Story by Kyra Buckley
Photos by Andy Abeyta
Springfield is up and coming. Yes, that Springfield: the Oregon town across the river from Eugene is shedding its poor image in exchange for a more family friendly and community oriented city center.
Eugene’s companion city has often had a bad reputation. Downtown, specifically, has been home to three strip clubs, playing into the less favorable perception of Springfield. In addition, the Eugene-Springfield area has long been associated with a high rate of methamphetamine use, homelessness, and property crime rates ranking second highest in the state.
“If you are riding a bike in Eugene, you are environmentally friendly,” explains Tom Draggoo of the Springfield Renaissance Development Corporation (SRDC). “However, if you are riding a bike in Springfield, you probably got a DUI and can no longer drive.”
However, over the last two decades a serious effort has been made to shift downtown Springfield away from less-than-reputable storefronts and into a thriving community—and it’s working.
“There is a big disconnect across the river,” Leanne Murray, former Main Street Coordinator at the Neighborhood Economic Development Corporation (NEDCO), says. “I consider[ed] that to be a huge part of my job, to dispel the myths—or the previously accurate reputation—to let people know that it’s not like that anymore. We’ve got some real anchors and there are assets that make [Springfield] a worthwhile destination.”
Recently, three of the more prominent strip clubs in the Main Street area have closed down. Main Street in Springfield has seen the addition of many locally owned businesses, including be WELL.Jazzercise fitness center, The Washburne Café, and Vino and Vango, a painting-party studio in which patrons and their friends are guided through painting a masterpiece—while snacking and drinking wine. In February 2013 the long anticipated Plank Town Brewing Co., a project of one of the owners of Sam Bond’s Garage, a popular and established bar in Eugene, opened their doors. However, to see where Springfield is headed, it’s imperative to know where the revitalization efforts of Springfield began.
Starting the climb
The rise of local business and the strengthening of existing companies in downtown Springfield is no mistake; instead, it has been the effort of many groups intersecting to create feasible and reasonable projects to rehabilitate the Main Street area. The Springfield Renaissance Development Corporation, the Neighborhood Economic Development Corporation, the City of Springfield, and downtown businesses are just some of the organizations contributing to the movement to renovate the downtown blocks.
While efforts to renew downtown Springfield can be traced back to the seventies, it wasn’t until the early nineties that a group of idealistic citizens came together to form the Springfield Renaissance Development Corporation (SRDC) and to promote the message of civic entrepreneurship. The group began to materialize in the late nineties when the Springfield Chamber of Commerce sponsored an event called “The Summit.” This event inspired thirteen Springfield citizens to attend a conference in Palo Alto, California in order to learn more about how civic entrepreneurship could benefit the city of Springfield.
“Civic entrepreneurs help communities collaborate to develop and organize their economic assets and to build productive, resilient relationships across the public, private, and civil sectors,” writes John Melville, the keynote speaker at that first meeting, along with Douglas Henton and Kimberly Walesh, in a 1999 Community Economics Newsletter. “They forge the ties that bind economy and community for their mutual benefit. They provide continuity to work on tough issues over the long haul.”
Tom Draggoo has a simpler explanation. “The idea of civic entrepreneurship is that you just kind of admit that you can’t depend on a government to ride over the hill and save you and make you better,” he says. “You just kind of suck it up and do it yourself. Be entrepreneurs.”
And that is exactly what the “Thirsty Thirteen” did. Named for their beginning meetings in the bar at the Palo Alto Holiday Inn, the thirteen returned home to make something happen in Springfield. They were diverse in many ways—from which businesses they represented to where they actually lived in Springfield—but to form the SRDC they had to leave their business
and personal hats at the door and pick up their “what’s good for Springfield hat,” according to Draggoo.
After doing some research, the SRDC found that the downtown is usually the heart of a community. Even though Springfield’s downtown is not centrally l
ocated it still has the qualities of a midtown hub. “You think of the downtown no matter where you are,” Draggoo says. The SRDC decided that
if that indeed was the case then they better start with Springfield’s Main Street district.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing from there, however. “We came back [from Palo Alto] all excited about what we were going to do, and we ran into this incredible [opposing] inertia,” Draggoo says. People told them that it’s been tried before and that they weren’t any better than last group of people that was going to fix it. “That kind of threw us for a loop, kind of like ‘what’s the matter with these people?”
Luckily for downtown Springfield, the SRDC didn’t back down.
A base of operations
“We looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s show people what’s possible,’” Draggoo says. “We didn’t want downtown Springfield to be the downtown that other people thought we ought to have—we should create our own kind of downtown.”
When the SRDC decided to work on a project in downtown they assumed that they would use their various roles as educators, facilitators, and even agitators, according to Draggoo, and to spark conversation between those who might not speak to each other under normal circumstances. They never planned on owning a building and doing something with it. However, then the old Mckenzie Theater building, nestled away in the middle of Main Street between Sixth and Seventh Street, was put up for sale.
The Mckenzie Theater opened in 1946 and by the eighties it was regarded as a community hub for fine arts. In spite of this, it closed down, and was used first as a boxing arena, and then as a less-than-reputable all ages dance club, according to cinematreasures.org, an online movie theater guide. As Draggoo explains, every subsequent use for the theater was w
orst than the last. The SRDC wasn’t daunted, however.
They began to collect data. They interviewed people from all sorts of backgrounds, exhausted their connections, and kept coming back to the same conclusion: the community needed a gathering place. “We thought, ‘to heck with it, let’s just build a theater,” Draggoo exclaims.
Luckily, the original “Thirsty Thirteen” were not alone in their endeavor. “Part of the magic of civic entrepreneurship is that it’s not the same group of people that do everything,” Draggoo says. “People come shooting in like comets with specific skills or connections or talents and they will do this incredibly important job, and then they’re done, and the leave, and someone else comes in and they do something really special.”
After having overcome some major road blocks on the way, such as securing grant money and winning a legal battle while buying the theater, the SRDC found themselves not quite done with project and needing a little help. That’s when the Springfield School District stepped in with a newly acquired grant to open up a small school. This school would become the Academy of Arts and Academics, commonly known as A3, a High School on the opposite block from the Mckenzie Theater building on Main Street. A requirement of their grant is that A3 cannot use the facilities at another school for any of their productions, according to Draggoo. They needed a performance space available to them. This created a natural alliance between A3 and the SRDC Theater project.
“That was magic,” Draggoo says. “That had to have happened or else it [opening the theater] wouldn’t have worked.”
In September of 2006 the Richard E. Wildish Community Theater opened its doors exclusively for the Springfield School District and for use by the faculty and students of A3. In December of 2006 it opened for the public with a lavish event: a gala concert performed by guitarist and composer Mason Williams, complete with a red carpet.
“It was a huge deal,” Draggoo says. “I got to be the emcee, and I said who would ever,” he trails off before saying, “I get emotional thinking about it. Who would ever have thought Mason Williams would be playing in downtown Springfield. It was incredible.”
If the SRDC had done any sort of feasibility survey in the beginning the theater may not ever have happened, Draggoo says. In essence, the group took a stab in the dark, hoping that their drive and determination to better downtown would create a catalyst for others to get involved. Many asked if this would be the thing that fixes Springfield, but as Draggoo said, “that’s just silly.” The theater wasn’t meant to solve everything.
“It takes a critical mass of people who sort of buy in to the whole thing that’s happening in downtown,” Draggoo says. But perhaps the Wildish Theater success story has helped more people and businesses buy into and invest in the Main Street area.
Changing an image

