A Shift in the Civic Landscape

The former Wells Fargo building in downtown Eugene (Google Streetview).

The County’s recent purchase from Eugene School District 4J of the former Wells Fargo building at 99 E. Broadway marks a significant pivot. It signals the end of Lane County’s plan to site a new courthouse on the former Eugene City Hall block and the beginning of a more incremental approach to meeting the needs of the courts, the Sheriff’s Office, and the District Attorney. It also raises a larger question: what becomes of the City Hall block now that its intended purpose has evaporated?

Before considering that question, it’s worth recalling why the County pursued a new courthouse in the first place. The existing building (designed by the firm of Wilmsen & Endicott and completed in 1959) is a structure stretched far beyond its intended capacity. By the time the County undertook a scoping study in 2018–2019, several issues had become impossible to ignore.(1) The most pressing was security and circulation. Modern courthouses rely on three fully separated circulation systems: public, private (judges and staff), and secure (in‑custody defendants). The current building cannot provide this separation. Judges, jurors, victims, witnesses, attorneys, and in-custody defendants routinely cross paths in public corridors, compromising safety and dignity every day.

The structure and building systems also lag contemporary expectations. Mechanical, electrical, and life‑safety components have reached the end of their useful life. The building cannot support modern technology loads, accessibility standards, or seismic requirements. Courtrooms remain undersized and inflexible, unable to accommodate modern jury boxes, ADA-compliant circulation, or the spatial needs of today’s legal practice. Support spaces fall short. And the courthouse cannot expand. Streets and the Public Service Building hem it in, leaving no flexibility for comprehensive modernization.

The Oregon Judicial Department documented these issues, the presiding judge echoed them, and the 2018–2019 scoping process confirmed them. The accompanying conceptual design attempted to address these deficiencies comprehensively and propose a courthouse that met contemporary standards for safety, functionality, and civic presence. Voters rejected the bond measure, state funding disappeared, and the project stalled. The underlying needs remain.

With the failure of the bond measure and the loss of state funding, the County had little choice but to change course. Instead of pursuing a single, transformative project, it has now shifted toward a three-building strategy: 1) keep the existing courthouse; 2) expand justice‑system functions into the Public Service Building; and 3) move other operations into the Wells Fargo building.

Blocking diagram of one of the 2018 Lane County Justice Center development scenarios (Robertson/Sherwood/Architects w/DLR Group).

The Wells Fargo building is not a courthouse-ready structure. It lacks the floor-to-floor heights, structural grid, circulation patterns, and security zoning that modern courthouses require. But it can relieve pressure. By moving a mix of administrative and selected justice‑system functions into the building, including portions of the District Attorney’s Office or the Sheriff’s Office, the County frees space in the Public Service Building for the functions that most directly support the courthouse next door. The Wells Fargo building is a way to buy time and improve conditions without taking on the cost or political risk of a massive new construction project.(2)

The County says it will fund the early phases of this three‑building strategy with existing capital reserves and general‑fund allocations. These will inevitably be modest, phased investments rather than a single large capital outlay. The County will proceed without waiting for new revenue sources.

Given that funding approach, it is reasonable to ask whether selling the former City Hall block could help pay for later improvements. The short answer is yes in principle, but not in a way that changes the County’s immediate capital picture. The block holds real market value, but Eugene’s land economics remain modest. Even a full‑block sale would likely generate only a few million dollars, helpful but not transformative.

Once the County completes the Wells Fargo move, reconfigures the PSB, and outlines a long-term renovation plan for the courthouse, the narrative becomes cleaner: the block no longer serves a justice function and can return to productive private use. The most plausible scenario is that the County eventually sells or ground‑leases the block, and that the proceeds support later phases of courthouse renovation rather than the immediate work that will likely start soon.

