City Council granted the University clearance Monday night to build a bus transit center on a parking lot near Autzen Stadium, a lot which the Willamette Science and Technology Center used to augment its revenue by selling parking passes to football fans.
In a 5-3 vote, the council ended a months-long dispute, during which WISTEC officials warned that the passage of the transportation proposal would force the non-profit museum to close.
WISTEC Executive Director Meg Trendler said after the decision that the museum’s board of directors will meet today to decide whether the museum must close its doors.
The decision was a victory for the University, which proposed the transit center to circumvent a city code that had stalled plans to expand Autzen Stadium. The expansion would bring 12,100 more fans to football games, and city code requires the University supply 1,375 more parking places to accommodate the additional fans. The transit center would bus fans to games and negate the need for added parking.
However, the council dished WISTEC a major setback. WISTEC officials said that the decision will cost the museum one-third of its parking revenue. In total, parking revenue constitutes roughly one-third of the museum’s income.
The University has offered WISTEC about $200,000 in compensation, and Dan Williams, vice president for University administration, said Monday that the offer still stands.
“We’ve made a good-faith effort to mitigate the negative consequences some members of the community foresee,” Williams said.
But WISTEC officials said that the offer won’t cover the museum’s long-term financial needs.
Monday night, Councilor Bonny Bettman proposed an amendment that could have further mitigated the financial blow WISTEC will receive, but changes to her amendment reduced the benefit the museum could have received.
The amendment would have placed parking spaces on three city lots and on Leo Harris Parkway under city control, rather than leave them for the University, as current agreements between the University and city provide. This would have allowed the city to raise significant funds in parking revenue from those spaces, revenue which Bettman suggested be allocated to WISTEC.
The council narrowly passed that amendment but also approved 5-3 an alteration, proposed by Councilor Gary Rayor, that withdrew the three city lots from Bettman’s proposal. In effect, the revenue the city could allocate to WISTEC was slashed.
“(Bettman’s amendment) could have worked,” Trendler said after the vote.
Councilors who supported Rayor’s change to the amendment said that taking away University control of the lots would have unfairly changed an agreement between the University and the city. Also, they suggested WISTEC more vigorously pursue fund raising.
“I think WISTEC would be miles ahead if they went out knocking on doors and doing the hard work we all do (to fund raise),” Councilor Gary Papé said.
But Trendler said WISTEC has already been doing as much fund raising as possible.
Earlier this month, the University and WISTEC considered a proposal that would have placed a transit station on the edge of Alton Baker Park and allow WISTEC to continue selling parking passes on the lots that the University gained access to use Monday night. But that proposal would have set the stadium expansion far behind schedule and incur unacceptable changes to the park, Eugene senior planner Allan Lowe said.