Item A: River Road/Santa Clara Transition Project

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Land UsePlanning Current Situation Both River Road and Santa Clara have been transitioning from rural unincorporated neighborhoods to urbanized communities for many years. The City has had planning authority over the entirety of both neighborhoods via intergovernmental agreement with Lane County for close to 20 years, although some public statements by some County Commissioners in early 2005 indicated that the County might be reconsidering this agreement (to date there has been no further public action in such a direction). The neighborhoods are undergoing gradual and incremental annexation and urbanization ranging from relatively major subdivisions to large lot partitions to in-fill or redevelopment. Rural subdivision patterns are being supplanted by contemporary developments, older commercial businesses must compete with new shopping centers on Beltline Road, and open fields and woodlots are disappearing. Some older county jurisdiction roads are being re-constructed to full City collector and arterial standards. Population and traffic is increasing. New residents are arriving with different demands and perspectives from those neighbors that may have lived in River Road and Santa Clara for decades. Services that have been provided for years by local institutions (such as local parks and water districts) are under new pressures to address a new “generation” of citizen needs, and service districts are experiencing declining revenues as due to annexation and shifts to City service providers. The situation described above is not unusual or unique to Santa Clara or River Road. Such circumstances have been repeated across Oregon and the nation for decades as rural communities grow and become urban neighborhoods and cities. Given economic realities, population growth, land use laws (both neighborhoods are within Eugene/Springfield Urban Growth Boundary and thus long slated for urbanization), changing demographics, property rights issues and more, both River Road and Santa Clara will continue to incorporate and urbanize. A key neighborhood issue therefore is the extent to which these two neighborhoods (and the City) can cooperatively identify the most important elements of their “rural” heritage and act to preserve such attributes even as incorporation and development advances apace. Other sections of this White Paper describe a range of options with respect to services such as public safety, parks and recreation, and streets. This “Planning” section focuses on the broader land use planning context within which such services are delivered. The City (in some cases in partnership with Lane County) has several planning initiatives underway that will impact and potentially benefit River Road and Santa Clara. Many of these initiatives are described herein and in other sections of this White Paper, including a master surface water management plan, a review of “context sensitive” street standards, and parks systems upgrades. Eugene is also undertaking a “periodic review” (a process mandated by Oregon land use planning statutes) of its Comprehensive Plan that will include protections for specific stream corridors. Such protections are consistent with neighborhood Heritage strategies outlined in the streets, parks and open space and surface water sections of this White Paper. River Road River Road, particularly south of Horn Street, is characterized by long east-west blocks. Between Horn and Howard Street there are many long north-south blocks and some long local streets that simply dead end. These street patterns would “date” the area as older than other parts of the neighborhood. River Road north of Howard to Beltline Road has a subdivision and local street pattern that looks more typically urban than south of Howard (e.g. blocks are shorter, there is more regular pattern of connectivity between streets, etc.), although the pattern is still very grid-like. The Bramblewood Park development is an exception to this characterization, exhibiting a mix of cul-de-sac and curvilinear streets that indicate a more recent subdivision. There appears to be only a couple of tracts left in the River Road neighborhood that could accommodate substantial new residential development, therefore the potential for most new housing will be limited to single lot or small tract projects, or re-development. Newer commercial development is concentrated 24 River Road/Santa Clara Transition/Heritage White Paper DRAFT 11-24-05 Service provider Review