Incremental Growth

Rendering of Capstone Collegiate Communities’ project for downtown Eugene (Humphreys & Partners Architects L.P.)

A (literally) big news item on the downtown Eugene development front these days is the huge apartment complex proposed by Birmingham, AL developer Capstone Collegiate Communities. If built, the $89 million project will occupy the old PeaceHealth Medical Group (formerly the Eugene Clinic) site astride Olive Street at 13th Avenue. It would consist of five 5-story apartment buildings with a total of 1,234 bedrooms in 379 units. Two 7-level above-ground parking structures would provide 1,014 on-site parking spaces. 

Boosters believe the project will further revitalize downtown Eugene by greatly increasing the resident population. AIA-Southwestern Oregon executive director Don Kahle is one of the more exuberant cheerleaders. In his March 16 column for the Register-Guard, Don imagines Capstone laying the foundation of a whole new era for downtown. He declares “Students will breathe life into the center—the soul—of our community.”

Harriet Cherry of PIVOT Architecture and David Funk of bell+funk are likewise big supporters of the Capstone proposal. They jointly penned a guest viewpoint in the April 19 edition of the Register-Guard in which they assert the residents’ demographic is “very attractive” and would contribute to a safer environment because of its sheer size. They believe the project will draw the downtown population we’ve yearned for.

The project has its critics too. There are those who oppose Capstone’s request for a ten-year property tax exemption. Others object to the magnitude of the proposed development, or the possibility its youthful monoculture will enjoy partying too much, or that Capstone’s profits will come at the expense of homegrown developers, and so on.(1)

The Eugene Community Advisory Team, led by steering committee members Paul Conte, Sherrill Necessary, and Jean Tate, occupies a middle-ground. It wants to ensure that one of the most significant developments ever proposed for downtown Eugene contributes to the community's overall interests. Its primary mandates include ensuring that City Council’s decisions are consistent with the Envision Eugene pillar to “protect, repair, and enhance neighborhood livability” and hosting public forums to disseminate information about the project.

I haven’t attended ECAT’s meetings or the other public forums, so I feel somewhat unqualified to debate the project’s merits and/or shortcomings. Regardless, my gut compels me to side with those who think Capstone’s ambitious project may be disproportionately large for Eugene.

Map of downtown Eugene; the Capstone site is in purple.

In their book A New Theory of Urban Design (1987), Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure advanced the concept of piecemeal growth, one of seven detailed rules for growth.(2)  As defined by Alexander and his team, the rule of piecemeal growth requires that no single project be too large. Furthermore, it mandates a reasonable mixture of project sizes and distribution of functions within an overall framework.

The benefit of piecemeal or incremental growth is that it allows for fine-grained adjustments over time. Assuming growth is desirable at all—in the case of downtown Eugene, I believe it is—development in smaller increments is less likely to result in undesirable outcomes. The entire enterprise of designing a desirable downtown is risky, especially when the stakes are highest. In the case of the Capstone project they are very high.

Fundamentally, we can view the urban fabric as a complex adaptive system subject to the effects of interrelated groups of activities. Because of their complexity, it is difficult to fully understand cities, let alone plan them well. Another analogous model is to view cities as living organisms. Like any life form, they are vulnerable to structurally disruptive effects. Predicting the impact of changes carried out in big chunks isn’t easy if we factor in the highly interdependent systems of which cities are comprised.

Arguably, one effective mechanism for improving the urban environment has been trial and error. Minor missteps provide feedback useful for recalibrating future choices. Small errors are relatively easy and inexpensive to correct. Bigger, coarser mistakes are far less so.

Of course, small is relative; a huge new skyscraper in Chicago might stir barely a ripple. On the other hand, few here in Eugene would characterize Lane Community College’s Downtown Campus as small. That ambitious multiuse project (now under construction) is set to significantly impact downtown’s future. And yet it would be dwarfed by the Capstone venture. As I said above, Capstone’s project would introduce 1,234 student residents downtown, nearly a thousand more than the LCC apartments will. That’s a big number.

