Item 5: Public Hearing on Ordinance Establishing Chambers Special Area Zone

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Page 1 of2 LOWE Allen D From: Joshua [joshua_daniels@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, November 07,200512:34 PM To: *Eugene Mayor and City Council; LOWE Allen D Subject: in regards to Chambers Special Area Zone (please ensure copies reach City Council members - thanks!) Nov. 3,2005 Dear Mayor and City Councilors, I am writing in support of amendments to the Land Use Code and Zoning Map Amendments under consideration by the City Council under the "Chambers Revisited project." These amendments will be the subject of an upcoming public hearing on November 14. While I am unable to attend this hearing, I would like to express my support for the amendments and briefly provide a viewpoint on this crucially important issue of balancing livability with development. I am a former resident of the Westside neighborhood (and former member of the Jefferson-Westside Executive Board), and I have observed first hand the denigration brought about by poorly conceived infill within this showcase Eugene neighborhood. There is little doubt that the lack of appropriate design standards has allowed, if not enabled or even encouraged, ongoing, incremental destruction to this fine neighborhood. The result of this has been a significant loss to the neighborhood as a whole. The evidence of this destruction is abundant and unambiguous (and very well documented by the Chambers Area Families for Healthy Neighborhoods -- the citizen group that has brought this issue to the attention of the City), and I encourage the the City Council and Mayor to walk this neighborhood to see it first hand. This "blight," as some are calling it is largely the result of economic interests taking precedence over the diverse and, for the most part, protective interests of the neighborhood's most valuable stakeholders: its long term home- owner residents and renters who prize livability and quality-of-life characteristics over narrow economic utility. I would like to emphasize that poorly implemented infill projects impose long term indirect costs to these stakeholders, many of whom simply want to live in the neighborhood and participate in the quality of life and sense of community it affords. It is important to recognize that those most like to reap immediate and direct economic benefit from development are those who view the neighborhood more from an economic utility-- return on investment -- perspective than simply as a place to live. Clearly, there are cases in which the two overlap, and ideally investors and residents would value both perspectives, and want to protect the greatest number of interests -- to the extent that they achieve ends: sustaining the livability of the neighborhood. This neighborhood is attractive to developers for the same reason it attracts resident, and the quality of the neighborhood rests on both the care and interest of residents and the building of homes and infrastructure. Moreover, the specific qualities of the Chambers / Westside area have accrued over time, in large part through the efforts of the many residents who have taken a long term interest in their own property, and who, in many cases, have improved it for reasons other than short term economic gain. It is ironic, therefore, as well as sad, that the kind of development the City has permitted in fact undermined those very same qualities that have made the neighborhood attractive--and drew development and investment in the first place. It is the long-term view of home-owner residents, reflected in the investment in property maintenance, improvement, and participation in community and civic life that defines the quality of this neighborhood -- not the supposed benefits brought by development. Why? Because home-owner residents have, to a much greater degree, an understanding of livability over the long term, and less interest in short term economic utility. Of course, as home-owners we care about our property values, but that is not the primary reason for choosing to reside in a given neighborhood. Given this, Why should the residents of this neighborhood have its character degraded or destroyed by those 11/712005