The implications of this shift extend beyond courthouse logistics. They also reshape the civic geography of downtown Eugene. The three‑building strategy, in an unintended way, brings the County back into alignment with the city’s earliest civic geometry. When Eugene’s early trustees platted the Park Blocks in the 1850s, they imagined them as the civic heart of the town, framed by public institutions and anchored by the courthouse. That geometry has persisted for more than a century and a half. By choosing to retain the courthouse on its current site rather than construct a new facility on the former City Hall block, the County has, perhaps unwittingly, honored that original civic logic. The Park Blocks remain the symbolic center of the justice system, and the courthouse remains essentially where the founders placed the original building. With that continuity intact, the City Hall block no longer carries any inherited obligation to remain civic land.

Civic uses evolve. Land use is not a sacred inheritance. The City’s move into the former EWEB headquarters, a far better outcome than any of the City Hall schemes pursued over the past two decades, effectively freed the block from its symbolic burden. Today, the County has no program for the site, no funding to develop it, and no political narrative that would support a new civic building there. In that context, private redevelopment offers the most responsible path forward.

Google Earth view of the existing courthouse (left), Lane County Public Services Building (center), and the former City Hall block, now a parking lot owned by the County (right).

A dense mixed-use project, whether housing, hotel, retail, or office, would not reshape the Park Blocks directly. But it would repair a missing piece of the streetscape along 8th Avenue, which the City once envisioned as a “Great Street.” Today, that sequence runs from the Park Blocks to the courthouse and Public Service Building, and then simply stops. Filling the old City Hall block with active, inhabited uses would stitch the urban fabric back together. In place of a void, there could be a more continuous, coherent civic corridor. Dense mixed-use redevelopment would bring residents, visitors, and daily activity to a part of downtown that has long felt underbuilt and unresolved. In that sense, private development would strengthen the district more effectively than any modest civic use the County could plausibly afford.

Lane County’s new three‑building strategy reflects fiscal reality and political constraints. Once fully implemented, it will improve conditions for the courts, the Sheriff, and the District Attorney, even if it falls short of the comprehensive solution envisioned in 2019. The County now owes the public a clear articulation of its long-term intentions, not just for the courthouse and the Public Service Building but for the former City Hall block. Downtown Eugene deserves decisions grounded in reality rather than nostalgia. It also deserves a plan that recognizes that even modest, well-considered choices can strengthen the civic core. If the County provides that clarity, this pivot, while less ambitious than many of us once hoped for, can still move the civic district in a constructive direction.

(1) My former firm, Robertson/Sherwood/Architects, with the assistance of DLR Group’s Justice+Civic studio, prepared the study.

(2) For readers who want the underlying numbers, recent reporting in the Register‑Guard and Lookout Eugene‑Springfield covers the purchase price, building size, and early renovation estimates.

Hope Is . . .

A desktop tableau: at the office, late at night, circa 2015.

Hope feels like a scarce resource right now. The world is carrying more than its share of upheaval, and the daily news makes it hard to imagine a future that’s coherent, let alone better. In moments like this, I find myself returning to the realm I understand best, that of the drawing, the detail, and the site. While the scale of events feels ungraspable, the scale of a plan or section still makes sense to me.

Architecture does not solve the larger forces shaping our time. It never has. But it does insist on a steady belief that the future is still worth shaping. Over the course of my working life, I learned to recognize certain decisions that embody that belief. They are small, specific choices, repeated often enough to become habits of mind.

Hope is . . .