What might the consequences be for downtown if Capstone’s big gambit fails to pay off? What if the student housing bubble bursts, the project’s anticipated market never materializes, and the development fails to achieve full occupancy and profitability? Would Capstone ever locate a buyer to take the property off its hands? Can downtown Eugene afford a forlorn white elephant?(3) The last thing we need is our own Pruitt-Igoe.(4)

Demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project, 1972, St. Louis

I’d love to be wrong about this. Incrementalism isn’t necessarily the best course. The clear prescription in some instances is catalytic change, a dramatic challenge to the status quo. Beneficial evolution in nature doesn’t always progress in a linear fashion; sometimes it surges forward. Perhaps the Capstone project will be the tipping point past which downtown Eugene will once again pulse with life as the heart of our city. Perhaps it is exactly the kind of change we’ve been looking for.

Then again, bigger isn’t always better. If we as a community are to make mistakes, my preference would be for them to be small and manageable. I prefer incremental growth.

(1)   A critic of a different sort is Otto Poticha, FAIA. Otto believes the project is “innovative, creative, and out of the box” but he’s no fan of the design by the Dallas, TX office of Humphreys & Partners Architects.

(2)   The seven rules for growth are:

1. Piecemeal growth
2. The growth of larger wholes
3. Visions
4. The basic rule of positive outdoor space
5. Layout of large buildings
6. Construction
7. Formation of centers

(3)  Retired architect Dan Herbert authored another recent commentary about the Capstone project. He echoed councilor Alan Zelenka’s suggestion that the city mandate guidelines for adaptive reuse of the Capstone project’s parking structures. Dan went further to propose the guidelines include the residential components as well. I agree. Our buildings need to be flexible and adaptable to change over time. What works now may not work as well in the future. We cannot be blind to the reality of change as a constant.

(4) Yes, this is hyperbole. Pruitt-Igoe and its legacy of misguided public policy, poverty, segregation, and crime are orders of magnitude beyond what the Capstone project might become under the gloomiest of scenarios.

MUPTE: Investing in a Better Downtown Eugene

The 13th & Olive project by Capstone Collegiate Communities, a beneficiary of Eugene's Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption (my photo)

I attended the June 8 MUPTE Matters public forum hoping to learn from all sides of the debate regarding whether the City of Eugene should reinstate the controversial property tax exemption program it suspended in 2013. I left the meeting further convinced of the need to revive MUPTE but also disappointed the discussion did not feature more of its most vocal opponents. 

 

The intent of the Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption (MUPTE) program has been to stimulate the construction of multi-unit housing in the core area and to ensure its use as a place where citizens have the opportunity to live as well as work. The City did this by offering developers who otherwise might choose to build anywhere but within downtown Eugene up to a 10-year exemption on property taxes based on the value of the improvements. The program has delivered mixed results since it was first enacted in 1977. 

 

Emceed and moderated by Rick Dancer, the MUPTE Matters forum did feature varied points of view regarding MUPTE from five panelists; however, each emanated from the same general perspective. All of the speakers are strong proponents for using a focused property tax exemption like MUPTE to achieve long-term, comprehensive city planning goals. 

 

The panel included:

 

• Brittney Quick-Warner – Eugene Chamber of Commerce
• Thomas Pettus-Czar – The Barn Light
• Greg Brokaw – Rowell Brokaw Architects
• Denny Braud – City of Eugene
• Mia Nelson – 1000 Friends of Oregon

In particular, Mia Nelson (who, along with Joshua Skov, would subsequently author a highly persuasive opinion piece for the June15 edition of The Register-Guard) convincingly recited reasons why MUPTE is desirable and necessary to encourage the development of housing in the downtown core. These included:

• Land use: The City of Eugene expects to see as many as 40,000 new residents arrive over the next couple of decades. Upholding the seven “pillars” of Envision Eugene, the city’s plan to accommodate this population growth, would be difficult at best without making the best use of the land we have available within the urban growth boundary. Without MUPTE, developers might choose to locate projects on the periphery of the urban area at odds with the city’s goals and the best interests of our community and neighborhoods. 
• The need for downtown housing: Notably, Eugene currently lacks an adequate pool of market-rate housing options located in its central core relative to cities of similar size elsewhere in the country. Ultimately, it will be a critical mass of residents that dictates the continued economic vitality and vibrancy of downtown. 
• The economics of development: Building downtown is more costly than building elsewhere and presents unique challenges (i.e. construction staging). Many desirable projects simply do not “pencil out” without the benefit of the property tax exemption.(1) Revenue from multi-unit housing in Eugene is currently not high enough to encourage the construction of market-rate apartments and condominiums in our downtown core without the benefit of incentives.

