Item 5: Parks and Open Space in River Road/Santa Clara

Home Browse Search

Park, Lone Oak Park, Terra Linda Park, and more recently, a park site near Ferndale Avenue and another near Beacon Drive East. The net result is that once these neighborhood parks are developed they will provide a well-distributed coverage of neighborhood park service that's comparable to other areas of Eugene. In contrast, Santa Clara continues to be significantly under-served in the categories of community parks and natural areas. To date, staff have not pursued options around the Santa Clara School site for use as a neighborhood park. The primary reason is that the area is currently served by an existing neighborhood park purchased in 1999 for that purpose. Lone Oak Park is an undeveloped, 4-acre site located at the comer of Ross Lane and Lone Oak Avenue, and was one of the earlier bond-funded acquisitions targeted to serve the neighborhood in southeast Santa Clara. The addition of a neighborhood park site at Santa Clara school would result in significant overlap with the existing service area covered by Lone Oak. The idea has been discussed about liquidating Lone Oak in favor of buying a portion of Santa Clara School for a neighborhood park. While this may sound appealing to some at first glance, we believe the additional costs involved would pose a significant barrier to this course of action. Our best current information indicates that School District 4J is expected to soon apply to change the zoning of the Santa Clara School. The property was recently listed on the market at $7.2 million. If the zone change application is successful, a portion of the former school property equal in size to Lone Oak Park could cost as much as $4 million. This compares with an estimate of the current land value of Lone Oak Park at approximately $695,000. If you have additional questions please contact me bye-mail at iohnny.r.medlin@ci.eugene.or.us or by telephone at 682-4930. Council Memo 12.1.05 Page 2