After more than a year of deliberating on designs for development of Eugene Water and Electric Board’s 27-acre riverfront property, EWEB is now moving the project from design phase to preparation for construction.
The finalization of EWEB’s design means a draft of the master plan will be submitted to the EWEB Board of Commissioners at its upcoming June 1 meeting. With approval from the board, the project moves into a 10- to 12-month process, addressing the land-use issues, before construction begins.
Riverfront Project Manager Kaarin Knudson said even though the EWEB community advisory team approved of the vision for riverfront development, realizing that vision could take a long time.
“When University students are coming back to visit Eugene, years down the road after they’ve graduated, this is an area that’s going to undergo a major change and, we think, a major improvement,” Knudson said.
EWEB spokesperson Joe Harwood confirmed the EWEB Riverfront Master Plan represents a hybrid of four design options workshopped over the last eight months.
Knudson, who works in conjunction with EWEB and Rowell Brokaw Architects, oversaw a year of meetings to advance the project’s design through community concern and technical feedback.
“We worked very hard to interview community members and people with expertise to gauge what elements people support or things they wanted to see changed … We were fortunate to have so much feedback. I think we were able to avoid missteps that otherwise would’ve been easy to make,” Knudson said.
The EWEB Riverfront Master Plan doesn’t yet address specific use of the area proposed for redevelopment, but it does designate eight acres of open space, a bike trail system and narrow parcels designated for construction of a potential “restaurant row” on the waterfront.
Knudson said the style of architecture along the riverfront plaza would be decided by whoever EWEB chose to sell space to, leaving the specifics of condo, cafe and storefront construction for a later step in the process.
The EWEB property, currently made relatively inaccessible by a lack of through-streets, would be opened to businesses with new city blocks, open public spaces and a “cultural landscape” along the riverfront, according to developers.
Connecting Eugene, an environmental organization opposed to the proposed Oregon Research Institute Riverfront development, could not be reached for immediate comment, but its Web site refers to the potential EWEB Riverfront development as an “ecologically sensitive developed public space.”
In the interest of developing an ecologically sound plan, EWEB sponsored an independently conducted study that resulted in a seven-page document titled “Riverfront Ecological Analysis and Design.”
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