Eugene weekly., January 26, 2006, Page 13, Image 13

In the past the council has balked at using
condemnation even for more public purpos-
es such as park land in the south hills and
Santa Clara and, ironically, to complete plans
for a rail/bus depot with a new street through
property Connor and Woolley own.
Kevin Matthews, director of the citizens
group Friends of Eugene, said the city
shouldn’t only use condemnation “because
somebody with a lot of money asks for it.”
The city’s limited condemnation experi-
ence indicates the property owners down-
town may be wise to wait for a higher price.
A few years ago an auto body shop on land
for the new Federal Courthouse forced the
city into condemnation. Rather than pursue
costly litigation, the city settled for about
double its initial offer.
Prichard said the CWO proposal may not
be able to afford to lose pieces of property or
long delays. The national retailers CWO is
trying to attract want to locate near other
national retailers in a big project. “It takes a
certain critical mass of those national tenants
to get them to all jump onboard.”
If land acquisition takes too long, the
retailers may also be lost to other cities,
Prichard warns. Prichard said even if all goes
well, the project could take up to five years
to complete and rent out.
Slumming It
Condemnation opponents are particularly
irked by the idea Connor/Woolley (CW) may
now be trying to acquire properties after
depressing downtown values by leaving the
many buildings they own downtown vacant
for so many years.
The large Centre Court building at
The Connor, Woolley, Opus proposal wraps condos and retail around parking garages on Broadway and includes
a movie theater in the Atrium building and a hotel on Olive Street, as shown in this preliminary rough plan.
Downtown
Character
The downtown plan adopted by the city a
couple years ago prioritizes downtown
“diversity” and states that “Downtown is
what is ‘Eugene about Eugene.’”
But what if CWO fills downtown with
high-rent national chain stores and there’s
nothing Eugene about it?
Prichard says CWO is looking for a mix
of local and national stores and doesn’t want
downtown to lose it’s unique Eugene flavor.
“I really don’t think there’s a danger of that,”
she said, noting that Connor and Woolley are
from Eugene. “That is one thing the devel-
“What’s great about this project is that it is
the anchor that the rest of us need to remain
viable,” he said. “We’re all going to benefit.”
Taxpayer Bill
The taxpayer bill for subsidies the CWO
proposal has asked for or could demand
could reach $40 million. CWO has told the
city that it wants the city to pay for a 455 car
garage for the project. That could cost up to
$22 million. CWO would also be eligible for
10-year property tax breaks on the entire
project. That could add about $15 million
more to the public tab. CWO also wants to
low income housing and set caps on devel-
oper profits. In the past, Eugene has given
away the money with few restrictions.
The city has also failed to protect taxpay-
ers from cost overruns on “public-private
partnership” projects. When Broadway
Place, a similar but smaller scale project on
West Broadway, went $1.2 million over
budget, developers stuck their public part-
ners with the bill.
Rather than putting so much money into
CWO, Bettman and Taylor said they’d like to
see the city subsidize ORI, a research non-
profit, in its struggle to fund a new green
building across from the downtown library
employing 200 well-paid professionals.
Moine said she wishes the big public sub-
sidies CWO demanded were also available
to her for redevelopment.
Bettman said she’s concerned about a
“very unlevel playing field” for businesses
trying to compete downtown with a subsi-
dized CWO. She pointed out, if all urban
renewal funding is dedicated to CWO, other
downtown businesses will essentially be
taxed to fund subsidies for their competitor.
Parking
A publicly subsidized parking garage
could cost almost $50,000 a space, based on
other cities’ experience.
“The less parking you build the better,
because it’s so costly,” Brink said.
CWO told the city they need 743 new
parking spaces for their development, of
which they’ll pay for only 288 with taxpay-
ers coughing up for the remaining 455.
Despite the big costs involved, the city has-
n’t taken an independent hard look at
‘I don’t think it’s right using eminent domain on one business for the benefit of another business.’
— COUNCILOR BETTY TAYLOR
Willamette and Broadway was once nearly
full but has been empty for three years since
CW cleared it of tenants. Other shops on
Broadway have left since they said CW
wouldn’t offer a long-term lease. A business
college was interested in the vacant
Symantec building, but CW declined to
invest in needed improvements.
“Because Connor Woolley have done
such wonders for the neighborhood, it’s not
worth that much,” Keim said of his property.
