The University is one step closer to acquiring the Williams’ Bakery site after the Legislative Emergency Board approved the use of up to $27.4 million in state-backed bonds for a land acquisition that University President Dave Frohnmayer describes as “a once-in-a-century opportunity.”
The decision came Friday morning after the Legislative Emergency Board Education Committee approved the acquisition under the circumstance that no funds will be used to finance whatever is done with the site.
“This is a really big day in the history of the University,” Frohnmayer said later on Friday.
The University has wanted the site for many years, Frohnmayer said, and the $25 million price-tag is a reflection of the property’s value to the University. An additional $2.4 million may be used to buy the 7-Eleven store site and the Villard medical building located behind the bakery.
“Land is always worth what a willing buyer and seller is willing to pay,” Frohnmayer said, adding that “no one in the world” wants the Williams’ Bakery site more than the University.
Paying $25 million for the site is necessary because of the University’s respect for the bakery and its hundreds of employees, Frohnmayer said. About $17 million of the $25 million will pay for the bakery’s relocation costs.
“They really care about their employees,” Frohnmayer said. “It’s a burden for them to move but they wanted to be a good neighbor.”
Frohnmayer said it may be possible to lower the site cost by refusing to fund the bakery’s relocation, but it would cost the city more than 200 family-wage jobs and the University does not want to do that.
The University hopes to build a new basketball arena on the site but has not secured the necessary funds for such a project, which Frohnmayer said will mostly come from
alumni donations.
The University of Oregon Foundation, a private, nonprofit corporation set up to receive and distribute private donations to the University, will create a separate organization to handle the arena’s funding.
Legislative committee members questioned during the Friday meeting whether the potential transportation problems an arena would pose to the surrounding neighborhood had been examined and told Frohnmayer that the University will have to present a plan to the board on how it will mitigate such problems before arena construction can begin.
Frohnmayer said that would not be a problem for the University. He added that the committee was mostly concerned that state funds not be used in the construction of the arena.
Legislative Fiscal Analyst Steve Bender said the legislative board was checking to see that the University had examined the fiscal impact of using the extra bonds and was merely “exercising its responsibility of oversight of state public operations.”
The next step in the land acquisition process is to sign a formal sale agreement with United States Bakery, the company that owns the site, and then decide what to do with the land, Frohnmayer said.
The site has been the targeted site for the new arena since plans for the Howe Field location fell through last spring — plans that University Vice President of Administration Dan Williams said were “an example of how not to do things.”
Williams spoke at the Public Relations Society of America monthly luncheon at the Downtown Athletic Club on Thursday about issues concerning University development and community relations.
Williams said it is important to include the community in the University’s development process but also said it is crucial not to forget “the importance of retaining authority on the land.”
Dealing with surrounding neighborhoods and allowing neighbors to have a say in what goes on at the University can be difficult, Williams said, because of how impassioned people become when something like the siting of a sports arena hits so close to home.
The University must expand to meet the growing needs of the institution and “all of this activity must be done in a way that protects and embraces the reputation” of the school, Williams said.
Many people concerned about University development “don’t lend themselves to rational thinking,” and it can be difficult to try to match such irrationality with rationality, Williams said.
Because the University is an academic institution, debate is encouraged and crucial to the learning process, but it can be problematic when it reaches the outside community, Williams said.
“I’ve taken some comfort at the thought that the public’s memory is short,” Williams said with a laugh, emphasizing that a handful of winning sports seasons or other forms of good publicity can make up for past problems.
Often when community members raise concerns the only thing University officials can do is say they understand the concerns and promise to mitigate them, Williams said, but “that doesn’t get you anywhere unless there’s already a level of trust there.”
There have been quiet rumblings throughout the community over the possibility that a new basketball arena built on the site could bring with it other projects that could intrude on the surrounding community — rumblings that Frohnmayer called “just invention.”
Eugene is an “unusually vocal community,” and the concerns neighbors raise are understood but do not have much relevance to the construction of a new basketball arena, Frohnmayer said.
No houses will be moved from the East Campus neighborhood if an arena is built, Frohnmayer said, and there will be a “buffered zone” of at least two blocks between the arena and the surrounding neighborhood.

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