I’m convinced the best return on investment for public coffers comes when smart and sustainable development occurs downtown. Experience has taught us we can’t rely on the marketplace alone to ensure this happens. Density provides the biggest bang for our buck even if that bang must be deferred to make it happen at all. Typically, the tax yield from a single acre of dense, multi-use, downtown development far exceeds that of many acres of sprawling suburban housing, strip-malls, or big-box stores. Which would you rather have? Hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional tax revenue per year after expiration of a temporary tax waiver? Or do you prefer a much lesser amount in perpetuity because developers are reluctant to construct desirable projects on the same site without the waiver? 

 

Although conspicuously absent at the forum, the arguments in opposition to MUPTE are familiar enough: 

• “MUPTE only lines the pockets of greedy developers.”
• “Look at all the student housing that’s been built. We don’t need anymore.”
• “MUPTE favors larger projects and developers.”
• “It’s unfair! I built something (outside of the MUPTE boundaries) and I didn’t get anything.”
• “Development downtown will happen anyway.”
• “MUPTE doesn't guarantee construction of affordable housing.”
• “MUPTE diverts millions of dollars of tax revenues from the city, county, and schools.”
• “Capstone!”
  

Ah, Capstone. For all the wrong reasons, many Eugeneans now associate the huge 1,300+ bed student housing project with MUPTE. I blogged about it in 2012 before any shovels had broken ground. From the beginning, I believed it was way too large and for better or worse would impact the character of our downtown for a long time. I must have been prescient. As built, the project is a disappointment. The troubled development could be one reason why the City Council may choose to saddle MUPTE with crippling changes or scuttle the program altogether. 

As Rick Dancer said, Eugene seems to spend a lot of time planning out of fear of change or making a mistake. He’s seen what bad decisions in the past have led to. Too often they paralyze us. He’d rather see us learn from mistakes like Capstone and move forward. That’s why he has great hope for the new generation of young professionals and leaders who will shape the future of Eugene’s downtown. In his opinion, they’re the ones who are optimistic and willing to build upon the successes, rather than the failures, of a program like MUPTE. I share Rick’s hope and do find the surge of youthful confidence in our city very encouraging. 

I wish the opponents to MUPTE turned out to provide a more balanced forum. If they did, I might have witnessed the substantive reasoning necessary to convince me the underlying premise for using property tax exemptions as a development tool is flawed. I might have heard ideas about how the city can practically realize an effective MUPTE that also addresses such concerns as the need to provide more workforce housing. To date, I’ve yet to be swayed in a compelling fashion by MUPTE opponents.

I do remain wary of relying too heavily upon imperfect planning tools shaped by imperfect, albeit well-intentioned, human beings. The dynamics of development and the factors that contribute to achieving a livable community will always be far too complex to effectively and flawlessly codify and regulate. Regardless, I do believe incentivizing the type of development we want for our downtown—as opposed to doing nothing at all—is necessary if we want the best possible outcome for Eugene. 

*    *    *    *    *    *

This past Monday, June 15, the Eugene City Council conducted a public hearing on the subject of possible MUPTE revisions. Under the council’s proposed new rules, student apartment complexes would not be eligible for the waivers, local contractors would have to be hired to work on projects, and developments would have to meet energy efficiency and environmental building standards. My understanding is the council will meet again on July 8 and eventually vote (later this fall?) to either reinstate the incentive or sunset it permanently.

(1) A case in point is former Eugene mayor Brian Obie’s proposed $67 million mixed-use Market District development to be located next to the 5^th Street Market. Without MUPTE, Obie says the project will not be as large or dense, and likely result in fewer market-rate apartments than originally intended.

Is Bigger Better for Glenwood?

Proposal by Glenwood Development, LLC. The 20-story hotel would be the tallest building in the Eugene-Springfield area.

