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more floors. He described the structure as having a three-foot slab for a foundation over the entire block which had taken 48 continuous hours to pour. He said it was made as ballast so that it does not “pop out of the ground like a swimming pool.” He did not know why the City and the County could not use that building. He had heard rumors that it had been said the structure would not hold up. He maintained that it would hold up and offered to put his engineering study up against any engineering study that asserted otherwise. Russ Brink , 132 East Broadway, provided the names of 225 people who visited the Downtown Eugene, Inc. website to show their support for the project. He acknowledged that Whole Foods Grocery could build a store on any properly zoned land in the City. He predicted the store would come to this community at some time and that parking would be key to its location at any site. He wondered how many parking spaces th Whole Foods Grocery would be required to build under current code on West 11 Avenue and Coburg Road. He asked why people would want to encourage surface parking at a suburban location when a City center location was more consistent with smart growth principles. He pointed out that the City built and operated parking in the downtown area because it was a parking exempt zone, which meant that developers were not required to provide parking. He stressed that the City provided parking as a public service and as a means to implement city growth management policies. He thought the site could be documented by any common sense analysis given the recent developments in that area such as the federal courthouse and the Shedd Institute. Bart Ricketts , 921 Southwest Washington Street, Portland, President of Lease Crutcher Lewis, spoke as a construction professional and contractor with a great deal of experience with the no-bid delivery method. He said this was the type of project that fit the no-bid contract and was allowable according to ORS 279. He averred that the crux of the process was the speed of delivery, coordination of trades on a complex site, the provision of public benefit to the public agency involved, and having a contractor that had public contracting experience and good rapport with the contracting community. He stressed that there was still “plenty of public bidding opportunities” built into the process as over 90 percent of the hard costs of construction would be competitively bid by local trades-people, vendors, and subcontractors in the community. He hoped the council would support the process. Kelly Saito , 1120 Northwest Couch Street, Suite 600, Portland, stated that he worked for Gerding/Edlen Development Company and his company partnered with the Broadway and High Associates to put forth the proposal for this development. He asked for approval on the resolution to grant the sole source exemption. He commented that it was unfair to paint Whole Foods Grocery as a corporate baron coming to town to put local businesses out of business. He felt it was a good company that would provide good jobs. He pointed out that Whole Foods had been consistently ranked as one of the 100 best companies to work for. He predicted Whole Foods would be a steward to the community and to the environment. He also wished to underscore that the parking garage project was not a subsidy to the Whole Foods Grocery. He stressed that Whole Foods was paying a premium to be in this location and was paying for its parking. He asserted that the store could purchase land with surface parking for far less in the outlying areas of the city. Mike Schwartz , 725 Olive Street, said he and his family had owned a business in downtown Eugene for 69 years. He had served on the Downtown Commission, the Downtown Development Board, and the Eugene Renewal Agency. He stressed that Whole Foods Grocery was “everything” the Downtown Plan that had been passed in 1984 wanted, both in scope and in the parking garage. He wondered why this debate was being held at all. He stated that the city and its citizens had spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours of volunteer time trying to set up a downtown just for the projects it was now beginning to see proposed. He averred that any downtown in the country would love to have a Whole Foods Grocery interested in locating MINUTES—Eugene City Council -- March 13, 2006 Page 17 City Council Meeting