NEWS
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
DOES CITY HALL
NEED A REDESIGN?
A
s Eugene’s downtown continues to thrive, it’s easy to forget that only a couple years
ago the urban core was widely regarded as lacking a sense of place. It was a down-
town without being a downtown center.
More recently, Eugene has been a city and a downtown without a City Hall, ever
since the City Council approved demolishing its central public building in 2014.
In mid-December, the council voted to
move toward locating a new phase one of
City Hall, housing the mayor, city man-
ager’s offices and council chambers, on the
north portion of the county’s “butterfly lot”
at Eighth Avenue and Oak Street. The coun-
cil also approved negotiating with Lane
County to buy that lot and sell the current
City Hall site to the county for a courthouse.
In late December, the city announced
plans to put $8.7 million from a Comcast
payment toward a new City Hall, boosting the budget considerably from its current $18.75
million to nearly $27.5 million.
About $4 million has already gone to designing the new City Hall. With the potential
move to a new location, some wonder whether there should also be a new design.
Scott Clarke of Pivot Architecture, speaking as a member of the Committee on Local Af-
fairs of the Southwestern Oregon chapter of the American Institute of Architects, says that
the issue of City Hall’s design is something that is on the group’s radar.
Clarke says building designs are site specific, and moving the structure just two blocks
puts City Hall in a different context than it was originally designed for. “It’s best to stop and
take stock of the new site and make sure the building is responsive to it,” he says.
But, Clarke clarifies, while it’s important to reconsider the design based on a change of
site, “everything learned about the project is still valuable.” He says that, should there to be
a new design, the community values and character and nature of what the city is looking for
in a building will have been worked through, and there are “still valid principles that can be
applied.”
The building “doesn’t have to look like what we thought to use that information well,”
he says.
Architect Otto Poticha, who designed the county’s Public Service Building near the old
City Hall site, is less sympathetic, comparing the current Rowell Brokaw design to that of a
McDonald’s restaurant.
Poticha says the city should not make the mistake of deciding that the city has already
spent the money on a design and then simply use that same design, “picking it up and drop-
ping it in the new location.” Instead, the city should look at the context of the butterfly lot
and the Park Blocks. “We need a different building,” he says, “to start over again.” He adds,
“The new site is very different from the old site.”
Poticha not only advocates for a redesign of the phase one of City Hall. He predicts that
a phase two, which would house city services rather than the more ceremonial offices, will
never be built. Instead he proposes remodeling the old county courthouse, whose steel gird-
ers he says can be reinforced to current earthquake standards.
City of Eugene spokesperson Jan Bohman says, “For now the design contract is on pause.
Negotiations with Lane County will occur first.” She adds, however, that it is expected “that
some additional design work would be needed if City Hall does go to the butterfly lot.”
Architect Otto Poticha
compares the current
City Hall design to a
McDonald’s restaurant.
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10
January 19, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com