Laserfiche WebLink
<br />M I N U T E S <br /> <br /> <br />Eugene City Council <br />Work Session <br />McNutt Room—City Hall <br />777 Pearl Street—Eugene, Oregon <br /> <br /> July 11, 2007 <br /> Noon <br /> <br />COUNCILORS PRESENT: Andrea Ortiz, Chris Pryor, Betty Taylor, Bonny Bettman, Jennifer <br />Solomon, George Poling, Mike Clark, Alan Zelenka. <br /> <br /> <br />Her Honor Mayor Kitty Piercy called the meeting of the Eugene City Council to order. She announced that <br />Mr. Poling would be unable to attend the meeting due to a family emergency. <br /> <br /> <br />1. WORK SESSION: City Council Goal – Downtown Initiative Action Plan <br /> <br />Assistant City Manager Angel Jones introduced Chief Randy Groves, the executive leading the project team <br />for the council goal, and Associate Planner Nan Laurence, team member. She said this was the first time the <br />council had reviewed the action plan and staff was asking for direction to guide their efforts. <br /> <br />Chief Groves commented that the goal was a very large and ambitious one and said the action plan <br />represented staff’s best efforts to develop an initial plan and associated strategies, but he welcomed <br />comments and suggestions for adjustments. He said council leadership was vital to any downtown <br />revitalization effort, with the council defining success. He said the draft action plan was strongly connected <br />to the Eugene Downtown Plan, which was the guiding document for revitalization efforts. He said the <br />assumption was that the downtown initiative was inclusive of the entire downtown, not just the proposed <br />West Broadway project. He said the action plan had a five-year planning horizon under the supposition that <br />the downtown initiative would remain a council goal for longer than the two-year goal cycle, although staff <br />recognized that a future council could amend or eliminate it as a priority. <br /> <br />Chief Groves said staff had developed four key values to focus their efforts: vision, teamwork, communica- <br />tion and commitment. He asked for the council’s direction in defining and guiding the role of the staff team <br />and its relationship to the Planning and Development Department technical team and the Broadway <br />Development Advisory Committee, which were also working towards downtown revitalization. He said <br />there were many outcomes, large and small, associated with the goal, with the council’s stated goal being a <br />revitalized downtown. He said specific outcomes came from individual projects and outcomes and ranged in <br />size and scope. He reviewed several examples, such as improvements to benefit the Farmers Market and the <br />council’s direction to support both the Beam and KWG concepts for West Broadway. He said staff was <br />currently focused on implementing strategies from the Downtown Plan and many of the actions and projects <br />built on one another and the results might be sequential, with initial, interim and long-term outcomes. <br /> <br />Ms. Laurence stated that the 71 implementation strategies from the Downtown Plan spoke to an enormous <br />range of actions addressing all of downtown and provided the specific action items for the initiative. She <br />said many of the strategies were opportunity-driven and many were interrelated, but all of them were <br /> <br /> <br />MINUTES—Eugene City Council July 11, 2007 Page 1 <br /> Work Session <br /> <br />