A Portland developer is inching forward with plans with the city to turn 18 acres along the Willamette River near Goodpasture Island Road into high-density housing.
Eugene city planner Lydia McKinney said there’s no official development proposal, but the group is taking steps in that direction. In a meeting with the city last week, the architects and developers asked tentative questions about what they would have to do if they wanted to build there, and at the end of last week they took their plans one step further, McKinney said.
The developers, led by Brent Keys of Willamette Builders Group, submitted a proposal to the city to re-zone the area from “medium density,” where they could build 10 to 28 units per acre, up to “limited high density.” If approved, that could bring 56 units per acre with buildings up to five stories high.
The process of changing a plan-on-paper into homes people can buy is a slow one in Eugene, McKinney said, especially on the bank of the Willamette.
“It has a lot of procedural stuff attached to it,” she said.
It will take three to four months for the re-zoning to go through, McKinney said, and there will be a public hearing and likely scrutiny of water resources and environmental effects. All this will add up to more than two years before anyone could move into their new homes, she said.
Brent Keys did not return repeated calls for comment, but project manager Keith Randolph, who works for the Myhre Group Architects firm, said “It’s going to be housing – how many, what format, that’s still up in the air.”
The property belongs to PeaceHealth, the non-profit medical group that operates hospitals and clinics throughout the Northwest, including Sacred Heart Medical Center. Whether Keys’ or another group plans to buy the property or PeaceHealth aims to keep the land while developing on it is still unclear. But Randolph said he’s not had contact with them, and as far as who will end up owning the property, he’s “not sure.”
Lloyd Zimmer, who leads the Cal Young Neighborhood Association, said he has “yet to hear from any residents as to their concerns over the plans.”
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