Item A: River Road/Santa Clara Transition Project

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future; upon adoption; outcomes such as a new community vision or neighborhood refinement plan for River Road and/or Santa Clara could potentially be part of amendments to the outdated 1987 Urban Facilities Plan. Challenges: Would not have the policy status given to a City ADOPTED plan or policy, may not be as comprehensive or enforceable as a neighborhood or city-wide comprehensive plan; may be perceived as a City effort and not one impacted special district service providers necessarily have a stake or commitment in ? Option No2: Develop Neighborhood Comprehensive Plan(s) – . These could be independent, or a component, of the City’s Comprehensive Plan, which is currently undergoing Periodic Review. Advantages: Deals with a broad range of heritage and planning issues in a comprehensive manner; allows for the practical and strategic selection of the most effective and feasible heritage options; establishes a vehicle for the entire community to participate in planning their future; upon adoption, provides for a benchmark of community agreement and consensus Challenges: Cost of and commitment to such a process may prove prohibitive; timing, financial feasibility, and prior policy decisions may favor simply proceeding with incorporation first (or selecting a couple of heritage programs in isolation); other planning issues may legitimately have priority within the City; such a planning processes may reveal more divisions within the neighborhoods than are presently perceived; issues of equity may arise with other neighborhoods wanting their “own” plan; integrating AND administering a series of neighborhood plans with a required overall City plan will be a challenge. ? Option No. 3: Neighborhood Centers – Both neighborhoods have been considered forvarious planning options to create neighborhood centers or “nodes” based around commercial services. The presence of historic (or even contemporary) town centers is a vital element in any heritage and community building strategy. As noted under the “Recreation” section of this White Paper, the River Road Parks and Recreation facility at Emerald Park seems to perform many neighborhood center functions, albeit not commercial ones. The City of Eugene has also established a small Lower River Road Nodal Development Area (also referred to as the Rasor Park Mixed Use Area, named after a local parks space within the river greenway) to encourage community oriented redevelopment. Experience elsewhere suggests that revitalized neighborhood center nodes have common characteristics such as relatively narrow primary commercial streets, some mix of nearby public or quasi-public services and facilities (parks, libraries, theatres, restaurants), and a viable stock of architecturally interesting commercial structures built close to the street (and more or less contiguous with each other -- often for several blocks). Neither River Road nor Beltline Road generally fit this profile. Beltline is dominated by contemporary “inward-looking” commercial development interspersed with transitional older commercial development. River Road is characterized by scattered older commercial structures set back from the street. In both cases, the roadways are wide and very busy, thus functionally dividing potential node(s) in half. Given this lack of “natural” attributes of successful neighborhood nodes, it will be a challenging and probably a capital intensive effort to create such nodes in along River Road and Beltline Road (note: the City currently has no plans for node creation along Beltline Road. Plans for River Road are highlighted below). Creation of functioning neighborhood centers might be accomplished by establishing a series of smaller neighborhood nodes folded into existing commercial or mixed use developments, but serving areas defined by, rather than subdivided by, major roadways (e.g.: you simply don’t try to get people across a busy roadway in the course of strolling around “their” neighborhood center). More capital intensive neighborhood node creation (at least with respect to traditional City and property owner obligations) could be facilitated by diverting thru-traffic to other arterials and fully 26 River Road/Santa Clara Transition/Heritage White Paper DRAFT 11-24-05 Service provider Review