In her Jan. 2 state of the city address, Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy said of the abandoned lot on West 10th Avenue and Charnelton Street, “A city party is due when the pit is finally plugged.” A decision at a Monday night City Council work session means she could soon be ordering pinatas and balloons.
The Council voted to allow Lane Community College to form plans to build a new downtown campus on the site. The new building will house LCC’s continuing education and English learning programs. Estimating it would create more than 300 jobs in Eugene, Piercy lauded the project.
“This isn’t small,” she said at the work session. “It’s very ambitious in terms of what we want to do with our community.”
The decision to give LCC exclusive rights to the site does not mean the future of the site is definitely in the college’s hands, however. LCC President Mary Spildesaid the college must still find an architect and a developer for the site. Neither the financing nor the cost of the project are yet certain.
Spilde said preliminary estimates for the cost of the site amounted to about $27 million. LCC, she said, has already found sources for a little more than $17.5 million, mostly from state funds.
Spilde said she has hopes of getting additional money from tax credits and from a $10.5 billion bill to support community colleges currently on the docket in the U.S. Congress.
More money may come from renting out parts of the new building for commercial use.
“Our board has figured out that there will never be enough public money to go around,” Spilde said.
Councilors voted unanimously to allow the project to go forward and had enthusiastic words for it.
“Nobody else has really been clamoring to develop on that site,” councilor George Brown said. “I think we’ve all agreed privately that we want LCC for that.”
Both Spilde and city officials were keen to emphasize the connection between LCC and the city.
“We’re excited about rebuilding the community,” Spilde said. “‘Community’ is our middle name.”
Piercy and councilors appeared to compare the University unfavorably to LCC.
“It’s not that I want to take away from the great institution on the hill,” Piercy said. “But it’s great to have a higher education institution enter the downtown.”
“Some of the other higher education institutions we have don’t represent (Eugene),” said Councilor Andrea Ortiz. “People feel like they belong with LCC.”
In addition to storefronts, LCC is also considering student housing and a police substation at the new site. LCC has not yet decided what it will do with its existing downtown campus between 10th and 11th Avenues on Willamette Street, which Spilde described as “the facility that Lane (Community College) owns that I am most embarrassed about.”
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