The city’s pro-development and anti-development camps are squaring off on Ballot Measure 20-50, which asks whether Broadway should be reopened to vehicular traffic between Charnelton and Oak Streets.
The area on Broadway, home to many businesses, is currently a pedestrian mall closed to traffic.
Supporters of the measure, which will be voted on Sept. 18, say opening the street will bring new economic growth to the area and will act as a step toward revitalizing downtown.
Those opposed to the measure say that reopening the streets will mean tearing down trees, as well as spending money they argue could be better spent to improve the area rather than reopen it to traffic.
City Councilor David Kelly said he has changed his opinion of Broadway in the last couple of years. He said he used to think that it was good to have different kinds of streets in one city, but now wants Broadway reopened to traffic because he thinks it would improve the look of downtown.
“It’s a pro-downtown-vitality decision,” Kelly said. “It’s very clear to me that the perception of a ton of people is so negative about the Broadway mall that it’s coloring their perception of downtown.”
Lazar Makyadath, who owns the businesses Shoe-a-Holic, Lazar’s Bazar and Bruce Lee’s Martial Arts Supply, which are located within the closed area, said reopening the street is long overdue.
“It should definitely have happened a long time ago,” Makyadath said. “There’s no blood flow going through the heart.”
He said he has been in business in his current location for 28 years, and said the closed street was an effective way to bring people in for businesses at first, but he said people have tired of it now. He said he thinks reopening Broadway will make traffic smoother and bring more people into the stores.
John Egan, a member of the Lane County Chapter of the Pacific Greens, is on the committee against reopening Broadway. Egan, who has lived in Eugene for three years, wants to keep Broadway closed to traffic because he said he wants to protect the trees and open space around it. He said instead of the street being bulldozed, he would rather see a fountain added to make the area a plaza, or see the area turned into a park. He said a ood example of this being done is in Oklahoma City, where a canal was built to go through an old business district to make it more attractive.
Egan said that he thinks some people are against it because it will cost so much money to reopen the mall to traffic.
“I think that there’s a lot of interest in not spending $2 to $3 million to open it up because they’ve opened up a lot of the old mall and it hasn’t really improved business,” Egan said.
Egan said that if the city wants to change the look of downtown, it should take on a big project like making Broadway a plaza center because the city recently paid off the mortgage on Hult Center.
“I think if you give people a big enough vision, they will respond,” Egan said.