CC Minutes - 10/28/02 Work Session

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neighborhood. Mr. Fart expressed the hope that as the council moved forward it keep in mind that what it wanted and what actually worked were not always the same thing. Ms. Nathanson recollected testimony offered at the public hearing regarding the issue of two functional floors and the entrances facing the street. She asked if staff was recommending any of the approaches that were mentioned in the Mr. Yeiter's memorandum responding to council questions. Mr. Yeiter said yes. Staff thought there were alternatives to the commission's recommendations, particularly with regard to the Wiley property. He said that staff attempted to forward both the commission's recommendations and options should the council want to pursue those. Ms. Nathanson said she was interested in the options mentioned by Mr. Yeiter. Ms. Nathanson noted the statement offered in testimony suggesting that office tenants do not want to locate above first-floor retail. She said that might be true for most, but she was skeptical of it as a generalization. She recalled the Meridian Building at 18th Avenue and Willamette Street, which had nonretail uses on the second floor. Ms. Nathanson said that the purpose of the commission recommendation was not only to create an effective retail center, but to increase the density and reduce the need for office development toward the periphery. In response, Mr. Yeiter said that the most absolute trend was that the City would not likely see retail uses above the first floor in this location for a very long time. If the two-story requirement was imposed, it would most likely result in office or residential development, on the second floor, although the latter was problematic in several ways. If the City was to reduce the commercial acreage as a way to encourage second floors in the remaining commercial problem, it would probably mean that office uses were built rather than retail or eating establishments. Ms. Taylor agreed with Ms. Bettman that the council had already compromised a great deal. She thought the node being proposed was large enough to be a regional shopping center. She wanted to preclude all drive-in uses, require two functional floors in the commercial area, and require individual entrances to businesses on the street. She said that the purpose of nodes was to reduce vehicle miles traveled, and the size of the center being proposed would attract people from elsewhere in the community. Mayor Torrey said the question was, does the City want to develop its first node? If the City was prepared to impose requirements that the current developer was not willing to accept, it could do so, but he questioned how long would it take for another developer to come forward. He suggested that the plan might not be everything the City wanted, but it was a start. Mayor Torrey asked staff if there were unintended consequences the City would face if the node was not developed; by that, he clarified, he meant not giving the developer some of the things they wanted. Mr. Yeiter said staff heard from area residents that they desired services in the area, and were now driving elsewhere to get them. He said that one of the reasons the larger commercial center was proposed was because the grocery store located in the nearby commercial center east on Centennial Boulevard had closed, and staff was concerned that waiting too long meant the grocery store there could be reestablished. The residents in the node would drive there instead, and the node would lose its market. Mayor Torrey called for another round of comments. Ms. Bettman said there would be other developers. Given population projections, the land would be developed and redeveloped in the future. She believed that the City could define what it needed to see to realize its objectives in the node. Ms. Bettman did not think the City had to "bend the rules until they broke" for the sake of one developer. She reminded the council that it MINUTES--Eugene City Council October 28, 2002 Page 6 Work Session