“They basically have monopolized and killed
downtown Eugene.”
Makyadath said it was CW’s plan to let
downtown die so they could buy up all the
property cheap. Except for a few properties,
he said, “it worked, they own it.”
Prichard says she has three decades of
experience with downtown Eugene leasing
and said CW wasn’t to blame for the down-
turn. “Even before they owned them, there
was a pretty clear downward trend.”
Rob Bennett, part owner of the
Downtown Athletic Club on Willamette,
agreed that the primary reason the buildings
long stood vacant was a lack of demand, but
he said CW also had a role. “It’s hard for me
to understand how they vacated the Centre
Court building, which had tenants in there,
and then let it sit so long,” he said.
“Connor/Woolley has been putting the
breaks on downtown for many years,”
Matthews said. “We need to be aware of
what games might be going on.”
opers are really concerned about.”
But Moine doubts that many local busi-
nesses will be able to afford the high rents.
“At what point do we let Eugene look like
Any Town, USA?”
Makyadath said he worries that the CWO
project is about forcing the poor out of down-
town. “I would like to see the downtown get
better, but it doesn’t have to be only all these
ritzy people can be downtown.”
There are indications that the less well-off
aren’t welcome downtown. In 2004, several
property owners publicly objected to a pro-
posal to locate a thrift store in the Centre
Court building.
The mix of track, tie-dye and
Birkenstocks “tapestry of Eugene is actually
one of our biggest assets,” Matthews said.
The unique character sets us apart for tourists
and new residents, he said. With many of
these new developments around the country,
“you could be Anywhere, USA which is the
same as Nowhere, USA.”
Councilor Bettman points to research by
planners indicating that diverse ownership
also makes a downtown stronger. “You’re
not putting all your eggs in one basket.”
But Greg Brokaw, an architect who part
owns a building across Willamette from the
proposed development, said that even with
CWO owning a large chunk of the core,
there’s still room for local “funkiness.”
“It’s going to be two blocks out of dozens
of blocks of downtown,” Brokaw said.
buy the Atrium building from the city.
Selling the building at below market value
and moving city offices could increase the
subsidy.
The city’s downtown urban renewal dis-
trict would be used to fund the garage. The
district diverts money from cash-strapped
school and local government funding. The
spending limit on the district will likely have
to be raised and the district could also run out
of money because of CWO’s 10-year tax
break. Any money spent by the district could
reduce funding available for a new City
Hall/police station, police patrols, planning
and other downtown projects, which could
result in the city imposing higher taxes to pay
for the shortfall.
Brink said the subsidies are appropriate.
“Projects don’t happen in downtowns strict-
ly by market forces,” Brink said. Portland’s
attractive downtown was built with “hun-
dreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of
public subsidies. That’s the only way it hap-
pened,” he said.
But Portland has put on hold its big tax
breaks for downtown developers. “Each time
we give a tax abatement, we are affecting
how much money goes to the county and to
the schools,” Portland Mayor Tom Potter
told The Oregonian. “We need to ask our-
selves, ‘Is this the best way to spend taxpay-
er money?’”
Even before Portland put its breaks on
hold it had required developers to include
whether so much parking is actually needed.
The city already provides more than
3,350 parking spaces downtown, including
seven garages. That doesn’t include thou-
sands of additional on-street parking spaces
and commercial parking lots. Many of these
parking spaces are only a short walk or adja-
cent to CWO’s proposed development.
The CWO proposal does factor in 1,111
currently available spaces to serve the devel-
opment. But the calculation inexplicably
leaves out street parking and many nearby
garages and lots with unused space, particu-
larly on nights and weekends.
In addition, the formulas CWO uses to
factor parking demand for its project appear
to be based more on suburban mall construc-
tion than a downtown, urban design.
Downtown Portland developers demand less
than half as much parking per square foot.
The project makes no apparent consider-
ation of people walking, biking or riding the
bus to its shops and theater. That’s odd since
a key premise of the proposal is that the
included housing will provide built-in
demand for the retail. It’s also odd because
the adjacent LTD bus station provides direct
routes and service for 10,000 people per day.
Providing too much parking could under-
mine city goals of building a dense city cen-
ter to reduce traffic congestion and sprawl
and promote livability. Pedestrians don’t like
walking long distances past ugly garages and
dodging the cars going in and out. LTD stud-
JANUARY 26, 2006 13