• Hope is keeping the existing structure because it still has stories left to tell.
• Hope is protecting the one tree on the site that anchors memory and shade.
• Hope is refusing to overbuild the ground, letting the earth breathe.
• Hope is leaving traces of earlier lives visible because they speak truthfully.
• Hope is turning the building toward the sun and prevailing breeze rather than the surveyor’s grid.
• Hope is opening the building to natural ventilation when the season permits.
• Hope is holding the window where light and view demand it, even when the plan protests.
• Hope is redrawing the section until the space feels right in the body.
• Hope is crafting a stair generous enough that people choose to walk it.
• Hope is shaping the threshold so arrival becomes a quiet ceremony.
• Hope is designing pathways wide and smooth enough for wheelchairs, strollers, and slow walkers alike.
• Hope is placing handrails and tactile cues where intuition might falter.
• Hope is designing restrooms that welcome every body without apology.
• Hope is carving out a small, unprogrammed room for solitude or spontaneous gathering.
• Hope is shrinking the lobby to what welcomes, not what impresses.
• Hope is orienting rooms to foster connection, not isolation.
• Hope is selecting the material that patinas gracefully over decades, not the one that shines in renderings.
• Hope is drawing the joint that reveals how the wall is made, honestly.
• Hope is insisting on flashing done right, even if buried forever.
• Hope is choosing connections that forgive time and allow repair without destruction.
• Hope is detailing the back-of-house with the same care as the public face.
• Hope is resisting the cheap shortcut that burdens someone else later.
• Hope is designing the building so it can be maintained without heroics.
• Hope is building in modularity so the next generation can adapt without demolition.
• Hope is choosing acoustics that let voices carry gently, not harshly.
• Hope is integrating shade, water, and greenery to temper heat and lift the spirit.
• Hope is leaving space—literal and figurative—for unforeseen uses and future lives.

None of this solves the larger problems we’re facing. It isn’t meant to. These habits of mind point to a way of working that refuses to give in to the noise and the speed of the moment. Taken together, they form an open-ended litany—an accumulation of decisions that take the future seriously even when the future feels uncertain.

In uncertain times, that is work worth doing.

Eugene/Architecture/Alphabet: Z

This is the final installment in my Eugene/Architecture/Alphabet series of blog posts, in which the focus of each entry was a landmark building in Eugene. Many of the buildings in this series are familiar to most Eugene residents; a few are less so. 

Eugene offers few buildings (perhaps none?) whose names begin with “Z.” Rather than force a tenuous fit, I’ve chosen to end this series with a conceptual entry: the Zone of Reflection.

 

Zone of Reflection

This is not a specific building, but a space shaped by the process of looking—of walking, observing, and thinking critically about the built environment. It’s the zone where architecture becomes more than form or function. It becomes context, memory, and meaning.

Throughout this series, I’ve considered buildings that signal civic ambition, institutional expansion, private development, and adaptive reuse. Together, they form a cross-section of Eugene’s architectural landscape.

The Zone of Reflection is where these observations settle, and questions emerge. What do these buildings say about Eugene’s priorities? How do they shape public life? What gets preserved, and what gets replaced? My series ends here, but I'll continue to pay attention.

This series began as a way to revisit Eugene’s architecture through a structured lens, one letter at a time. My aim was to highlight buildings that are architecturally interesting, locally important, or historically significant. All are extant, and all contribute to the city’s evolving built environment. The alphabet provided a framework, but the deeper intent was to encourage closer observation and critical reflection on the spaces we inhabit.

Paying Attention to Place

 

Rue Saint-Sulpice, Montreal, QC (all photos by me)

Places reveal themselves in layers. Some register immediately; others take time, weather, and use to come into focus. Streets, buildings, and public spaces rarely explain themselves all at once. That slow unfolding, often missed in a rush toward first impressions, shapes how cities are understood and how they endure.

Certain places speak right away: a street that feels coherent the moment you step onto it, or a building whose presence seems fully resolved at first glance. Others ask for patience. Their character emerges through shifting light, seasonal changes, and the habits of daily life. I’ve learned to trust both kinds of encounters. Each reveals something different about how places actually work.

Cities depend on a legible fabric, the everyday buildings that give a place its rhythm and make its streets understandable. That fabric grows out of the ground it sits on; geography and topography often shape it outright, bending streets, breaking grids, and steering development in ways no plan can fully override. When the fabric holds together, even loosely, a city feels grounded. When it falls apart, everything around it struggles: landmarks lose their context, public spaces drift, and movement turns confusing. The fabric isn’t just background; it’s what lets a city make sense.

