The Eugene City Council heard testimony about an ordinance to spearhead construction of the Walnut Station Mixed Use Center at a public hearing last Monday.
Last month, the city’s planning commission submitted its most recent draft of the ordinance to the council, which calls for the redevelopment of ailing local businesses in the area and the improvement of pedestrian and bus transit along the boulevard by adding additional lanes.
The proposed center, which will be located at the current Walnut Station northeast of campus along Franklin Boulevard, has cycled through various planning stages since 2003, and over the years has seen considerable input from stakeholders, such as community members, small-business owners, city staff and the University.
Commercial stakeholders, including building developers and small business owners, have expressed their interest in the center’s progress, viewing the area’s redevelopment as an opportunity to meet the needs of both local residents and entrepreneurs.
Jared Mason-Gere, director of business advocacy for the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, was optimistic at the meeting that the new building guidelines will “foster walkable, dense neighborhoods” and “facilitate a more streamlined building code” to help potential developers.
Lydia McKinna, a city community planner and the center’s project manager, said the commercial lucrativeness of the project will depend on increasing population in the neighborhood by constructing additional residential buildings.
“If we get more housing in that area, the jobs and retail will follow,” McKinna said. “The market for residential development is greater than that for commercial development in Eugene.”
More than a dozen members of the Fairmount Neighbors Association (FNA) were also present at the hearing, and most were optimistic that the new planning guidelines would lead to a more easily accessible and prosperous neighborhood. Sections of the mixed-use center plan have been revised because cajoling by Fairmount neighbors, and the city hopes such compromises will produce a final blueprint that pleases all parties. For example, current zoning allows construction of buildings along Franklin to reach as high as 10 stories, but the center’s pending plan cedes building height limits around Fairmount to only three stories out of respect for the neighborhood’s desire for open space.
Though the plan met a generally good-spirited reception by FNA members at the council meeting, several Fairmount residents professed their skepticism of the plan on the grounds that further development of commercial and high-density residential buildings would make living and commuting in the neighborhood much more cumbersome. A good portion of the dissenters’ speaking time dealt with the issue of parking, which even the council itself admitted to be a problem, assuming that developers will see greater pedestrian and bus transit as an excuse to remove parking spaces.
Fairmount neighbor Camilla Bayliss expressed her concern that finding parking for her friends and family will become even more difficult with the high-occupancy residential construction in the center’s plan.
“Use of our neighborhood for overnight storage of vehicles of mixed-use centers users is unacceptable,” Bayliss said.
Pedestrian safety was also brought up as another important asset that has been overlooked by city planners. Marianne Walter, a resident of Fairmount for three decades, was very blunt in her contention that an expanded boulevard would increase the risk of pedestrian-vehicle collisions.
“It will become dangerous to cross at Orchard and Franklin,” Walter said, “and I, and I am sure others, don’t want to be the first ones to be killed.”
Though the University was not represented at the council meeting, Vice President of Finance and Administration Frances Dyke sent a letter to the commissioners on its behalf, saying that the proposal in question will support “the on-going and future success of the University.” Dyke’s letter also expressed the concern that the widening of Franklin Boulevard will take up nearly 8,000 square feet of University land between Orchard and Walnut Streets, for which the city can hopefully provide “a reasonable compensation.”
The council is poised to adopt the ordinance, and the final vote of approval will be conducted on July 12. A public comment period remains open until July 2.

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