Last Monday evening’s meeting of the Springfield Economic Development Agency (SEDA) featured presentations by two teams vying for the opportunity to develop a 9.5-acre riverfront parcel in Glenwood brimming with potential. I joined the virtual audience online to see the proposals, either of which holds the potential to trigger a radical transformation of the metro area’s long-neglected, shabby backwater.  

 

Even though I watched already knowing a bit about both proposals,(1) I was still blown away by the ambitious visions presented by the two team. Both contenders—Glenwood Development, LLC, and LOCALIS Partners--propose massive projects. The enormity of the proposed budgets and the projected paces of development are likewise staggering: Glenwood Development, LLC estimates it would spend between $311 million and $340 million, and complete all construction by January 1, 2025. LOCALIS anticipates spending roughly $400 million, executing its project in three phases over an equally short period. In recent memory, few projects in the Eugene-Springfield market have rivaled the magnitude of the two proposals, with the possible exception of the Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend.

 

Significantly, because Glenwood is an IRS-sanctioned Opportunity Zone, both Glenwood Development, LLC and LOCALIS Partners anticipate extensive backing from interested investors. Investment funds are attracted by the tax benefits associated with moving capital to investments in an OZ. I can’t profess to understand the mechanisms involved, but I believe one upshot is there would be no burden upon local taxpayers associated with either proposal (i.e. no commitment of public monies in the form of general obligation bonds to fund the development). Indeed, any significant project within the OZ would generate considerable new tax revenues for the City of Springfield, Lane County, and the Glenwood Urban Renewal District well in excess of any waiver of systems development charges or partial deferral of property taxes.

 

Due to the requirements of opportunity zone investment (I think it has to do with what is called the “31-Month Working Capital Safe Harbor”), once the project’s funding is lined up it must proceed expeditiously. So, this means if the funds are committed, we will see whichever project SEDA favors take shape in very short order.

Glenwood Development, LLC building massing & program diagram

As the images here show, both proposals are nothing if not audacious. At first blush, the design concept by Morphosis Architects for the LOCALIS Partners team breaks the mold, whereas by comparison the plans by LRS Architects for Glenwood Development, LLC appears conventional. The way each scheme addresses the site context is likewise dichotomous: The Morphosis approach is campus-like, while the LRS design seeks to kickstart a desirable pattern of urban development between Franklin Boulevard and the river by introducing walkable streets and blocks. Both development teams propose a possible collaboration with Homes for Good to include a sizable complement of affordable or workforce housing.

 

LOCALIS Partners proposal - View from the east. A new soccer stadium and a hockey arena are centerpieces of the proposed design.

LOCALIS Partners proposal - View looking north. The landscaped plinth conceals parking and commercial spaces below.

I’m not going to address the specific design merits of either concept; instead, I’ll discuss my concern with the scale of both. Fundamentally, is bigger better for Glenwood? My answer to this question is a qualified “no.”

 

My unease with the size of the proposals stems from my long-held preference for piecemeal or incremental growth. As I wrote way back in 2012 upon the unveiling of the overly large 13^th & Olive student housing project by Capstone Development Partners in downtown Eugene, the benefit of piecemeal or incremental growth is that it allows for fine-grained adjustments over time. Development in smaller increments is less likely to result in undesirable outcomes. I argued that an effective process for improving our urban environments has been trial and error. Minor missteps provide feedback useful for recalibrating future choices. Small errors are relatively easy and inexpensive to correct. Bigger, coarser mistakes are far less so. Unfortunately, the Capstone project stands today as an example of a big, crude blunder.

 

An immense project built within a short timeframe also risks being unremittingly sterile. Inevitably, it will lack the richness, patina, and variety characteristic of a series of unrelated developments that evolved organically over many years. Some architects ill-advisedly attempt to compensate by generating an illusion of natural complexity; however, the results inevitably appear disingenuous and artificial.

LOCALIS Partners - Site Plan; the red rectangle is the proposed new soccer stadium.

Don’t get me wrong; I applaud the City of Springfield and the two proposing teams for their faith in Glenwood’s potential. And based on the little I know I do believe the Opportunity Zone investment program presents the most practical and realistic means to spark development. Glenwood has laid fallow for far too long. The time is right; accordingly, I do want to see one of the two proposals proceed because the alternative is too likely to be a continuation of Glenwood’s decades-long torpor. Sometimes incrementalism isn’t the best course. The clear prescription in some instances is catalytic change, a dramatic challenge to the status quo. Beneficial evolution in nature doesn’t always progress in a linear fashion; sometimes it surges forward.