Within that fabric, a few buildings and spaces take on a larger role. They steady their surroundings, give direction to a street, or quietly signal that they belong to everyone. Some call these places monuments, not because they’re necessarily grand, but because they help the city orient itself. Their presence clarifies what’s around them. Without them, a place can feel disoriented; with them, the whole gains coherence. Here in Eugene, the downtown Park Blocks form a central public space that fulfills this role. I also like to think the main branch of the Eugene Public Library—a project I had a hand in shaping—functions as one of the city’s steadying civic anchors.

Piazza Navona, Rome 

History deepens this understanding. Every city carries traces of what came before: old street lines that refuse to disappear, materials that weather in familiar ways, settlement patterns that continue to guide how people move. Even when a place looks new, it rests on earlier decisions. Cities are palimpsests, not in a romantic sense but a practical one. The past sits plainly in the present, whether we notice it or not, and paying attention to those layers helps explain why places feel the way they do.

The rains of the Pacific Northwest test every exposed joint. Low winter light exposes the difference between a generous window and a half-hearted one. Moss softens edges whether it’s invited or not. Climate shows its effects early. Geography and history shape perception too: filtered light, volcanic soils, a layered cultural landscape. Every place has a character that precedes design and outlasts it, and buildings work better when they acknowledge that character rather than resist it.

What matters most is whether a building feels anchored to its purpose. Sometimes that shows up in small choices. Other times it’s broader: a space that gathers people naturally, a form that belongs to its setting, a presence that feels inevitable once you’ve lived with it for a while. The reasons vary, but that sense of rightness is hard to miss when you see and feel it.

None of this happens easily. Budgets, codes, timelines, and competing priorities shape every project. Attention is often the first casualty of speed and efficiency. I’ve been inside enough jobs to know how many compromises hide behind even the simplest building. Still, thoughtful decisions—daylight where it counts, materials that age honestly, plans that anticipate real use—can give a building staying power. These are far from new ideas. 

Times Square, New York.

I keep coming back to how the built environment shapes our expectations of one another. A well-considered public building quietly suggests that a community values its shared life. A neglected streetscape sends the opposite message. Those cues accumulate. They influence how we behave, how we gather, and how we imagine the future. Architecture doesn’t dictate any of it, but it sets the stage for what’s possible.

Over time, my own thinking has settled around a few recurring ideas: the importance of a legible fabric; the pull of geography and history; the honesty of materials; and the authority of well-placed civic buildings. None of these insights is original. They echo through the work of others I’ve learned from along the way. They’ve simply grown clearer the longer I’ve watched them play out in real places.

If there’s an arc here, it’s the arc of looking closely. Buildings reveal themselves in their own time. Cities take longer still. After a lifetime working in and around them, and now watching from a different vantage point, I see my role less as a conclusion than as participation in a long conversation. The best any of us can do is pay attention, make careful choices, and add something worth keeping.

Can an AI System Write Specifications?

Architects often encounter new tools that promise efficiency. Some deliver it. Others only shift the work. The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence has revived a familiar question in architectural practice: whether a machine can produce a complete set of written specifications for a building, formatted in accordance with CSI MasterFormat, with only limited direction from the architect. The premise is straightforward: provide the AI with a Design Development set or BIM model, supplement it with a UniFormat outline, and ask it to generate the rest. 

Before considering the question, it helps to define the scope of this discussion. My aim is not to evaluate the technical capabilities of AI or to predict its trajectory. I am describing the nature of architectural specifications as they function in practice, and why their essential characteristics do not lend themselves to full automation. The observations that follow come from the work itself, not from any claim to expertise in artificial intelligence. 

Conversations about AI-generated specifications tend to fall into two predictable camps: optimism that the technology will soon automate the task, and caution from specifiers who emphasize the role of human judgment. I am not positioning this essay within that debate. Instead, I am outlining how specifications operate in practice and why their structure resists full delegation to an automated system. 

