NEWS
B Y A L E X V. C I P O L L E
TAX EXEMPT, DESIGN OPTIONAL
A review of MUPTE design quality requirements past and present
A
n urban promenade, balconies, sloped roofs,
trellises, tables and chairs on the street.
Those features were all promised in
Capstone
Collegiate
Communities’
application for a Multi-Unit Property Tax
Exemption (MUPTE) submitted to the city of Eugene
on Jan. 24, 2012. City Manager Jon Ruiz
recommended the application to the City Council,
which voted to approve Capstone for the exemption,
allowing developers to pay no taxes on the new
structure for 10 years — or the equivalent of a
$16-million tax break.
The application also stated there would be a
5,000-square-foot retail space on the ground floor
that would be “synergistic with the residents and will
enable convenience food or service options on site
and create additional retail and pedestrian activity
along Willamette Street.”
Today, walk by the enormous student-housing
complex, 13th & Olive, and it is immediately clear
that none of those promises were kept. Eugene is not
known for a particularly attractive urban landscape,
but the site, deemed “Crapstone” by many, is
particularly bleak. It has no balconies, no sloped
roofs, no street furniture, no retail spaces, no vibrant
street life. Some of the sidewalks, especially along
high-traffic 13th Avenue, feel downright dangerous
to walk along.
So what happened?
“We did not lock in the design of the building,”
Senior City Planner Nan Laurence told EW in
November. “We didn’t know that what [Capstone]
proposed would be so different from what they built.”
Laurence continued: “There was no one in the
city who was watching over [what] the illustrative
image on the building permit set and then what was
actually built.”
To put it plainly: No one on the city of Eugene’s
staff was tasked to enforce the building designs of an
out-of-state developer receiving a $16-million tax
break for a $90-million housing project.
The Capstone snafu, in part, prompted the city of
Eugene to suspend the MUPTE program in 2013, a
program dating back to the ’70s designed to
incentivize development and population density in
the urban core.
On July 13, 2015, the Eugene City Council voted
to reinstate MUPTE through Ordinance 20556,
which made amendments to the original code
including stricter design enforcement and making
student housing projects ineligible.
MUPTE became a hot topic again in the fall of
2015 when a local development group — Rowell
Brokaw Architects, downtown business owner
Kazem Oveissi, developer consultant Mark
Miksis and advising developers Hugh
Prichard and Harris Hoffman —
submitted a proposal to the city
to purchase Kesey Square, a
public land parcel, and
in its place build
an apartment
building
with
retail on the ground floor. The developers have said
they will ask for a 10-year MUPTE for the project, as
well as a loan from the city.
The city already approved a MUPTE in 2012 for
Rowell Brokaw Architects and Oveissi’s “First On
Broadway” project, also an apartment building with
ground-floor retail space. They are building a similar
project in the parking lot across the street from
Kesey Square between Toadstool Cupcakes and the
Wells Fargo building this spring.
“I think we’ve all learned something as a result
of Capstone,” City Manager Jon Ruiz told EW in
November. “In part because of the Capstone project,
we have revamped the MUPTE program pretty
significantly.” Ruiz said there will be more
accountability and oversight.
The new MUPTE requires the city manager and a
10-person review panel to oversee any future
MUPTE projects, from design submission to
completion of construction.
“Failure to comply with the approved design (and
any other MUTPE program requirements or any of
the individual project approval resolution) may result
in an administrative civil penalty [E.C. 2.947(8)] or in
termination of the tax exemption [E.C. 2.947(1) - (7)],”
wrote Amanda Nobel Flannery, Eugene’s economic
prosperity programs manager, in an email to EW.
Additionally, Flannery told EW, “the final design is
submitted to staff before it is submitted for permits,
staff will review conformance with the design that is
attached to the approval resolution.”
The new MUPTE ordinance, however, does not
require retail space on the ground floor, considered an
essential component in city planning and place-
making to create a vibrant and safe pedestrian
experience. In the city’s own Community Design
Handbook, it states: “Maximize pedestrian activity
on the street with retail frontage along the sidewalk
and living spaces at street level.”
While Ruiz and Laurence acknowledged issues
with Capstone’s 13th & Olive student housing
complex, they said it was a “net gain” for the city,
acquiring the urban density desired. They
also argued that it was not the eyesore
many in the community have
expressed it to be.
Laurence told EW that
when
renowned
urban designer
and author
of Walkable Cities Jeff Speck came to Eugene in June
2015 to give a talk, she took him to 13th & Olive.
“We took him there and we said, ‘What can we do
to fix this?’” Laurence recalled. “He wasn’t troubled
by it. He’s like, ‘I don’t see the problem.’”
EW followed up with Speck via email who
clarified that he “had no problem with the urbanism
of the project, but was troubled by the architecture.”
Speck continued: “The architecture suffers
principally from three problems. First, [which is]
easy to code against, is the common error that these
huge buildings have been conceived as a single
design. The monotony of having the same facade for
so many yards along one street — on both sides, no
less — could have been prevented by a regulation
requiring mega-buildings to appear to be multiple
buildings of different design. The city should enact
such a regulation.”
He went on to say the building should have been
required to have more variety in its exterior design
rather than “one big mishmash that shows no
architectural objective beyond the desire to
disappear.”
Speck said the building is “wafer thin, of
incredibly shallow, cheap construction,” concluding
that “this sort of parsimony is much harder to code
against: The most effective preventative measure is
public shaming.”
Laurence said the city is still in “conversations
with Capstone to see what could make it better.” She
added that every new project is an opportunity to
improve, especially with the added incentive of the
2021 International Association of Athletics
Federations World Championships coming to
Eugene.
“By 2021, when the eyes of the world are on us
and people are here from 180 countries, I want
[Willamette Street] to look like it’s our main street
and it’s dressed up,” Laurence added. ■
CAPSTONE’S
13TH & OLIVE
eugeneweekly.com • January 7, 2016
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