 

SEDA meets again on April 26 to deliberate and select between the Glenwood Development, LLC and LOCALIS Partners proposals. I’ll be tuning in to see which team SEDA rewards with the privilege and responsibility to unleash Glenwood’s substantial potential.

 

(1)  The Eugene Emeralds withdrew their expression of interest and did not submit a formal proposal for consideration by SEDA. 

Hudson Yards: Lessons for Eugene?

Hudson Yards under construction, June 2018 (my photo)

Literally big news in architectural circles lately has been the March 15 opening of the first phase of the massive Hudson Yards development in New York City. I’ve followed the progress of Hudson Yards since my visit to the Big Apple last June to attend the 2018 AIA Conference on Architecture. The window of my 26^th floor room in the New Yorker Hotel happened to look westward towards its site atop the storage yard for the Long Island Railroad cars, the rising 1 Manhattan West tower(1) looming in my view. I walked past Hudson Yards daily to and from the Javits Center, site of the AIA Conference, so I also enjoyed a sidewalk perspective. To say the development is merely huge would be an understatement; it is in fact the largest private real estate development ever in the United States. Not surprisingly, it is also enormously expensive—by some accounts the bill will total more than twenty-six billion dollars when all is said and done (let that sink in for a moment: that’s 26,000 million dollars!). 

How can such an unimaginably large megaproject be relevant to our work here in little Eugene, Oregon? What are the lessons we might take from what is already evident about Hudson Yards, and how can we apply those lessons here? 

Much of the press about Hudson Yards on the occasion of its opening has been harshly critical. Alexandra Schwartz of The New Yorker magazine lamented its “unremitting artificiality,” with a “frictionless sameness” about it, “an enclave, a high-end corporate park buoyed by six billion dollars in tax breaks.” She described its centerpiece—the Vessel, a permanent art installation designed by Thomas Heatherwick—as a “triumph of vapidity, banal to its hollow core.”(2)  Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times popped the project’s bubble of urbanistic pretension by rightly characterizing it as “a gated community catering to the upper class . . . a relic of dated 2000s thinking, nearly devoid of urban design [that] declines to blend into the city grid.” 

The Vessel. Photo by Epicgenius [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Other critics have similarly been less than charitable. Like Kimmelman, Mark Alan Hewitt of Common\Edge questioned Hudson Yard’s inward-focus, exclusivity, and particularly its incorporation of a glitzy shopping mall for the wealthy. “Having a shopping mall, a ‘museum of commodities,’ attached to both housing and arts venues is an inevitable consequence of our conflation of money with culture,” he wrote. Many detractors draw unfavorable comparisons between the 28-acre development and Rockefeller Center, itself a mega-development in its own time. As Michael J. Lewis of The Wall Street Journal said, “Hudson Yards, it is now clear to see, is no Rockefeller Center … it lacks the gracious integration of outdoor space with the architectural order of its surrounding buildings.” Matt Shaw of The Architect’s Newspaper sardonically refers to Hudson Yards as “Little Dubai” because its genesis is not unlike how development has occurred in spectacular fashion in Dubai, via a marriage of government and private interests that confers power upon technocratic consultants to plan whole districts in one fell swoop. 

Witold Rybczynski, one of my favorite writers on architecture, remarked most succinctly of all: “. . . the whole thing adds up to—well, nothing, really.” 

Do I agree? For the most part, yes. Hudson Yards seems remorselessly sterile. This much was immediately apparent to me during my visit to New York, well before its opening last week. Additionally, nothing about the project suggests it grew in a piecemeal and organic way; I suppose in this respect it is at least “honest.” There’s no room for clutter, chaos, or a diversity of experiences. It’s all carefully curated, programmed, and choreographed, mostly for the benefit of the uber-rich. Access to the Vessel is by appointment. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that order is enforced by a squadron of Segway-riding mall cops. 

