esey Square is the
last public space in
Eugene that has no
curfew.
As a citizen —
not as a consumer or
a business owner —
if there is one thing to
take away from this
story, or any story
you hear about Kesey
Square, regardless of
where you fall on the issue, it should be this:
Kesey Square is the last and only place in downtown
Eugene, day or night, where you can go to exercise your
rights as a citizen, be it freedom of speech or the right to
assembly, or just the right to be in the heart of the city.
It is the last place in Eugene, 24-hours a day, seven
days a week, where citizens can be without the expectation
of spending money or abiding by the rules of a particular
business or property owner.
Not even in the spot that has been designated for free
speech, the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza (i.e. the
Saturday Market drum circle spot), can you express your
opinions past 11 pm. The county deemed it free speech
with a curfew (11 pm to 6 am) in 2013. Free Speech Lite.
As citizens we must ask ourselves: Are public spaces
like this still important? It’s a valid question in a time
when the internet has caused the public sphere to
perpetually fragment and the communities around
traditional institutions, like unions and churches, dwindle.
Perhaps, then, the more appropriate question is: Do
cities still need places where citizens can be citizens, and
not consumers?
The answer is yes for Amanda Burden — the city
planner behind New York City’s High Line greenway, one
of the most successful and beloved public-space projects
of the 21st century.
“If there’s one lesson I’ve learned in my life as a city
planner, it is that public spaces have power,” she says in a
2014 TED talk. “Public spaces always need vigilant
champions, not only to claim them at the outset for public
use, but to design them for the people that use them. Then
to maintain them, to make sure they are for everyone, that
they are not violated, invaded, abandoned or ignored.”
At the literal crossroads of our city, Kesey Square lies
largely unchanged since its creation more than four
decades ago when a building was removed from the site.
Now, the 55-foot-by-80-foot brick pocket holds all our
anxieties about poverty, development, the economy,
government, accountability and apathy.
This story is not about the “travelers”* — it’s about
neglected public space. This scrappy plaza has become the
restless symbol of what happens when you do nothing.
In October, Kesey Square was thrust into the spotlight
once again when a group of local business owners,
architects and developers proposed to buy it and develop
in its place a six-story apartment building with retail
space on the ground floor.
For many, the proposal seemed to come out of thin air,
prompting a collective: Wait a moment — Kesey Square is
for sale?
For others, a proposal to build there was a relief: Kesey
Square is a failure; we need to do something.
While another business owner, Ali Emami, says he’s
been trying to work with the city for decades to improve
Kesey Square. But outside of MUPTE (Multiple-Use
Property Tax Exemption) projects, the city has made no
funds available to improve Kesey Square.
So why is a public square in the heart of downtown so
problematic? How did it get that way? It’s a classic civic
tale of lack of vision and action, money and conflicting
interests.
K
A HISTORY OF APATHY
Through this most recent recession, the city of Eugene
has spurred development downtown with financial tools
like MUPTE, urban renewal funds, a patchwork of grants
and loans and the scattering of city offices around the
city. And downtown has blossomed, from the construction
of the beautiful public library and the new Lane
Community College building to the bustling Broadway
Commerce Center and the Bijou Metro and all the new
restaurants, bars, cafes and shops sprinkled up and down
Willamette and Broadway.
To be sure, there have been hiccups along the way —
Capstone’s 13th and Olive, the demolition of City Hall
and now the closing of the Jacobs Gallery at the Hult
Center, to name a few. And the lingering vacant storefronts
downtown are a reminder of how fragile the economic
recovery has been for this city.
Downtown is the most vibrant it’s been since before
the city opened the pedestrian mall in 1971, making it a
car-free zone and, in effect, a dead zone — a move that
downtown is still recovering from.
Although the city has addressed many issues with
MUPTE — no more student housing, increased regulation
— some feel the city hasn’t learned from past mistakes,
ignoring the concerns of citizens. Take the most recent
MUPTE project, for example: Capstone’s 13th and Olive
student housing development, or “Crapstone” as the kids
call it these days.
Business owner Tina Scott calls it a monstrosity.
“Week by week, we were suffering,” says Scott,
co-owner of Nest, an antique and home furnishing store
she runs with her daughter Amy Clancy. Nest was part of
the popular “Vintage Row,” the strip of stores across from
where 13th and Olive now stands. They have all since
relocated or closed.
Scott says their clientele plummeted during its
construction, while roads were closed or blocked
intermittently for two years.
“Slowly but surely the whole entire area died,” says
Scott, adding that her complaints to the city went
unanswered for long stretches.
Nest has since relocated, with some help from the
city, to a storefront at 8th and Willamette, just north of
Kesey Square. “When you move, you lose clientele,”
Scott says.
Co-owner and daughter Clancy agrees about the
Capstone project: “Our previous business was completely
destroyed because of poor choices in city planning.”
