Every building project should help solve a city's problems. Its design should help create a better city in as many ways as possible. The Eugene Community Trust proposal for the West End of Eugene's downtown tackles the following issues:

Transportation

Typically, development and zoning practices separate housing from work, shopping, schooling and other services. These patterns guarantee that trips between these activities are common. And the automobile's range encourages development at greater distances. The consequence is ever-increasing resources dedicated to parking and roads.
 

But if a number of people could work, live and shop within a walkable neighborhood, they would only need a car occasionally. We believe the West End could be just this sort of neighborhood. It could be made more personal, and less automobile-dependent, than any other urban development in the United States.

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We propose to require that tenants of the West End own no private automobile. All tenants of the 140 units will be expected to commute by foot, bike or public transport.

Tenants may, however belong to a car-sharing organization. In Europe, over one hundred thousand city-dwellers belong to these professionally run, not-for-profit, hourly car rental co-ops. This motor pool only needs one vehicle for every 10 to 20 people. Driving has been dramatically reduced by these groups. We are already in contact with the oldest of these groups in Berlin and Zurich. We will develop and manage this organization for the tenants and the surrounding neighborhood.
 

Parking normally needed for West End's 140 housing units

Residential parking needed under our proposal.

The West End will also contain office space and workshop/ showrooms. We will require that no worker commutes by automobile.

To make this easier, we will begin a flexible-route minibus commuting service for downtown employees. We believe that this service can be self-supporting, and dramatically reduce demand on parking downtown. During non-commute times, the minbuses can be available for large deliveries made by West End and Downtown businesses.

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We plan to develop necessary services, such as childcare, so those who live and work downtown will not need a car.

Bicyclists will find a permanent bike valet parking operation in the West End. In this way cyclists can come downtown and check-in their bikes and gear without worry, and go to work or shop. Bike commuters can use showers and lockers here.

To help create an easier life for the auto-free Eugenean, such as the residents of the West End, we will organize the Transport Card, another successful idea from Europe. With one convenient card you can: get the keys to the shared car, ride the bus, pay for taxis, pay for deliveries, pay for your friends to ride the bus, rent bikes, rent boats, buy train tickets, etc. You then get a monthy "Transport Bill".

Berlin car sharing members hold up their Transport Cards.

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Around the West End we plan to use inexpensive, state-of-the-art bike, pedestrian and auto separation strategies. A fundamental element in these is the bollard.
 

A bollard, along with a change in pavement texture, height and color, lets you know that you are moving into a different transport zone. For example, when walking past the ingress/egress to the West End parking structure you cross two lines of bollards. Lines of bollards also are found between the sidewalk and bike lane, and between the bike lane and the auto lane.

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We plan to begin organizing many of our transportation projects as soon as possible. We believe parking demand downtown can be significantly reduced by the time the buildings are complete.

Eugene's car-sharing organization, the first in the U.S., is incorporated and has tested its procedures. The Eugene Car Co-op could have several hundred members by the West End's opening. We would start the flexible-route minibus commuter service for downtown employees as soon as construction begins. But we must also reduce construction impact. By building fully one-half of the underground parking at a time, we can make sure that at least half the current spots on the site are always available.

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Community

Density does not automatically create community. But several things will make for a genuine neighborhood at the West End.

When people don't rely on automobiles, they must walk or bike. People see each other more often.
 

When people both live and work in the same neighborhood, they care about the neighborhood that much more. When buildings are designed so people have a connection to the street, this reinforces neighborhood relationships.

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We plan for much of the work in the building to be local manufacturers making products for the local market. When this happens, people get to know who makes their goods.
 

We think these workshops in the West End, which will both make and sell goods there, will be a kind of giant school. We expect that adults will take lessons, children will become intrigued, and teenagers will want to apprentice.

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Physical Character

One of the most striking aspects of the existing site are the trees, a few of which date from the 19th century. We intend to shape the site plan around these trees.

The building profiles will also be shaped back by the trees. This is most easily accomplished using the same craftsman-style, wood-frame construction found in the adjacent historic neighborhood.

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The shaping effect of the trees, and the use of pitched roof buildings, makes for a character which is urban, yet fits Eugene's residential neighborhoods. It contrasts strongly with typical urban development.

The indentations caused by the trees create plazas. These will be successful because they're surrounded by active building fronts. They also make for shorter traversals across the internal parking.

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The ground floor and the level above it have narrow internal cores of parking. These hold a total of 212 automobiles. There is one large underground parking level, which holds 462 cars.