Hudson Yards seen from the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building, November 2018. Photo by DigbyDalton [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

What’s especially remarkable to me is the persistent sameness of the architecture at Hudson Yards, which is peculiar because the developers—Related Companies and Oxford Properties—commissioned several architectural firms(3) to design the project’s various office and residential towers. And yet, there they are, all so much alike: same silvery blue glass curtain walls, same stark geometries, same Brobdingnagian proportions. Moreover, they’re indifferent to one another, an upmarket gaggle that happens to rub shoulders only by circumstance, nothing if not like uniformly pinstriped, mute office workers in a crowded elevator cab. 

Equally peculiar is its street-level desolation. From what I gather, the pedestrian experience since Hudson Yards’ opening is nothing like that of the city to which it has been grafted. New York is famous for its authentic street experiences, its spirited juxtapositions, and the messy vitality of its crowded, dirty sidewalks. It’s a wondrous mélange of public spaces where serendipity rules and one ever is alone. It’s a city that never sleeps and where everyone walks. It’s a place with few barriers and welcoming to people from all cultures and walks of life. By contrast, Hudson Yards is an elevated office park, an icy monument to private influence over public space. It’s possible the passage of time and the acquisition of patina will soften its edges, but for now it hardly resembles nor meshes with the great city from which it springs. 

In its defense, the Hudson Yards project isn’t a byproduct of neighborhood-busting “urban renewal.” Nobody was forcibly displaced. It’s built over a working railyard, multiplying the value of that real estate many times over. Despite relying upon substantial tax waivers and subsidies to “pencil out,” the property will ultimately contribute orders of magnitude more to New York’s property tax rolls than it would if left as it was. Hudson Yards also needed to be a very large project to warrant the enormous investment in improvements to the site’s infrastructure. 

So, what can we here in Eugene learn from a project like Hudson Yards, one that seems alien to the reality of our urban situation? 

It’s clear one lesson from Hudson Yards is endless buckets of money do not guarantee good architecture and urban design. Another is that bigger is not synonymous with better. Those with the benefit of hindsight recognize the damage wrought upon downtown Eugene by the injurious union of imprudent redevelopment, slavish devotion to the needs of the automobile, and the flight of retail to newfangled malls during the 1960s and 70s. Those broad strokes condemned our urban core to decades of decline from which it is still now only recovering. Eugene’s modest scale cannot withstand similarly misguided ventures. The misbegotten Capstone student housing development approaches the limits of what our downtown can withstand; as it is, Capstone serves as a prime example of how not to create a pedestrian-friendly streetscape and as a poster child for missed opportunities. 

1 Manhattan West under construction with Hudson Yards beyond, as viewed from my room on the 26th floor of The New Yorker Hotel, June 2018

I’ve long championed the principle of incremental growth. Incremental growth is by definition inconsistent with huge megaprojects like Hudson Yards. The benefit of piecemeal or incremental growth is that it allows for fine-grained adjustments over time. Assuming growth is desirable at all—in the case of downtown Eugene, I believe it is—development in smaller increments is less likely to result in undesirable outcomes.  

Fundamentally, we can view the urban fabric as a complex adaptive system subject to the effects of interrelated groups of activities. Because of their complexity, it is difficult to fully understand cities, let alone plan them well. Another analogous model is to view cities as living organisms. Like any life form, they are vulnerable to structurally disruptive effects. Predicting the impact of changes carried out in big chunks isn’t easy if we factor in the highly interdependent systems of which cities are comprised. 

Arguably, one effective mechanism for improving the urban environment has been trial and error. Minor missteps provide feedback useful for recalibrating future choices. Small errors are relatively easy and inexpensive to correct. Bigger, coarser mistakes are far less so. 

The redevelopment of the former EWEB site along the banks of the Willamette River is monumentally important to Eugene. As a matter of fact, it may be our Hudson Yards. Perhaps it’s a stretch for me to suggest there are considerable parallels between the two projects, but they are clearly there. Both developments are being undertaken by a single development team on sites brimming with potential. Both are the beneficiaries of public subsidies. Both are and will be realized relatively quickly. Though perhaps inconceivable given the disparities between them, the EWEB riverfront redevelopment may be even more significant to Eugene than Hudson Yards is to New York. 

