ly bought the Williams Bakery site down the
street for three times more money per acre.
“The EWEB property is too valuable an asset
to sell at a fire sale price,” he wrote.
The offer also won’t cover the estimated
$38.5 million cost of building a new EWEB
headquarters and utility yards. Several com-
missioners have said they won’t raise utility
rates to fund a move. “Our primary concern is
running a utility, not locating a hospital,”
Bishop says. “I’m not going to raise EWEB
customer’s rates to move this utility.”
EWEB is now spending about $1 million
for a more exact estimate of its relocation
costs and the costs of possibly splitting its
industrial maintenance facilities from it’s
courthouse and river. But in the current plan,
the great street “goes down a hole,” Diethelm
says, pointing to the ditch drop-offs and con-
crete retaining walls apparent in a city road
study last year. “It isn’t going to be so great, I
don’t even think it’s even going to be pretty
good.”
The city study for the site envisions a
Patterson Street underpass that will descend
under adjacent 50-foot-wide and 20-foot-
wide highway and railroad bridges to reach
the riverfront. Three sloped trenches will
extend hundreds of feet out to lower the road-
ways under the surface-level bridges. Getting
water out of the trenches near the river will
require continuously running pumps.
‘We need to have a public, natural riverfront.’
SIN
CE
198
9
— Friends of Eugene President Kevin Matthews
administrative headquarters building. Results
of the new study are due in September.
Bishop says its crucial for EWEB to keep
its administration building downtown. “As a
public utility, it’s absolutely essential that we
be at a central location.”
Even if it doesn’t move, EWEB says it
will need to spend roughly $10 million reno-
vating its older maintenance buildings.
Hinkley says it would make good sense for
the utility to split its operation, moving its
maintenance yard to recently acquired indus-
trial land in northwest Eugene and leaving its
headquarters downtown.
Orr says Triad’s offer could help EWEB
raise the money it needs to upgrade its main-
tenance facilities. Triad’s offer “is a great help
to them.” The amount of Triad’s offer remains
an “open issue” for discussion, Orr says.
The trenching will rule out any possibility
of putting the popular millrace envisioned in
earlier city plans into the area. “You put that
trench in there, and there’s no way to put a
millrace in,” Diethelm says.
Bettman says she’s talked to Diethelm
about his concerns. “He brought up some very
good issues.” Bettman says she’s seen attrac-
tive underpasses with arches and rock faces
and she hopes the city will move in that direc-
tion in building this project.
Diethelm says the city can make the
underpass work, but probably not without a
major redesign that prioritizes attractive river
access over-roads. The highway the city envi-
sions for along the railroad tracks should be
moved to 8th Avenue to provide less of a bar-
rier, and the underpass should be moved west
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Critics of the Triad deal say that it will cost
citizens more than just money — the city will
lose the opportunity to return to the river with
a beautiful, easily accessible natural river-
front.
Retired UO landscape architecture profes-
sor Jerry Diethelm says the city’s preliminary
designs for a railroad underpass to access the
hospital could create a long ugly trench block-
ing river access. “I think it’s going to be a big
mistake.”
The city earlier designated 8th Avenue as a
“great street” connecting downtown to the
Triad wants to buy
this land from EWEB.
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APRIL 7, 2005 13