The City of Springfield certainly buys into the momentum happening in downtown and has worked to elevate the Main Street area into an art and culture hot spot. Before this could happen, however, John Tamulanis, the Community Development Manager for the City of Springfield, acknowledged that some changes had to be made.
“We had three bars that were not well managed,” Tamulonis says. “Their clients were out in the street during the day, they were shooting up on the street, prostitutes were out there, [and] there were fights. There was a big push in the community to make a change. What eventually happened after an awful lot of work, including students that went and filmed what people were doing and showed it to city council, and the council recommended that these three bars not have their licenses renewed.”
In addition to closing down these bars, the citizens of Springfield in a 2004 bond measure approved the building of a new jail facility on A Street between Pioneer Parkway and Fourth Street. The Jail opened in January of 2010 with 100 beds, making it the largest municipal jail in the State of Oregon.
“We now have much more interest in the downtown,” Tamulonis notes. “A lot of it stemmed from the new jail facility … Our crime rate has dropped by 30 percent.” Springfield has further experienced a myriad of capital improvement in the last two decades. ODOT (Oregon Department of Transportation) paved Main Street and changed the sidewalk configuration to make them wider and more pedestrian friendly, according to Tamulonis.
For six years during this time period, Main Street businesses created a “Business Improvement District” where the companies taxed themselves. These taxes were then used to hire a city manager to help with joint marketing projects, activities and events. It also established a route of communication between the city and the merchants.
On the arts and culture front, the Emerald Empire Arts Association, a non-profit volunteer-run artist association, moved to its present location at Fifth and Main Street in 2002, and with the help of the US Green Building Council updated their historical building into a sustainable and “Green” certified structure.
“And then suddenly all this stuff started happening,” Tamulonis says. “The Wildish is complete, LTD put a new downtown station in…A3 moved in in 2008, NEDCO relocated to downtown in the same year… About this time we noticed that there was a lot of activity that we were seeing with the businesses and the interest in art and bringing people in here.”
Thanks to commissioned funds from a hotel tax, the city has also been able to support the implementation of over 20 murals, according to Tamulonis. For example, the students at A3 developed a mural for their own building. When they finished their mural, they went a block down the street to create a piece on the Siuslaw Bank Building.
Overall, the City is working to make small yet meaningful upgrades in the Main Street area. Challenges are constantly present, such as the formerly accurate poor reputation, low rent costs, and lack of funds. Small projects, however, can build on each other to make a real difference. One case in point is the open banners that now decorate Main Street. During the construction of the jail businesses wanted patrons to know that they were sill open. Courtney Griesel, Management Analyst for the City Manager’s Office, researched and helped implement a system in which the city owns the metal poles that the banner hangs on, but the business has the freedom to design their own open banner. The business must open and close on the same day (which excludes bars open past midnight) and the banner must be taken in when the business is closed. The project started with six interested parties; now over 60 banners can be spotted along Main Street.
“I liken it to knitting a sweater with lint,” laughs Tamulonis. “You collect enough lint, you can make a little piece of yarn, and eventually you have enough yarn to knit a sweater. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I’m going to start with really small things. So you have a banner, you have some minor changes in signage, you get the signage on parking laid out…There’s expectations, and then you have to perform and make sure that you follow through with each one of these things. So, you change the lighting slightly, you change the signage slightly, you change the sidewalk slightly, you keep adding those things and eventually you have this transformation.”
The City would love to see some bigger projects come to fruition in the future, such as more adequate lighting in the downtown blocks. Other projects like building renovations, the building of a plaza near the river, and the restructuring of Main Street into a two way street (which would be a dream come true for Murray, Tamulonis and downtown businesses) are all in their infancies, with only so much as sketches and expressed hopes to build off of. However, with renewed spirit and an inspired community, these dreams may turn into reality within the next few decades of growth.
Look for Part II later in the term!

Gallery • 4 Photos

Creating the Downtown We Deserve (Part I)