NEWS
100 NEW PARKING
SPACES AVAILABLE IN
THE WHITEAKER
KELSANG PHUNRAB WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO ARRIVE AT THE CONFEDERATE FLAG RALLY OUTSIDE OF THE OLD FEDERAL
BUILDING IN DOWNTOWN EUGENE SATURDAY, MARCH 5. PHUNRAB SAYS HE SHOOK THE PROTESTERS’ HANDS, TOLD THEM HE
WISHED THEY COULD CELEBRATE THEIR ANCESTRY WITHOUT HATING OTHERS, THEN WENT ACROSS THE STREET TO MEDITATE
FOR PEACE. THE CONFEDERATE ACTIVISTS HAD COME AND GONE BY 9:30 AM. A COUNTERPROTEST OF AN ESTIMATED 200
PEOPLE ORGANIZED BY THE COMMUNITY ALLIANCE OF LANE COUNTY (CALC) TOOK PLACE AT NOON.
JILL WINANS & KATHY FORD
After college at Jacksonville University in Florida and a
four-year enlistment in the Air Force, Kathy Ford headed west
in 1976 to Los Angeles where she worked for AT&T, the phone
company, and where she met her partner, Jill Winans. The
pair escaped the Southern California heat in 1985 when Ford
took a job with US West in Seattle, and left the big-city rat race
in 1992, when she transferred to US West Wireless in Eugene.
Two years later, Winans opened the CatSpa, a boarding
kennel for cats. In 10 years of operation, the CatSpa became
increasingly involved in animal rescue. “Greenhill needed a
place for victims of domestic violence to leave their cats,” she
says. “I had as many as 15 at a time.” As a board member of
BY PAUL NEEVEL
PHOTO: MOHAMMED ALKHADHER
HAPPENING PEOPLE
Three new parking lots have opened in the
Whiteaker neighborhood, courtesy of the political
strategizing by the Whiteaker Community Council
(WCC), which is leasing the properties with funds
donated by a coalition of local businesses.
The free lots, which will remain open around-
the-clock for public use, are a response to concerns
that on-street parking has been overwhelmed by
visitors to the Whit. “The neighborhood at large
expressed a lot of concern about how bad parking
had gotten just in front of their residential proper-
ties,” says WCC Board President Sam Hahn, who
says the Whiteaker CarPark Project is an example
of a neighborhood “controlling its own destiny.”
Formerly known by the colloquial designa-
tion “Felony Flats,” the Whiteaker in recent years
has blossomed as an artsy, hip district of boutique
shops, chic restaurants and homegrown micro-
brewers, the most famous of which is Ninkasi.
In the minds of many residents, however, such
popularity has lead to a massive influx of drunk-
en chuckleheads and high-rent bourgeois tourists
seeking to slum on Eugene’s wild side.
Whether this is gentrification or no, the Whit’s
growth undeniably led to more cars and less avail-
able free parking in the area. The new lots — at
2nd and Van Buren, 3rd and Van Buren and 5th and
Blair, located behind the 76 gas station — open up
roughly 100 parking spaces.
Hahn puts the monthly cost of the combined
leases in the thousands of dollars, and he notes that
the WCC has the option to purchase the lot behind
the gas station in April of 2017 for $100,000 — an
amount for which the WCC is currently solicit-
ing donations from the community at large. WCC
board members Cathie Kapelka and Emily West
are spearheading a project to beautify the lots with
art and murals, and landscaping is being done by
Rising Sun Custom Landscape and Danks Tree
Care.
“The first plan was basically to solicit/beg the
city to fix a problem that they indirectly and inci-
dentally created,” Hahn says of tackling the Whit’s
parking problem. “I was just getting led around in
circles.”
WCC treasurer Dennis Ramsey says one of the
original ideas of creating permitted parking zones
in the Whit proved “too cumbersome” because
of the data collection required. “We realized that
we were going to have to solve this problem our-
selves,” he adds, noting that he is pleased with the
business-community partnership that resulted.
Jeff Petry, manager of the city’s Epark Eugene
division, says he’s impressed by the WCC’s solu-
tion to parking demands. “It’s kind of a unique
situation, and you have a community council that’s
taking it head-on and solving their own problems,”
Petry notes. “It’s awesome to have neighborhood
groups take the initiative and solve their prob-
lems.”
Hahn himself takes a long view of what the
new lots mean for the neighborhood. “This parking
project gives the residents of Whiteaker some ele-
ment of control over their commercial destiny,” he
says, “as well as art-related opportunities both for
creating art and, down the road, affordable spaces
to create art.”
For more information on the Whiteaker Car-
Park Project, including participating businesses
and how to donate to the project, visit whiteaker-
communitycouncil.org.— Rick Levin
the Stray Cat Alliance, she organized an adopt-a-thon in 2003
and brought the Oregon Neutermobile to town for two months
in 2004. “We altered 611 dogs and cats,” she notes. “And we
realized that we needed a full-time, everyday low-cost spay/
neuter clinic.” So Winans and Ford started their own nonprofit,
the Willamette Animal Guild (WAG), and paid a visit to the
Humane Alliance of North Carolina. “They mentor groups that
want to open a clinic,” says Ford, who retired from her phone-
business job in 2006. “We had a blueprint.” The WAG Spay/
Neuter Clinic opened its doors in January 2008 at 3045
Royal Ave. in Eugene. Earlier this week, the clinic celebrated
its 40,000th surgery. To learn more about WAG or to schedule
an appointment, visit wagwag.org.
eugeneweekly.com • March 10, 2016
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