Item 3: Ordinance on Downtown Code Amendments

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implications that regulations would have the more they could preclude the type of development they would like to see. She underscored that they were tracking the suggestions for making buildings be greener and more sustainable over time. Ms. Kneeland opined that some of the conclusions regarding VMT had been based on “fairly simplistic ideas.” She felt that the park once idea was appealing but she was not certain as to how it would be true. She asked what kind of research supported this idea that reducing density and bringing a car that would park once would reduce VMT. Ms. Laurence replied that when the Transit Oriented District was first put in place in the code in 1993 staff had conducted research on what buildable areas and the impact on property owners would be. She recalled that when the FAR had been changed from .65 to 1.0 it had been an effort to round the number up. She did not believe there was a discussion on what the impact to properties that were there would be. She said the research they were doing involved looking at the impacts of this approach in other cities. She related that the division was working with some University of Oregon economics students to conduct a survey of cities either in Oregon or nationwide in order to take a look at what the transit oriented regulations were. She underscored that many cities had transit oriented regulations but hardly any required an FAR. She said they wanted to see from the examples from other cities what impact density regulations have on the type of downtown that was desired. Ms. Kneeland surmised that it was somewhat of a leap of faith that achieving density would reduce VMT. Ms. Laurence responded that it was not “just a leap of faith.” She stated that movement patterns downtown were known. She said most of the downtown was a parking exempt zone and the City had tried to mitigate that with the construction of parking garages. She related that in looking at other cities it was possible to see the kinds of buildings where people were inclined to walk from one building to another. She added that it was known that a person would typically walk up to a quarter mile or for five minutes from their parked car. She also noted that studies had been conducted in downtown Eugene of circles widening out from the parking structures to see where people would go from a given parking structure as opposed to getting into their car and driving half a block away. Mr. McCown observed that the commission had spent much of the time he had served on the commission cleaning up the land use code. He said it seemed that there was a lot of passion around it and the updates were for worthwhile goals. He was not certain, however, whether the past MINUTES—Eugene Planning Commission April 28, 2008 Page 6