CC Minutes - 05/12/03 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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Ms. Nathanson asked if it was possible to require onsite parking in the parking exempt zone downtown. Mr. Sullivan said that the parties to an agreement could agree to any set of terms, but he pointed out that the zone was in place for a purpose. Parking was intended to be shared throughout the system. There were a substantial number of parking spaces at the Broadway Place parking structure, parking spaces adjacent to the site, and spaces irregularly available in the Parcade, Eugene Performing Arts Center, and Overpark parking structures. The system had considerable capacity. He said that staff preferred to see money invested in the development rather than in parking. Mr. PapS, seconded by Ms. Nathanson, moved to direct the City Manager and staff to work with both ORI and the Fogelstrom Group to put together an agreement or agreements for an option for either party to purchase the building in nine months. Mayor Torrey called for discussion on the motion. Ms. Bettman recalled that she had asked if the City could pursue two responses during the Olive Street development process, and had been advised against it. She asked what the difference was in this case. Mr. Braud suggested that in that case, the response selected was clearly much more responsive to the criteria that staff did not support moving forward with the other responses. Ms. Bettman asked if nine months was sufficient for the federal grant cycle. Mr. Braud did not know the answer. He pointed out, however, that the grant was a small percentage of the total funding package, and ORI had financing issues to work out that went beyond the grant, as did all the responses. Ms. Bettman said of the three housing proposals, she considered the Sockeye response the best because of the firm's experience in Portland and because it included Iow-income housing. However, she was leaning toward the ORI response because of its long-time community history, its provision of family-wage jobs, and the proposed downtown location. She said that a mix of uses in one building was not as important to her as the overall mix of uses downtown. She believed that there were other suitable locations downtown for housing, but fewer opportunities in downtown to locate a large employer anchor. Ms. Bettman thought in this case, the proposal was worth the public subsidy. Mr. Pap8 said that he offered the motion because he wanted the City to put an agreement together with both parties to "start the horse race," and in nine months the council would have created criteria for which response would prevail. Ms. Taylor requested staff comment on the motion. She preferred to adopt the staff recommendation to select the ORI response. Mr. Sullivan said that without talking to the parties involved, it was difficult to know if they would want to go through another competitive process. He also believed it would be difficult to create an evaluation process for such different projects. Each project had characteristics with merits and each had unknown elements. He did not know if the City could keep both parties interested. Mr. Poling called for predictability in the process. He said that the City established a process, the respondents followed it, and staff returned with a recommendation that he supported. He pointed out that if the council adopted the staff recommendation, staff would enter into negotiations with the Fogelstrom Group if the ORI proposal did not appear to be feasible within a six-month period. Mr. Poling agreed with the remarks of Ms. Bettman and Ms. Taylor regarding the benefit of the MINUTES--Eugene City Council May 12, 2003 Page 7 Work Session