Eugene weekly., July 21, 2016, Page 9, Image 9

NEWS
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
CITY HALL
LAND SWAP
DISCUSSIONS
CONTINUE
T
he only thing certain about Eugene City Hall right
now is that the city doesn’t have one. What the city
does have are some ideas about how a new City
Hall can be integrated into planning the land swap
with Lane County.
The old City Hall building was torn down last year, and
the price for building a new one is mounting. After the lat-
est bid came in from McKenzie Commercial Contractors
for $18.2 million, about $3 million more than anticipated
— bringing the total cost up to around $28 million factor-
ing in design and demolition — the Eugene City Council
voted 7-1 to reject the bid at a July 18 meeting.
The original budget was set for around $15 million, and
then it became $18 million. Currently the city is more than
$10 million over budget.
In the midst of the city’s wrangling over cost, Lane
County proposed in early July that rather than utilize the
eastern half of the City Hall block for its new courthouse,
the county could use either the entire City Hall block or at
least three-quarters of it. That would put a new City Hall
on the “butterfly lot,” to be shared with an expanded farm-
ers market.
The butterfly lot, sitting between 7th and 8th avenues
and West Park and Oak streets, is so-called because the
parking structure has slanted wings rising up from the
ground.
Architect Otto Poticha, who was one of the many op-
ponents to completely razing the previous City Hall, con-
tacted Eugene City Manager Jon Ruiz, Lane County Ad-
ministrator Steve Mokrohisky and the City Council and
County Commission with a proposal that he calls “the
Consolidated City-County Master Plan.”
Poticha, who designed the county’s Public Services
Building, writes that his plan is a “possible solution for
solving the current City Hall and County Courthouse situ-
ation in a collaborative and integrated manner.” He uses
the term “consolidated” to “suggest what would become a
true and integrated city-county governmental center” and
also lead to a restored North Park Block. Poticha says in-
tegrated use, such as putting the city’s Municipal Court in
the County Courthouse building, could also make it easier
for Lane County to get state funding for a new courthouse.
According to Poticha, his strategy would bring energy
to the Park Blocks area. Those blocks house Saturday Mar-
ket on the weekend and a farmers market on Tuesdays, but
the rest of the week the open space faces the dull backs of
city buildings.
The plan would put City Hall on the northern part of
the butterfly lot, together with a seasonal farmers market
structure and a market square.
A new 250,000-square-foot County Courthouse would
be at the old City Hall location. The new courthouse could
be connected to the existing County Public Service Build-
ing by a bridge.
The old, smaller County Courthouse could be renovated
into a city services building at half the cost of building a
proposed second phase of City Hall, Poticha says, and it
could be connected by another bridge to the first phase City
Hall. Finally, the city and county could continue to share
Harris Hall for meetings. And as part of the plan, the North
Park Blocks would be restored, “forming the the heart of
a new downtown civic and market center,” according to
architect Jerry Diethelm who supports the proposal.
Poticha tells EW that while the current proposed City
Hall design could be placed in the new location, he thinks
there is an opportunity to design a City Hall that fits the
context of the new location.
EW reached out to Ruiz and Mokrohisky for comments
on Poticha’s proposal. Mokrohisky responded that the pro-
posal is similar to one of the scenarios the county com-
mission shared and discussed with the city, and “we are
pleased to see community members involved and offering
ideas and solutions they feel create a great civic center and
maximize the public benefit.”
Jan Bohman, the city’s communications manager re-
sponded for Ruiz, also saying the proposal was similar to
a county proposal and that the City Council “indicated a
willingness to continue a discussion with Lane County but
did not make any decision about how that could occur.”
Bohman says that beyond rejecting the bid from the con-
tractor, “The council did not make any further decisions
but indicated they will talk about it again this coming Mon-
day, July 25.”
OTTO POTICHA’S
PROPOSED LAND
SWAP STRATEGY
MICHAEL, BONNIE AND LAUREN MOORE
BY PAUL NEEVEL
HAPPENING PEOPLE
COURTESY OTTO POTICHA
When Lauren Moore was 6 years old, her mother, Anne Marie, sug-
gested that she try a class at the U.S. TaeKwonDo College. “I liked it,”
Lauren reports. “We were totally sedentary,” says her father, Michael
Moore, who spends his working days on a computer. He decided to
enroll as well and also recruited his mother Bonnie Moore, a Eugene
native and a pharmacist. She calls it “a great family activity.”
Taekwondo is a traditional Korean martial art that was formalized
for competition in the 1960s and ’70s, and the only martial art to be
contested in next month’s Rio Olympics. The Moores’ mentor is Great
Grand Master Lee, a former hand-to-hand combat instructor in the
Korean Army, a former judge and trainer at U.S. Olympic Trials, and a
ninth degree black belt, who founded the college in 1987. Lee’s
teaching philosophy stresses positive thinking, positive talking,
positive acting and perseverance. In March of 2016, nine years after
they began, all three of the Moores succeeded in testing for their third
degree black belts. They were tested on advanced sparring and kicking
techniques, and required to break multiple boards.
At ages 73, 47 and 15, they are the first three-generation third-
degree black belt family recognized by the World TaeKwonDo
Federation. Bonnie is now retired from pharmacy and Michael has
taken up running. Lauren is a tenth grader at Elmira High School and a
community theater performer with Actors Cabaret of Eugene, currently
appearing in The Little Mermaid through July 23.
eugeneweekly.com • July 21, 2016
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