In less than a year, downtown Eugene will be a center of activity full of tourists, customers, families and media personnel. Only it won’t happen because the Eugene City Council and developers worked together to revitalize the area, but because the U.S. Olympic Trials – and the 13,000 spectators the event is expected to bring – will be here in June 2008.
With the recent failure of the downtown urban renewal ballot measure, and a rejection by the council of a smaller-scale plan posed about a year ago, city officials are uncertain of just how much work can be done in time to give the blighted West Broadway area a facelift before the summer.
It’s also uncertain how long residents will have to wait for a revamped downtown, and Councilor Chris Pryor said he wasn’t sure either.
“I don’t know, and it hurts me to say that,” he said. “I’ve been around for years, and I know there are a number of ways these things can be dragged out for a long time. I only hope our momentum will move us forward and we won’t have to wait for a couple of years” to see significant change.
But Pryor did say the large-scale redevelopment plans were not killed when the measure was convincingly defeated by voters last week. The city could ultimately “scrape together enough money” and still put together those plans, Pryor said.
These plans would have used the visions of two Portland developers, KWG Development Partners and Beam Development, to radically change the look of two blocks in the heart of downtown.
That means the possibility of large chain stores that some downtown business owners feared could force them out of the area still exists.
If those new business do come into downtown, however, they could create a commercial center in the area, keeping alive the city’s hope that local shoppers will not have to avoid downtown by visiting the Oakway Center or Valley River Center.
What happens next for the two blocks of West Broadway between Willamette and Charnelton streets and the rest of downtown seems to be anyone’s guess – that is, until the city council measures the outcome of two variables: What did the “no” vote mean, and will the developers stick around or have they been scared away?
The council needs to assess the true intentions of the “no” vote on the downtown issue before moving forward with any new plans for the area, Pryor said.
The questions that Pryor said should be asked are: Did the landslide rejection of the downtown measure really mean there was a distrust of government, or did voters perhaps just not like this particular project? Maybe residents felt the money would be spent in inappropriate ways, he said.
“In my opinion the election demonstrated just how out of touch the council majority and city leadership are with the general public,” Councilor Bonny Bettman wrote in an e-mail. “I hope that they have taken the mandate to heart and will employ a more affordable, sensible, and inclusive approach to ‘next steps’ for improving downtown.”
What those “next steps” include for the West Broadway area may help to figure out the other variable – the commitment level of KWG and Beam to the revitalization of downtown around this particular plan.
Bettman said the developers “would still be interested” in redeveloping the Sears and Aster pits, as well as the Centre Court and Washburne buildings using the “incremental” plan. Bettman and Councilor Betty Taylor put the incremental plan on the table about a year ago along with the larger version, but it did not receive the majority vote from the council.
Whether this verbal assurance translates into a written guarantee still is yet to be seen. Interim City Manager Angel Jones traveled to Portland on Friday for a meeting with the developers to gauge their interests, but the city has not released any information to the public or city councilors as of Friday afternoon about the developers’ decisions.
City officials have said the goal of completing or making significant progress on either the incremental or large-scale plan for downtown seems improbable now, but things could have been different.
Bettman was skeptical of the chances for significant development before the Olympic Trials.
“That possibility lapsed when the council majority decided to vote against the incremental development and go for the KWG deal,” she said. “At the time I pointed out that the pits could be redeveloped by the time of the Olympic (Trials) with my motion for incremental revitalization, but supporting the KWG deal would cause at least a two-year delay. Turns out, I was right.”
Whatever the outcome for downtown, Eugene will be in the spotlight this summer. The city could show it is building an attractive downtown, masking a dilapidated one, or neglecting the area while the University proudly displays a newly upgraded Hayward Field.
The Trials are expected to bring in $18 million dollars to the community, said Dave Hauser, the president of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce.
“There will be an effort to dress up downtown … maybe we’ll put up murals around the pits that display the history of track and field in Eugene, or one dedicated to Pre,” Hauser said. “Clearly these are not fixes for downtown, but taking what we have and making it as attractive as possible.”
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Urban renewal plans still on the table
Daily Emerald
November 11, 2007
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