Item B: Opportunity Siting Update

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2.Non-binding brainstorm exercise matching development types with potential opportunity sites. Results Numerous hypothetical development sites emerged from the brainstorming exercise matching sites with development types (See map in Supplemental Attachment 2). The brainstorming activity aligning development types with sites in the neighborhood also provided for a choice of sites to be used for a hypothetical market study and financial viability analysis. The Naval th Reserve site near 13 and Chambers (owned by the City of Eugene) was selected as the subject of the hypothetical analysis. Expanded Workshop Model The sequence of the workshops as requested by JWN served well to educate the Task Team and staff about the neighborhood organization’s priorities and the important factors in gaining neighborhood support for opportunity sites and implementation strategies. Brainstorming of hypothetical sites also successfully demonstrated the benefits of an intuitive exercise for neighbors to link design, development types and sites as they imagine a possible future neighborhood with denser housing in suitable locations. Following the workshops, the Task Team, staff volunteers and JWN leadership provided debriefing comments and a critique to guide future workshops. Their comments stressed the importance of a more in-depth process with significant pre-planning and inclusion of components that address infill compatibility: “To plan an OS process that effectively engages neighborhood residents, staff and the OS Task Team should understand that most neighborhood residents don’t separate “infill compatibility standards” and “opportunity siting” in the way that OS (and ICS) Task Team members, staff, and Planning Commissioners may. Accordingly, residents’ concerns over infill compatibility standards must be considered by the OS Task Team in planning for successful approaches to achieving OS goals.” The Task Team Workshop Subcommittee used the experience and the debriefing information to develop the Expanded Workshop Model to be tested as part of Next Steps below (See Supplemental Attachment 2). Relationship with Mixed-Use Centers The Council’s original motion identified Opportunity Siting as “a primary strategy for achieving density targets in mixed-use centers.” Based on Planning Commission OS Subcommittee input and web survey results, the Task Team stepped back to create a public process to allow the community to identify a broader range of suggested locations for opportunity sites. Neighbors in the test case study wanted to look at a variety of locations for different types of sites including on the interior and the edge of neighborhoods. A next step will be evaluation of sites to determine how locations identified by the community align with mixed use centers. The sites can also be evaluated against other preliminary siting criteria to test both the suitability of sites and the appropriateness of the criteria.