Item B: Parks, Recreation and Open Space Comprehensive Plan

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."' .. JOHN ETTER 85444 TEAGUE lOOP EUGENE, OREGON 97405 RECEIVED BY CITY MAN,4,GER' OCT 1. 4 2005 October 14, 2005 Eugene Planning Commission 777 Pearl Street Eugene, Oregon 97401 Dear Planning Commissioners: Thank you for expressing an interest at the PROS Plan hearing on 10/11/05 for some ideas that have evolved from a small citizen group about the architecture of the downtown area along East 8th Avenue. As you requested, I have enclosed the letter I sent to Mayor Kitty Piercy on April 27, 2005, as well as a cover letter to the City Council as the letter was shared with them. As I expressed at the hearing, the concern is that the proposals for parks that appear in the PROS Plan, as well as the DOVv'lltown Plan, will not be realized in optimum locations without a major planning effort. Private enterprise almost always gets to optimum parcels first, taking away opportunities for prime park locations. Park spaces called for in these plans, appropriately located, could yield an architectural strength and appeal to this redeveloping area that in time would give Eugene a new identity, possibly greater than the two buttes along the axis of our city. Planning staff felt that the best hope for achieving this potential was through the imminent rezoning process for this area. Planning staff also felt that to provide park space in the early phase of this redeveloping area would amount to an invitation for a transient population to use it in a way that would create undesirable results, discouraging development that at this moment seems to be coming on a random first come, first served basis. The solution to these two problems, therefore, could be aided with an interim zoning plan. Sequentially, a master plan for the area would be created, wherein a specific vision for the future is created, with designated park and plaza locations that would ultimately be a magnet.for the area. A decision would be made as to what point in time the plan can realistically be achieved. Fifty years might be a target in time. A zoning plan would be created to support that development in 50 years. And finally, an interim zoning plan would be developed to allow land uses and development on the ultimate park parcels where the useful life of the improvement is acknowledged to be somewhere between, say, 15 and 40 years. More penn anent development would not preempt for all time the achievement of the ultimate design objectives. At the point where the critical mass is achieved to support parks and urban plazas-it should take less than 50 years to get there-public funding would need to be secured to implement or finish the plan.