Eugene’s Town Square

Aerial view of the future Eugene Town Square: North is to the left; the yellow rectangle is the existing "butterfly" parking lot owned by the County (base image © 2018 Google) 

In a decidedly snarky editorial last week, the Register-Guard threw shade upon the City of Eugene’s latest bid to provide our community with a physical seat for its civic government. The paper likened the City’s proposed bundling of a new Eugene City Hall on the county-owned “butterfly” parking lot along with a year-round Lane County Farmers’ Market and Parks Blocks improvements in a combined project it dubbed Eugene’s “Town Square” to a self-interested marketing ploy worthy of fictional Mad Men ad agency Sterling Cooper. While the City’s culpability for the City Hall debacle is not subject to debate, I do know the folks in COE Planning & Development are genuinely earnest and sincere in their efforts to improve downtown and make the best of its leaders’ botched handling of the City Hall replacement project. The R-G piece likely inflamed cynicism among its readers, which is unfortunate and unhelpful. 

The Town Square concept is not Madison Avenue packaging. It is instead an organic outcome of a multiplicity of factors stemming from historical and contemporary roots, many of which were and are beyond the control of COE planners. That we’ve arrived at this point is due in equal parts to dumb luck and serendipity. Thanks to the prospect of a proposed land swap with Lane County, the City can now consider three previously separate projects to be a singular opportunity to generate what Christopher Alexander refers to as “wholeness” in the built environment. The City and County are not always known for thinking outside the box or cooperatively(1), so this cross-agency collaboration is commendable. We owe thanks to the elected representatives and members of the joint coordinated downtown development task force who recognized the opportunities inherent in developing an equitably beneficial and collaborative vision for downtown Eugene.(2) 

Any functioning city is a complex adaptive system, much more than the sum of its parts alone. Rather than separately regarding a new City Hall, a covered Farmers’ Market, and the Parks Blocks, designers will be able to approach the three elements with coherence and a compelling vision in mind. The goal now is to create something so intertwined and whole that it is difficult to imagine how it can be considered or function well as discrete elements. Combining the three projects magnifies the prospect of a generative design process that emphasizes the interrelatedness of the projects and ensures every building increment will form a greater whole, which is both larger and more significant than itself (this is Alexander’s Rule #2: The Growth of Larger Wholes, from his 1987 book A New Theory of Urban Design). 

From both morphological and symbolic perspectives, a recognizable city hall is necessary and important because it is an expression of municipal authority and democracy in the spatial order of our urban fabric. Its symbolism resonates with people because civic ritual and ceremony encourage participation in the collective life of the community. If anything, the concept of shared ritual is necessary now more than ever because of the increasingly fragmented and digital nature of our interactions. Properly handled, a city hall and its architecture, along with that of a permanent Farmers’ Market structure and the refurbished Park Blocks, will enhance literal and conceptual perceptions of centeredness, wholeness, and urban order. 

In the past, city halls often bordered or occupied a town square in the historical heart of the community. Functional town squares offer a gathering spot for people and social, cultural, and political activities. According to Project for Public Spaces, public squares bring diverse benefits to a city. They can nurture identity, draw a diverse population, serve as a city’s “common ground,” and catalyze private investment. PPS’s principles for successful squares include image and identity, attractions and amenities, access, and management plans that promote ways to keep them safe and lively. As presently envisioned by COE planners—bounded in part by an attractive and welcoming new City Hall—Eugene’s Town Square would be a place even more inseparable from our civic identity than the current Park Blocks are today. 

City Hall needn’t be a palace, and the City’s currently proposed funding is certainly insufficient to realize anything remotely close to one. The same is true for the relatively modest amount of urban renewal district dollars earmarked for the Farmers’ Market and Parks Blocks. The key will be leveraging the limited resources to maximize bang for the buck. For example, a covered Farmer’s Market might double as a venue for large town hall gatherings or entertainment events. Perhaps there are other functions or activities that might benefit from the synergies inherent in a combined project. Certainly, a primary role for a new City Hall to perform will be as a backdrop for the activities occurring on the Town Square. The City should otherwise scale back its expectations for what its new City Hall will be. A pragmatic strategy will be to continue to limit its scope to that of a symbolic seat for city government, housing at most the ceremonial council chamber and offices for the mayor, city councilors, and the City Manager. Other COE offices would remain in leased space distributed throughout downtown. 

The 40 acre parcel donated by Eugene and Mary Skinner to Lane County in 1856. 

Of course, as the Register-Guard pointed out, still unanswered is whether the proposed land swap between the City and the County will be allowed to proceed. I’m presuming the court ruling will favor the transaction. Even if it does not, the community founders’ original vision of a public square would still be attainable, the difference being the County’s new courthouse might rise on the “butterfly” lot parcel instead of a new City Hall. I do know in terms of programmatic fit, a new courthouse—which will be many times larger than a ceremonial City Hall—is much better suited to the former City Hall site, and vice versa. In my opinion, a scenario wherein the City Hall occupies the Town Square would fulfill the founders’ vision in spirit if not the letter of the original deed restrictions. I don’t see a problem as long as the property is kept under public ownership. 

If the land swap falls through, I’m inclined to favor moving City Hall to the riverfront EWEB headquarters building rather than once again attempting to rebuild on the former city hall site. If newly constructed on the old city hall site, the building would look oddly diminutive and the remainder of the block would by necessity remain fallow if it is to be reserved for future consolidation of COE offices.(3) 

The City of Eugene’s self-inflicted wounds have not helped its efforts to develop a new City Hall. The narrative today would be much different if the City and the County brokered the land swap and the Town Square concept from the outset. If they had, chances are the City of Eugene would have been spared much of the controversy and bad press that has accompanied more than a decade of poor decisions, false starts, and equivocation. Hindsight is always 20/20. The fact is we are where we are today. 

In a scene from what is now part of pop culture lore, Mad Men protagonist and Sterling Cooper creative director Dan Draper memorably declared “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.” The City of Eugene has changed the conversation, but this isn’t a marketing gambit. This is a laudably deep reset, one that might achieve the best outcome we can reasonably hope for.

(1) A written history of the site by Dan Armstrong is particularly informative. The use and conditions of use of the “public square in Eugene City” have been issues of debate multiple times in the one hundred and sixty-plus years since the square’s creation.

(2) Full disclosure: In 2016 the City of Eugene and Lane County retained Cameron McCarthy Landscape Architecture & Planning and my firm—Robertson/Sherwood/Architects—to explore the opportunities inherent in three development scenarios for publicly owned properties in downtown.

Scenario A: City Hall and Farmers Market on the Site of Former City Hall and the Courthouse on the Butterfly Lot

Scenario B: City Hall and the Courthouse on the Site of Former City Hall and the Farmers Market on the Butterfly Lot

Scenario C: City Hall and the Farmers Market on the Butterfly Lot and the Courthouse on the Site of the Former City Hall.

(3)  If the City does need to lower its sights for City Hall, it could do much worse than purchasing and repurposing the EWEB headquarters. As I wrote six years ago, converting the EWEB headquarters into Eugene’s new city hall can be a win-win scenario. EWEB could entrust its prominent, uniquely situated, structurally sound, and energy-efficient building to the City of Eugene rather than to a private enterprise that might permanently remove it and its riverfront prospect from the public realm. The City would secure an attractive new home for itself at a considerable discount compared to the cost of constructing equivalent space from scratch. The downside, of course, would be the distance between that location and the historic center of Eugene.