The University should not sell Westmoreland Apartments until a plan is drafted that specifies where the sale proceeds will go and how the University will help the potentially displaced students, the Family Housing Board ruled at its Friday meeting.
The board, which makes policy recommendations to University Housing, passed a motion 8-1 asking University officials to refrain from selling the 404-unit complex until such a plan has been presented.
Board member and Campus Card Office manager Joel Woodruff opposed the motion, saying the two task groups University officials created are doing everything they can to address the issues the board is asking be examined.
“There’ll be more information available” as the University proceeds with its sale plans, Woodruff said.
But many board members expressed concerns about the possible sale and the impetus behind it.
“I think the proposal of the sale is wholly shameful and unethical,” said Kristi Durante, the board’s east campus neighborhood representative.
The University announced Oct. 20 its intention to sell the 21-acre west Eugene property and use the sale money – which could be between $15 million and $18 million – to improve on-campus housing and purchase property closer to campus, such as the state-owned property east of the Romania car lot on Franklin Boulevard. The UO Foundation, a private organization dedicated to fundraising for the University, owns the car lot, and University officials hope to purchase it as soon as funds are available.
The University is considering doing a private-public housing partnership on the Romania lot, Vice President for Finance and Administration Frances Dyke told the board.
Dyke said there will be a written agreement guaranteeing that University Housing, a financially independent department, eventually will receive all money from the sale. Durante said she is particularly concerned that the sale money will be used for on-campus housing rather than family housing.
Board member Chris Miller, who serves as vice chairman for the Westmoreland Tenants Council, said he would like the University to make a decision as soon as possible about who will buy the property and when the sale might go through.
“I know there’s this sense of like a hammer waiting to fall,” Miller said.
Dyke said the University doesn’t want to finalize a sale too soon because leases at Westmoreland do not expire until June 2006. Selling the property early in the year could make it difficult to honor the leases, and “that’s certainly not appropriate,” she said.
A worker in University Housing, who is not authorized to speak to the press and wishes to remain anonymous, said staffers were told on Friday that University President Dave Frohnmayer will decide by Dec. 1 whether to sell the property in June or wait until 2007. If the apartments are sold in June, Westmoreland tenants will be allowed to move into Spencer View Family Housing or housing in the east campus neighborhood and pay the same rates they are paying at Westmoreland, the source said.
Interim Vice President for Student Affairs and Director of University Housing Mike Eyster said he has not heard anything about a Dec. 1 decision.
“I would know if that happened,” Eyster said.
He said the information presented at the Family Housing Board meeting is the most current available.
“This sounds like somebody’s imagination is working overtime,” he said.

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