One day in late February, University sophomore Micah Joyner and his roommates heard a knock at their front door: two representatives from their landlord, Von Klein Property Management, asking them to end their lease early. Foreseeing the hassles of vacating the house before the end of their lease in June, they refused.@@http://local.yahoo.com/info-22016511-von-klein-property-management-eugene@@
Three months later, the house they lived in on the corner of East 17th Avenue and Pearl Street has been replaced by a pile of rubble. So have all the properties on the northeast corner of those two streets, save one, which is riddled with holes and set to be demolished as well. An entire quarter of the block is surrounded by a chain-link fence, behind which lie mountains of debris and gnarled appliances.
By the end of 2011, the rubble too will be gone. On the site, there will instead sit a four-story complex of businesses and apartments — by the standards of the West University neighborhood, a massive one. The Paradigm on Pearl will be the largest building in the area, a U-shaped edifice with space for businesses on the bottom floor, parking in the basement, and housing on the upper floors. One estimate put it at 47 feet longer than the next largest in the area.

To build it, the developer needed to find a way to raze the houses there before tenants’ leases were complete. Dan Neal, the property’s developer and owner, said Von Klein offered all tenants in the seven buildings generous deals to leave.@@www.registerguard.com/…/neal-building-university-neighbors-project.csp@@
Some, such as Joyner, resisted for more than a month; others held out longer.
“They said, ‘You can stay until June,’ but they were basically trying to bribe us to leave,” Joyner said.
In the end, he and his roommates settled on a deal: a full refund on their damage deposit, a month’s rent free, and a payment equivalent to 15 days’ rent. In total, Joyner estimates this was about $3,700. In the end, Joyner said, “It was a lot of money to pass up.”
Joyner said some who held out longer ended up with worse deals, and that he and his roommates are bitter because the payment of 15 days’ rent — about $700 — hasn’t been forthcoming, with the developer insisting it never agreed to that payment.
The reason for the need to prematurely end the leases: tax exemptions. On Monday, the City Council voted to give the developers an exemption, which some members of the council estimated will end up being worth $1.5 million over 10 years. Neal said the property would have been ineligible for the exemption if it wasn’t finished by the end of the year, which he said would have been difficult if he developing waited until June when the tenants’ leases end.
Reactions to the development were polarized. Kevin Matthews, editor of the ArchitectureWeek magazine, called it “grotesque” and said its design threatened to create a “slum.” Local activist Zachary Vishanoff also criticized it. “This 10-year tax break is part of what’s tearing this neighborhood apart,” he said.@@http://www.designlaboratory.com/faculty/matthews.kevin/vitae.html@@ @@http://www2.eugeneweekly.com/2002/08_15_02/news.html@@
Neal, visibly frustrated at Matthews’ comments, pointed to his track record of environmentally conscious buildings. The new complex scored nearly three times as many points as the next highest building in a city index that determines whether buildings can gain tax exemption for the quality of their design; Neal said the next highest building on the index was also one of his.
“(The building) is quite a noteworthy achievement in environmental development,” Neal said.
Even Vishanoff said that, though he disagrees with the proposal itself, he likes Neal’s work.
“This developer, I actually think is a good developer,” Vishanoff said.