CC Minutes - 02/21/01 Work Session

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terms it used in discussing the "riverfront" and "waterfront." Perhaps the council could state the riverfront was be the natural area between any development and the high water mark. Mr. Meisner agreed with Ms. Taylor that it was relatively easy to get to the river but if one stood at 5th Street Market one might not know there even was a river nearby because EWEB had created walls to conceal surface parking lots. He wanted to see a new connection to the river as the current connection at EWEB was not ideal. He envisioned a pedestrian and sight corridor between 5th Street Market and the river. Speaking to the theme of downtown as a regional center, Mr. Farr likened the situation to the riverfront. The City needed to do more to bring people to the core, and could do so by taking advantage of the arts in the community to get people downtown after 5 p.m. Ms. Nathanson encouraged staff to do some thinking about whether fairgrounds convention activities competed with or was complementary to downtown. She asked if there were activities the council should be less enthusiastic about encouraging at the fairgrounds. She suggested the City could be inadvertently undermining its own goals. Mr. Kelly supported the broad concepts in the section but had concerns about the key next steps. He said those steps needed to be put in a citywide concept. For example, if systems development charges were decreased downtown they should be increased on the periphery. Regarding the recommendation to promote additional office development in downtown, he suggested a complementary step was to discuss how to discourage such development at the periphery. Regarding the next steps for parking, Mr. Kelly agreed with the bullet as stated but noted his belief that structured parking was the private sector's ultimate responsibility. He believed the public sector could make that process easier by allowing the formation of local improvement districts and by providing loans. Ms. Bettman said she had always had a problem with the idea of downtown as a regional center. She thought the City would do best if it made downtown work for Eugene, and worked to foster it as a cultural center, government center, and urban neighborhood. She did not see major commercial uses as compatible with her vision. The places she had seen that worked well started out working well for the neighborhood, then for the city, and then it began to attract others from outside the neighborhood. Ms. Bettman said it was unrealistic to think that the City could stimulate major commercial development downtown. She agreed with Mr. Kelly that the issues needed be looked at in a larger context. Regarding the concept of reducing or waiving SDCs, Ms. Bettman said that those costs did not go away, and the taxpayer ended up paying for the difference. She said that there were perhaps ways to offset that, such as through a geographic component in SDCs, but she questioned whether it would make up the difference. Ms. Bettman referred to the key step, "Develop appropriate zoning to promote downtown development," and suggested that appropriate zoning was needed to promote downtown development both inside and outside of downtown; in other words, there needed to be incentives and disincentives for development. MINUTES--Eugene City Council February 21, 2000 Page 7 Work Session