With the deep inside of the building dominated by parking, it is important to create as auto-free an environment as possible for the West End's public. After all, many of them have given up their cars or worked hard to travel to the West End without one. Towards this end, we think it is prudent to turn Broadway between Charnelton and Lincoln into a pedestrian promenade. This continues the currrent trend downtown: north-south streets for automobiles, Broadway for pedestrians.

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The pedestrian promenade's most straight-forward gift to the West End is significant extra square footage, since the building will move into normal street space. This allows for decent workshop depth and pedestrian arcades while keeping the internal core parking intact.

This walking street will be much narrower than the rest of Broadway, although it opens up into plazas along the promenade. One of the problems with the existing mall on Broadway is it's too wide for the density of people downtown, and always looks deserted. The primary reason it looks deserted, however, is because there is no web of life across Broadway. This is something we believe the West End will fix, because of the strength of the neighborhood connections.

Web of life along Broadway

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The tree-preserving plazas help to make short traversals through the structure, leading the outside activity through the building. This will improve safety around the parking lot.

To make the parking even safer, we would like genuine street life inside the structure. Towards that end, the workshops and offices, whose primary entrance is outside, will have a street front inside. This will make for easier loading and unloading for customers and delivery vehicles. We've planned for a rich masonry interior with vaults, well-lit for growing plants and maintaining a pleasant feeling.

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The interior of the West End apartments will be in the style of the early 20th century craftsman bungalows so popular in Eugene: wood floors, plaster walls, thick trim, small-paned windows, alcoves, bay windows, balconies, deep porches, dormers, window seats, etc.

The exterior is also inspired by the neighboring craftsman houses.

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There is a hierarchy of privacy in the design that gives West End residents the freedom to decide how public they want to be at any given moment. From the very public and friendly outskirts of the buildings, residents pass through a "tenants & guest only" roof garden to their front doors.

Within the gardens, residents have private front porches and verandas, as well as shared community space. Within the apartments deep balconies, bay windows, alcoves and dormers give people many choices regarding just how "outside" they want to be at any one time.

Roof Gardens

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Local Economic Development

At the ground level, around the perimeter of both buildings at the West End, is a covered pedestrian walk: a traditional arcade. The roof lets passing pedestrians easily drop by and watch the many small-scale workshops in action.

These workshops directly interact with the public. Besides selling their stock pieces, we expect the workshops to provide reasonably priced custom services.

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The West End offers small-scale manufacturers structural opportunities to cooperate. Clustered workshops can save money by sharing office equipment, retail space, and large pieces of machinery.

We will design the building with these specific uses in mind, so that the workspaces fit their tenants like a home. We will attempt to cluster workshops with related interests: food, glassworks, metalshops, woodwork, publishing, etc. Generally these will cluster around a plaza. In one, Eugene's new International Youth Hostel will anchor several multicultural organizations.

The West End also will provide services many tenants' businesses can use, such as childcare, delivery, marketing and referral services. We will also actively ensure that organizations are aware of each others' hours and activities, so that they take advantage of cooperative opportunities.

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In our proposal, there is housing and workspace surrounding both buildings. Because it would mean giving up opportunites to improve the city, we do not abandon any outside edge of the buildings.

Working with and strengthening businesses near these edges is one of our major goals. Two of our plazas are purposely placed to complement activity adjacent to the site.

One is at Hutch's bicycles. We have designed a plaza near its alley service entrance, so that customers can park on the ground floor of the structure and walk through a pleasant plaza to the service door.

The other plaza forms a food court where the back of Govinda's restaurant meets the backyard of Pipin' Hot Bakery. This is an excellent spot for the two businesses to run an outdoor serving area, perhaps with other food businesses in this plaza.

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Low-Income Housing

It is possible to build extremely high-quality housing that rents for a reasonable price. It's partly a matter of extra-careful and caring design. It's partly an avoidance of speculative development. And it partly requires a long-term view.

The West End will have 140 units, 80 of which will be beautiful studios: at the quality of $100/sq. ft. construction. These will rent for $300/month, a few dollars below the median.

But when the West End mortgage has been paid, in 20 to 30 years, these rents can be maintained or lowered -- in either case kept far below market rents in the future.

This would not be possible if these were low-quality buildings, intended for immediate provision of very low-income housing. This is because the units might fall apart by the time they are paid off. This becomes quite likely since tenants see little point in taking care of buildings that nobody cared to build well.

Tenants are careful if they have control over, and responsibility for, their housing and workshops. The Trust will foster tenant control at the West End: we believe this is essential to a healthy community.

These are not arguments against housing people now. But in the long run, don't we want to provide solid, humane housing for all?

