CC Minutes - 10/22/07 Work Session

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downtown core. However, she believed the housing around the West University Neighborhood was predominantly student housing with a transitory student population and the associated challenges that population brought. Those challenges created by the student housing placed a heavier burden on the City and at the same time the City was forgoing the taxes from those developments. The last MUPTE applica- tion the City processed in that area resulted in the existing improvements on the property being demolished, and the City lost the tax value outside the land value. Ms. Bettman agreed that if one was trying to leverage higher quality construction, it was not fair to focus on the downtown alone. She disagreed that there was no infill happening, as there was plenty happening, and the biggest complaint she heard was about quality. She suggested that the City focus on where development would not occur without assistance, which was downtown. Ms. Bettman, seconded by Ms. Ortiz, moved to direct the City Manager to bring back for a public hearing a revised ordinance amending the MUPTE plan boundary consistent with the Downtown Plan boundary that was in place before the West University Neighborhood ex- th pansion, but including the amendments for 13 and Olive and the co-housing project. Mr. Zelenka said that his research indicated that the MUPTE tool was not used as much as he had thought. There had been numerous housing projects in the West University Neighborhood that were built without the benefit of the MUPTE. He thought a focus on the urban core seemed much more critical given that no housing project occurred in downtown in the last 20 years without a subsidy. However, when considering a boundary shift, he did not think the ‘big guys’ needed the exemption, but the most recent examples of the MUPTE involved small, local developers doing small, quality projects. He suggested that “incentivizing” local, small builders was a better strategy as they had more incentive to build a higher quality project. Mr. Weinman pointed out that almost all the MUPTE applications were from local builders, with the possible exception of Broadway Center and Broadway Place. Most of those projects were still locally owned. Mr. Zelenka asked if the developments were higher quality because they were locally owned. Mr. Weinman attributed the higher quality to more stringent City standards. Mr. Clark indicated he would not support the motion. He was concerned about the amount of affordable housing in the core and he thought changing the boundaries would mean no more such housing would be built. He had spoken to Campus Housing Coordinator Mike Eyster of the University of Oregon (UO) earlier that day, who indicated there was a demand for on-campus housing but the UO was reluctant to build more because it created more public safety burdens for the City. The AIS indicated that the City had very low vacancy rates around the UO and in order for development to be economically feasible, rents must be sufficiently high to repay the loan. He pointed out that the higher the cost, the higher the rents people must pay. If the City was not involved in development in the area he feared that would contribute to a diminution of affordable housing in the area. He said that rents were increasing well above wages, and that was a concern to him. Ms. Bettman said that taxpayers were not in the business of development, but rather had their elected official leverage their money to achieve a public good. She said that student housing would get built anyway. Most students lived on campus in other university towns and very few lived off campus. It was unusual for a community to have to accommodate so many students outside a university system. She thought the arguments in favor of MUPTE were salient when applied to downtown and lost credibility when that focus was removed. Infill was happening in the other areas and there was no reason not to collect taxes from those developments to support needed services. MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 22, 2007 Page 10 Work Session