City Hall, Vision Eugene, and a Different Downtown

The City of Eugene finally has its new city hall, formally closing on the purchase of the former Eugene Water & Electric Board headquarters last week. For far too many years, I’ve chronicled the almost tragically comic and protracted course taken to provide the seat of our city government with a new home. Now that the question of where Eugene City Hall will be is settled, those of us who have a vested interest in the future of our downtown core can take stock of the long-term implications. There is no question the goalposts have moved, and not only because of the City of Eugene’s purchase of the former EWEB headquarters. 

Vision Eugene is an ad hoc group of citizens who came together with the goal of convincing the EWEB board to support redevelopment of its former headquarters as the “Eugene Cultural Center.” Their vision initially included entirely transforming the building and its immediate precinct into a cultural and educational neighborhood on the river. The attractions they proposed as possibilities include a “Rivers Museum,” a new (and heretofore nonexistent) Eugene Art Museum, and fancifully, a "National Hippy Hall of Fame." Additionally, they imagined both the Lane County History Museum and The Eugene Science Center relocating to the site, addressing both institutions’ longstanding desires to expand. While the City of Eugene intends to repurpose much of the building to meet the needs of its city hall functions, Vision Eugene believes a master plan incorporating elements of their proposed Cultural Center remains not only viable, but also necessary to fully capitalize on the site’s riverfront location and maximize public benefit. 

Recently, at the invitation of Otto Poticha, FAIA, and David Hilton—two of the group’s members—I attended a meeting of Vision Eugene. The goal of the meeting was to bring everyone up to date regarding their current plans and the implications of those plans for our city. Numbering among Vision Eugene‘s members are some notable individuals with a long history of service to the community or interest in improving Eugene’s livability and vibrancy, including Roscoe Devine, Sue Prichard, Anita Johnson, Jerry Diethelm, and George Brown.(1) Otto and David led the discussion. 

To their credit, Otto and David acknowledged the reality of the current situation, which is that the City of Eugene’s needs for its new city hall will first and foremost take precedence over the aspirations of others. Vision Eugene is not giving up the hope that the former EWEB headquarters and riverfront site will one day become a truly active and public place, but the group also recognizes that moving forward it will be the community’s overall cultural and economic vitality that will define Eugene. Fundamentally, Vision Eugene wishes to engage and inform development projects that enhance the cultural and educational quality of life for everyone. Whether Eugene City Hall is part of any such future projects is secondary to that overarching mission. 

The current state of downtown is clearly another matter of concern to Vision Eugene. Numerous factors have contributed to the public's perception of downtown Eugene's decline in recent years. These include increasing office vacancies exacerbated by the shift to work-from-home or hybrid work regimes, the shuttering of brick-and-mortar retail establishments, and the intractable problems of homelessness, drug addiction, attendant crime and the absence of adequate resources to deal with their underlying causes. As others have noted, the downtowns of many U.S. cities are facing an “urban doom loop” attributable to an accelerating disinvestment in their downtowns, exacerbating their downward spiral. Businesses do not willingly choose to locate in such environments, especially as the necessity of 9-5 five days a week in-office work wanes and more companies embrace remote working. The City of Eugene’s relocation of hundreds of its employees to the riverfront site away from the core will further, rather than reverse, this trend. 

Reframing a different future for downtown Eugene is necessary. Rather than attempt to fully resurrect it along the lines of what it once was—a center for commerce, government, and culture—I believe we should emphasize the development of housing of all types at various levels, both market-rate and subsidized, at mid-to-high levels of density. More housing is one means to help forestall downtown Eugene’s further hollowing-out. When people live in the city's core, they become caring stakeholders who take ownership of its future; however, providing additional housing by itself is not a panacea. 

As Otto pointed out during the meeting, you must give people reasons to want to live downtown. Presently, the number of those reasons is insufficient. It is somewhat a cart-before-the-horse matter: simply increasing the stock of new housing will not make downtown’s problems disappear. Downtown Eugene will need a greater variety of quality attractions if it is to possess the gravitational pull necessary to draw a resident population of sufficient size. 

The City of Eugene has identified a list of downtown priorities and projects, which includes supporting the creation of a mix of new affordable housing across income levels, increasing the public safety presence downtown, identifying needed social services in the downtown area, strengthening downtown’s commercial environment, improving the pedestrian and multimodal experience, and supporting downtown’s role as Eugene’s cultural hub. Building a strong sense of community and fostering civic pride are clear goals. 

It may be that realizing Vision Eugene’s plans for a Eugene Cultural Center will bear more fruit if proposed for location downtown. The various elements of the group’s plans could adaptively reuse the area’s surplus of underutilized real estate. For example, imagine transforming the former Bon Marche department store building (later Symantec’s downtown Eugene office location, then a call center, and now vacant) at 190 W. 8th Avenue to become a National Hippy Hall of Fame or the new home for The Eugene Science Center. 

Obviously, with a new Eugene City Hall no longer part of the plans for the Eugene Town Square site north of the Farmers Market Pavilion, another opportunity exists there. I personally can envision the construction of an annex to the Graduate Hotel Convention Center, perhaps as a public/private partnership that would ensure the facility’s availability for programming events of broad interest to the community. The annex could be connected by either a tunnel or pedestrian bridge over 7th Avenue to the hotel. 

Do we need to further rethink what the morphology of a successful city should be? Does the paradigm of a thriving and vibrant downtown still hold? I posit it is not necessarily obsolete, but it is evolving. We may be witnessing in real time the transitioning of cities like Eugene from a model focused upon a single urban core to one that embraces polycentric development. Such a model would foster multiple centers of housing, activity, and employment throughout the city, reducing the concentration and opportunities in any one area. This approach can distribute economic and social benefits more equitably and create a network of vibrant neighborhoods. Eugene’s neighborhoods could assume a degree of preeminence over the city’s greater identity such that people may come to regard Eugene primarily as a constellation of neighborhoods, each with its own unique character and attractions. 

As the very recent history here in Eugene has proven, the concept of a successful city is constantly changing, and it is important to adapt urban planning and development strategies to suit those changing circumstances. The City of Eugene’s purchase of the former EWEB headquarters is certainly one such example. Time will tell whether City Hall’s move to its new home is a tipping point, beyond which downtown Eugene cannot reverse its downward spiral, or a trigger effecting a welcome paradigm shift in the way we regard its future development.

(1) Notably absent from the meeting was a younger cohort. I pegged the median age of those in attendance at around 70.