The University moved a step closer Monday to purchasing portions of two streets from the city that school planners intend to line with parking spots for campus.
The University turned in its application to the city on Monday to purchase the portions of Moss Street and Villard Alley between East 15th and East 17th Avenues. The area is directly across from what is currently a parking lot behind the School of Law. The University will soon remove that parking lot to build a new residence hall.
If plans go ahead, the stretch of Moss Street will transform into something like the expanse of East 15th Avenue that runs past Hayward Field and the turf fields, lined with vertical parking spots on both sides.
The portion of Villard Alley will also change. Currently, it is unpaved, but the University would pave it and line one side with parking.
University planner Emily Eng said plans for the two streets would not involve major alterations to the properties currently lining the streets. On Moss Street, the University would replace a grassy strip between the sidewalk and the street with parking.
In Villard Alley, Eng said, the University will likely cut into some backyards to create space for parking.
The University owns all the properties that line both areas it is seeking to purchase. The University mostly does not rent out properties along Moss Street, but Villard Alley is lined with houses that are mostly rented out to students with families, who usually stay there for several years at a time.
“This doesn’t affect the status of homes to be rented out by the University,” Eng said.
The University now needs the city council to vote to approve the sale of the street. The University has undergone that process in the past, most recently in asking the city to cede another portion of Villard Alley, upon which part of the new Matthew Knight Arena has since been built.
That cost nearly $500,000, but Eugene city planner Steve Ochs said that is not a clear indication of how much the city might ask the University to pay, since the arena is being built on what used to be a commercial area, while the areas the University is now asking the city to cede are zoned as residential areas.
Ochs estimated the city council will probably vote on the University’s proposal some time during the summer.
That timing, along with several other aspects of the proposal, troubles community activist Zach Vishanoff. Vishanoff, who has called the University’s development on Moss Street a conspiracy, said the timing of the hearing will allow the University to escape community oversight because many people leave Eugene in the summer.
Vishanoff criticized the University’s plans for the site.
“You’re making neighborhoods where people will be run over,” he said. “You’re killing people with bad design.”
Vishanoff said people in the neighborhood oppose the development because of the possibility that another sports facility, perhaps the proposed indoor track, might be
built there.
“Who knows what will go there in the end?” he said.
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University applies to buy streets for parking
Daily Emerald
May 10, 2010
Nick Cote
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