Clancy says she likes the current proposal to put
apartments in Kesey Square.
“I’ve seen businesses come and go because of Kesey
[Square],” she says. “I don’t think there are a ton of
options. I’m totally in support of more city housing.”
Scott does not want to see a building go up.
“The same thing is going to happen,” Scott says. “We
are the most wasteful society.”
“There’s no organization in the city at all, there’s no
history,” she continues. The city is “sporadic, and they’re
not really focusing on what makes downtown.”
AN INDECENT PROPOSAL
This fall, City Manager Jon Ruiz brought to the City
Council a proposal to purchase Kesey Square, and
eventually use financial aid from the city via MUPTE to
build a six-story apartment building, with some workforce
housing and retail space on the ground level.
On Oct. 12, Eugene City Council held an executive
session on the proposal to purchase city property.
The local team that submitted the proposal to Ruiz
includes architects John Rowell and Greg Brokaw,
downtown business owner Kazem Oveissi, developer
*While it’s not our preferred nomenclature, EW will be using the label “travelers,” as it’s the parlance the city has adopted
to speak about Some People Downtown. We are keeping it in quotes because, well, deeming some people “travelers” really
smacks of Otherness. We are all people. And while we believe the city must urgently address the issues of poverty and the
unhoused in Eugene, the problem is much more complex and widespread than the focus of this story.
consultant Mark Miksis and advising developers Hugh
Prichard and Harris Hoffman.
Councilor Clair Syrett says she was invited to the
office of Rowell Brokaw Architecture some months ago
with some of the other councilors, the mayor and
Downtown Eugene, Inc. President Sarah Bennett to see
“their vision for residential and commercial development.”
Ruiz tells Eugene Weekly that he first became aware of
the proposal earlier this year.
“The proposers came to us and had this plan, so we
spent time with the city in executive session talking about
it,” Ruiz says. “Any time someone offers to purchase
property, we would talk about that with council in
executive session.”
Ruiz explains, however, that nothing has been decided
and, ultimately, it’s up to the City Council to decide
whether Kesey Square is indeed for sale.
Typically, for a proposed project of this scope and
cultural importance, best practices calls for a city to
publicly issue an RFP (request for proposals) for a public
space like Kesey Square, if the city is, in fact, accepting
proposals for it.
But, as Ruiz and Mayor Kitty Piercy explain, the city
has no development plan for the site, so an RFP would be
“premature.”
“An RFP actually would indicate that we’ve made up our
minds to do something different with that space in terms of
a building or something, and we haven’t,” Piercy says.
This lack of a plan coupled with inaction — a common
complaint about the city of Eugene — has riled citizens
on both sides of the Kesey Square debate.
After protests in the community arose about the
unsolicited proposal to purchase Kesey, Ruiz announced
that the city is open to other ideas for the site.
“Our intent is not to do an RFP,” Ruiz says. “What we
told the council, or mentioned to the council, is that we will
invite others who have ideas, to submit those ideas to us.”
Rumors swirled that this proposal got in front of the
eyes of the City Council so fast because of favoritism
between the city and developers. As stated in The
Register-Guard, Hugh Prichard, one of the advising
developers on this proposal, is a friend of Ruiz’s.
Ruiz confirmed that Prichard is indeed a friend, but
denied any sort of backroom deals.
“Hugh is a friend and if he’s advising a project, he’s
advising a project,” Ruiz says. “That relationship has no
bearing whatsoever on this project being considered or
not being considered.”
He continues: “If somebody else had come in with a
proposal, we would be talking about that proposal.”
Which brings us to the strange case of Ali Emami, a
key player in making the square, if it remains a square, a
success.
IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK
The city, local architects and even the Rowell Brokaw
Architecture proposal have identified the two blank brick
walls at Kesey Square as the major structural issue
blocking the square from success. It’s city planning 101:
successful squares have permeable boundaries with traffic
coming from multiple directions. As the walls now stand,
they create a dead zone.
Or as Jerry Diethelm, UO professor emiritus of landscape
architecture, wrote in EW in 2013: “It’s the blank brick walls
of the adjoining buildings that make up the square’s two
dead sides that are holding it back. In any other square in any
other city in the world, those sides would be alive with
penetrations and connections between the square’s outdoor
spaces and the activities and services beyond.”
As EW wrote Nov. 5 (“One Flew Over Kesey Square:
Business owner’s plan calls for incubators and public
space downtown, not apartments”), Emami had submitted
proposals for Kesey Square in 1995 and 2004. After
hearing of the proposal to purchase the square, Emami
went to the city on Oct. 12, 2015, with a letter reminding
the council of his past proposals.
Emami, a downtown business owner and UO senior
instructor of finance, owns the building that houses
Northwest Persian Rugs (his business) and Voodoo
Doughnut. The walls of these businesses make up the two
eugeneweekly.com • November 19, 2015
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