Again, bigger isn’t necessarily better. What’s clearly needed for the EWEB riverfront project is good design, fine-grained and attuned to the specifics of the site and its connections to the river and urban fabric. Good design will be necessary to avert the possibility of “unremitting artificiality” and “frictionless sameness” that afflicts Hudson Yards. Indeed, what Eugene needs of its riverfront redevelopment project is to avoid making the big mistakes by utilizing an iterative design process that models as closely as possible what piecemeal growth might be like if it was actually implemented that way. 

Regardless of their size, location, or cost, there are lessons to be learned from any project. Hudson Yards may be huge and expensive but not so much so that it doesn’t have something to teach architects here in Eugene.

(1) 1 Manhattan West isn’t technically part of the Hudson Yards development, but it is immediately contiguous with it and utilizes the same architectural vocabulary. The tower is part of an associated mixed-use project by Brookfield Properties and not by Related Companies/Oxford Properties, developers for Hudson Yards. 

(2) The Guardian dubbed the Vessel “a 15-story high answer to the question: ‘How much money could a rich man waste building a climbable version of an M.C. Escher drawing?’ (The answer is $200 million).” 

(3) KPF, SOM, Roche-Dinkeloo, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed the Phase 1 towers. Phase 2 will include towers reportedly designed by Santiago Calatrava, Robert A.M. Stern, and Frank Gehry.

Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day

Rome; painting by Rudolf Wiegmann [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Steven Leuck is one of the owners of Contractors Electric LLC here in Eugene. He’s also a past-president of the Willamette Valley Chapter - Construction Specifications Institute, and like me a member of the Emerald Executive Association. He’s also one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, with a tirelessly curious mind.

Steven recently passed along a link to a CNN article about young architects from Europe who chose to pursue their careers in China immediately upon graduating from architecture school. What the article said did not surprise me. What was most startling (and telling perhaps) is how much misplaced trust was laid at the feet of mere babies (architecturally speaking). Designers right out of school do not know what they don’t know. The Chinese boom-era predilection toward “xenocentric” buildings, as President Xi Jinping called them, exacerbated problems. Those projects betray a certain insecurity toward more traditional or conservative design approaches in favor of shiny new objects as if to proclaim how “modern and progressive” China’s contemporary culture is. As the article says, that trend is now being tempered. I’m no expert, but my sense is China has been through a period of excess, over-speculation, and profligacy that had to end at some point. China is maturing and will increasingly focus on making its new cities more attractive and coherent: cleaner, people-friendly, with vibrant streets and neighborhoods, as opposed to assembling collections of anti-urban, Jetsons-like trophy buildings that clamor for attention.

As the article goes on to say, the end of the Chinese “gold rush” has been accompanied by a lessening reverence toward Westerners and an exodus of the young European architects drawn to China by the promise of creative freedom and the projects to lavish it upon. The legacy of this period includes eerily empty and vast, instant “ghost cities” such as Ordos New City (Kangbashi) devoid of not only people but also of any sense of place or history.

Changfeng footbridge on Fen river and Shanxi theater, Taiyuan, Shanxi, China. Photo by Emdx (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

What lessons, if any, should we here in Oregon take from the Chinese experience? Certainly, the scale of development there dwarfs anything that might ever occur here, so perhaps we needn’t be so concerned. On the other hand, it does not take especially large projects to have an outsized impact in a community like Eugene. The recent wave of large student housing developments is a case in point. For better or worse, projects like The Hub and the Capstone apartments (13th & Olive) have irretrievably transformed downtown Eugene. Even much larger American cities, such as the would-be Amazon suitors, should be wary of the potentially destabilizing impact of massive projects drawn from whole cloth.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. No city aspiring to greatness or simply mere pleasantness can be. I’m not exactly sure what the best mechanisms are to ensure future development occurs in easily digested increments; however, we can avoid repeating the mistakes of others. Wisdom is a byproduct of experience, something most twenty-something architects lack. The Chinese undervalued prudence as well as its own history and culture, paying a heavy price for doing so. Growth may be inevitable but Eugene can achieve the grace and style we hope for, even as it grows. What’s important is to value experience, whether it is our own or comes from others far away.

Thank you Steven for sharing a thought-provoking article!