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The West End will be a seed for further development of its kind in Eugene. Certainly it will have value as a demonstration project, but we intend to take a more active role in promoting responsible, publicly-minded development.

The Eugene Community Trust will actively develop, or arrange the development of, more auto-free work/housing clusters. Based in the West End, the Trust will also strongly pursue further housing in Downtown Eugene. Many sites have already been deeply examined by Architecture students and faculty at the U of O.

A complementary organization that will occupy the West End is the Center for Community Architecture. This is modeled after the successful Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture in London. At this Institute, graduate students study under experienced, concerned architects and developers, learning entirely through actual work on real projects profoundly in the community interest.

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Conservation

A building with so many diverse activities, stacked next to and on top of each other, offers countless opportunities for energy savings. Waste heat from manufacturing can heat the apartments; graywater from apartments can do hydraulic work in the shops; etc.

Unfortunately, all possible opportunities can't be foreseen. But retrofits can be facilitated. Our unusually thick walls and floors, meant as storage space and sound insulation, if built correctly, can simplify the running of additional pipes, conduits, and active and passive devices. This is unusual for a housing project, but we believe our tenants will, and should, experiment with such systems.

Basic systems in place upon opening, however, include graywater, power generation, insulation, passive solar heating and ventilation, air filtration in the underground garage, and a complete set of efficient appliances. And we plan extensive use of the rainwater that will fall upon the over 100,000 sq. ft. of surface at the West End.

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The Refillables Project will ensure that all packaging coming from West End businesses is re-usable. The project will help businesses, both at the West End and elsewhere in Eugene, to design, manufacture, collect and wash these deposit containers for re-use.

West End businesses that serve food will use re-washable plates and utensils. The Refillables Project will also run Dish-mobiles. These are very successful in Europe, where they provide, collect and wash solid dishware for small food vendors at festivals and markets.

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Conclusion

This project has many facets, more than we can present here. This is because a genuine human neighborhood is a complex thing. Its components reinforce each other, making the community robust, exciting and diverse.

This is why we cannot separate the parking from the housing in any way. They are different aspects of a single project. Every decision made for one aspect has to then be considered in light of the other. To get a good result, both must be part of the same design process, with no obstacles. A community is a difficult enough thing to bring into the world.

The project's parts don't interact only with each other. They effect everything around it. This proposal for the West End will revitalize street life downtown. This in turn will help downtown businesses. Such a high-profile project would boost the entire local economy, and raise Eugene's standing internationally.

It would be another thing about Eugene that would make everyone proud.

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Ground Floor Arcade

Roof Garden

North-South Cross-Section 

Ground Level (Workspace & Parking)

Underground Parking 

Second Level (Workspace & Parking) 

Third & Fourth Levels (Residential & Roof Garden) 

1995 -- The West End (Back to top)

• Greg Bryant,Project Director
• David Edrington, Architectural Advisor
• Demetrius Gonzalez, Schematics & Diagrams
• Danielle Janes, Web Site Designer
• Paul Ollswang, Cartoonist & Illustrator

Eugene Community Trust, P.O. Box 30097, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA

Analysis

Despite the offering of funds and land, The Eugene Community Trust proposal was one of only two parties to respond to Eugene's RFP. The Trust was not given a chance to present.

The Eugene city council meeting on the topic is here.

Pressure from downtown commercial leasee Symantec, for whom the extra parking was being built, prevented us from presenting our case. Ironically, Symantec eventually abandoned the downtown area.

The downtown once held some promise as a high-tech corridor. Unfortunately, the original high-tech company downtown, gamemaker Dynamix, abandoned downtown for a competing high-tech research park near the Univrsity of Oregon. [Ostensibly because of discomfort with the presence of teenagers downtown]. Dynamix was that controversial development's only leasee, until it was bought by a conglomerate, and shut its doors in the post-Internet-boom recession.

The trust was also not heard for reasons of legitimacy: the other proposing party was an experienced developer, Lorig & Associates, well known to the city staff & its unpaid council. The building's apartments have rented well, but much of the retail space is vacant.

The most significant result of the Trust alternative's failure was social. Lorig cut down all the trees on the site, causing Eugene's most serious confrontation between protesters and law enforcement since the 1960's, including a brutality protest from Amnesty International. Anarchists from around the world gather in Eugene annually, to riot in rememberence of the tree-felling. This event led, intertwined with WTO protests in Seattle, to Eugene being labeled "the anarchist capital of the United states".

Blame for the failure of the Trust proposal rests primarily on a failure to raise awareness of the project outside the decision-makers purview, gathering a necessary constituency.