With that boundary in place, the short answer is that an AI system can produce text that resembles specifications. The longer answer is that resemblance does not equal authorship, and it certainly does not equal responsibility. 

AI systems excel at producing language that follows a pattern. They can generate the familiar three-part structure of a MasterFormat section and fill it with plausible content. They can map a UniFormat outline to the appropriate divisions and suggest likely sections. They can expand common assemblies into generic descriptions suitable for a preliminary draft. For routine editing tasks, such as checking terminology, consistency, or cross-referencing, they already offer real assistance. 

But specifications are not primarily a writing exercise. They serve as instruments of service that carry intent, performance criteria, and contractual force. They allocate risk. They coordinate with drawings, consultant documents, procurement requirements, and the owner’s expectations. They reflect decisions that are technical, legal, and experiential. An AI system cannot distinguish between what the drawings show and what the architect intends. It cannot infer performance requirements from geometry. It cannot decide when a prescriptive specification suits the project or when a performance specification becomes necessary. It cannot judge installer qualifications, warranty durations, or the level of detail required to make a section enforceable. It can only generate text that sounds like something an architect might have written. 

A simple example illustrates the point: imagine a project where the drawings call for a mechanically fastened roofing system, but an AI-generated specification defaults to a fully adhered system because that assembly appears more frequently in its training data. The contradiction is not a technical glitch; it is a failure of judgment. The machine cannot know which document reflects the architect’s intent, and the architect must resolve the discrepancy regardless. The risk created by the mismatch remains entirely human. 

The gap does not arise from a lack of training data or processing power. It stems from the nature of the work. Specifications depend on judgment, and judgment depends on experience, liability, and the ability to weigh consequences. A machine with none of these cannot produce a specification in the professional sense. It can only imitate the surface features of one. 

Some may argue that future AI systems trained on liability-aware datasets could narrow this gap. Even if such systems emerge, the underlying issue persists. Responsibility for the document cannot shift to a tool that cannot bear it. The architect would still need to verify the content, and verification would still require judgment. More sophisticated text does not change the structure of professional accountability. 

It is still reasonable to consider what might improve. AI systems will become better at interpreting drawings and models. They will identify assemblies more reliably, compare documents more effectively, and flag inconsistencies more quickly. They may eventually serve as competent reviewers, for example, as tools that scan a DD set, identify missing sections, and highlight divergences between specifications and drawings. They may help maintain internal consistency across large projects. They may reduce the time spent on boilerplate. These gains are modest, but they are real. 

What they are unlikely to do is assume the role of the specifier. The profession’s obligations—clarity, coordination, and accountability—do not reduce to pattern recognition. Even if an AI system produced a document that looked complete, the architect would still need to verify every line. The liability would remain exactly where it is now. 

A more interesting question concerns the appearance of completeness. When a machine can create a document that sounds authoritative, the risk of misplaced confidence increases. A specification that reads smoothly but lacks enforceability poses more danger than an incomplete one. This shifts the architect’s labor from accountable authorship to comprehensive verification, a change in workflow that increases risk without reducing responsibility. 

For now, the practical answer is that AI can assist with specifications, but it cannot write them. It can organize information, expand outlines, and check for consistency. It cannot make the decisions that define the document. The distinction matters, especially as the tools grow more fluent. The risk is not that AI will replace the architect, but that it will produce documents that appear authoritative without meeting the obligations of the profession. 

Years ago, I argued that specifiers serve as the managers of a project’s essential information. That view has not diminished. If anything, the rise of AI has clarified how much of the work depends on judgment rather than text. (See my 2012 post, “Revenge of the Specifiers”). 

Architects have always adapted to new tools. This one will be no different. But the work of specifying—deciding what is required, why it is required, and how it must perform—remains a human responsibility. The danger is not that AI will write specifications, but that it will encourage architects to trust documents whose authority exceeds their judgment.