Eugene residents had their chance Wednesday night to air their concerns about proposed changes to the city’s land use code at a public hearing attended by all of Eugene’s city councilors, Lane County commissioners and Mayor Jim Torrey.
Many expressed concerns about the city’s zoning and growth boundary ordinances and the effects of urban density on some of Eugene’s older neighborhoods. The City Council took first steps to update the code in 1994 and subsequently overhauled the additions in 1998 and 1999. Some of the policies in the update included redefining zoning requirements for residential and commercial areas and encouraging growth within the urban growth boundary.
The new changes to the code will take effect on January 1, 2001. However, some Eugene residents and business owners said during testimony to the council that the proposed changes would hurt their neighborhoods and make it difficult to develop new businesses in certain areas.
Paul Vaughn, a West Eugene resident, said that the changes are moving away from the idea of nodal development around the campus area. Nodal development, a major piece of the city’s Land Use Code, encourages development in specific neighborhoods to create an infrastructure that would reduce the amount of automobile use and foster a stronger sense of community.
“With construction of a business plaza in the campus area, people won’t get in their cars and drive away,” Vaughn said.
Connie Berglund, a Eugene resident, stressed that every neighborhood has different needs and rates of growth and worried that the new changes would allow developers to put up student-oriented housing in older neighborhoods and destroy their character.
“The neighborhoods are becoming ghettoized,” she said. “Would you want to live next to one of these structures, with 50 college students coming and going and having all their friends over?
“Don’t turn our neighborhood into a human sardine can,” she said.
Business owners voiced concerns about zoning changes that would make it difficult to develop properties in residential zones. Dan Montgomery, a Eugene property developer, recounted how he had tried to build an apartment complex in urban Eugene but soon ran afoul of land use codes.
“In order to meet land use code standards, multi-family housing is mostly limited to suburban areas and bumps up against the urban services boundary,” he said. “I couldn’t come close to completing the project under the current standards.”
Tom Slocum, another developer, said that commercial properties with residential housing attached to them fall under residential restrictions in the new changes, and he called this standard unfair.
“Residential structures in commercial zones should fall under commercial restrictions, not the other way around,” he said. Slocum also said that in order to rent out ancillary housing above or next to a commercial structure, he would have to charge abnormally high rents just to cover the costs of construction in such a situation.
Eugene Water and Electric Board even got into the act by pushing for continued research into providing solar power to new homes. EWEB Commissioner Dorothy Andersen said that if the council keeps its current commitments to solar power, $37 million could be saved over the 50-year life of homes built with solar power sources.
“EWEB is committed to sustainable and alternative energy sources and urges you to keep the current provisions in the city code,” she said.