Following the passage of University Senate’s resolution, which urged University President Richard Lariviere to comply with the conditions established with the Riverfront Research Development Plan, Connecting Eugene has alleged the University has been engaging in questionable business practices over the use of the Riverfront Research Park for the past decade.
“Kids are getting taught these principles of design and sustainability in all their classes by faculty members that are world-renowned in green design,” Connecting Eugene member Paul Cziko said. “Oregon is highly rated in sustainability and green design from an academic standpoint, but the administration doesn’t care — they really have no interest in following what they teach.”
Cziko said the Riverfront Research Park’s developer, TC Eugene LLC, and the University routinely violated the city’s ordinances by establishing agreements that excluded the city and a Riverfront Research Park commission.
Cziko, who has helped to spearhead Connecting Eugene’s efforts, said plans for the Riverfront Research Park dates back to 1989 when the University entered into a conditional lease agreement with the city and the Oregon Board of Higher Education to create the park in hopes that it would advance the research mission of the University and provide jobs to the local community. Under a stipulation created by the conditional lease agreement, Cziko said the University had 20 years to develop the 67-acre Riverfront Research Park by putting 1.2 million square feet of office space on the site. The University failed to meet the stipulation requirements in time and reapplied for an extension to the conditional lease agreement in 2009. The extension was ultimately granted until 2012 despite appeals by Connecting Eugene against the decision.
“The research park has been a failure,” Cziko said. “It hasn’t really diversified the economy of Eugene and out of the 1.2 million square feet of office space that they were supposed to build, the University only built less than 10 percent of that. Then, right at the end of this process, they put forth this proposal to jump forward onto the riverfront and jump over all of this vacant land away from the river … to stake their claim.”
Cynthia Guinn, the executive director for the Oregon Research Institute, said the Oregon Research Institute itself is not expanding, but is rather “moving from two buildings into one” and is “just one tenant in the building,” according to e-mail correspondence.
According to the original 1986 intergovernmental agreement provided by Cziko, a seven-member commission was to be appointed and established “to make recommendations to the city and to the University of Oregon in connection with the development of the Riverfront Research Park property.”
“It is the intent that cooperative efforts between the city and the University of Oregon will be focused in this commission, which will provide a forum for public participation and public comment on plans and actions necessary for the development of the Riverfront Research Park property,” the agreement said.
However, the city said one of Connecting Eugene’s arguments has no legal standing, since the commission was terminated after years of inactivity. Jan Bohman, the community relations director for the city manager’s office, said that in 1998, commission members were “unsure of what their future role would be” and reappointed on a conditional basis for another year. The following year, Bohman said the commission sent a letter to the city that requested for its termination and that corresponding documents between the city and the University support the commission’s decision.
“As far as we can tell, there were no further appointments,” Bohman said. “We believe that the group has been deactivated, since it has not been active since 1999.”
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