Council approves UO East Campus package 5-3

Presenter: The Eugene City Council approves the University’s plan for East Campus by a vote of 5-3. On May 11, City Manager Jenny Haruyama: 

Jenny Haruyama (Eugene, city manager): Tonight, the Eugene Council is scheduled to take an action on a package of land use applications submitted by the University of Oregon for the East Campus area: a refinement plan amendment, a code amendment, and a zone change application. This package of applications would amend the Fairmount University East Campus area to align with recent updates to the East Campus area plan and the University’s Next Generation Housing development plan. 

Presenter: From Ward 3, including the Fairmount neighborhood, Councilor Alan Zelenka:

Councilor Alan Zelenka: Yeah, I sent the following comments to the Council in email, and I was advised by the city attorney that since this is a quasi-judicial proceeding, that while not a problem, I should read the email in its entirety into the record. 

The decision before the Council on the East Campus environment plan amendments needs to be based on whether or not the applicant, the U of O, met the burden of proof that their proposed amendments to the East Campus plan are consistent with the approval criteria.

Because of the quasi-judicial nature of the proceedings, we only have three options to the Council: We can approve it, we can modify it, or we can deny it.

While it’s possible that the Council could make modifications to the application, I think it would be extraordinarily difficult for the Council to craft adequate modifications to the proposed amendments to address all the issues. 

However, I find, and I hope you will too, that the professional testimony by the Fairmount Neighbors was very persuasive and compelling. And I agree with them that the findings are not adequate, not supported by the evidence, and that they failed to meet the burden of proof showing that they were consistent with the approval (inaudible). 

Even the Planning Commission struggled with the volume and complexity of this application, which led to one commissioner abstaining from voting. 

In my 20 years on the Council, I’ve never seen an application like this before, where it was so fundamentally flawed that the applicant had to so substantially revise their submission that it required another public hearing. This is extremely rare. And even after the revisions, I don’t believe the application still fails to prove consistency with that (inaudible). 

The preferred outcome to all of this should be to have the parties work together in a work group to develop a mutually acceptable result that both enables the U of O to develop the East Campus plan area and maintain the compatibility with and mitigate for the negative impacts to this historic, significantly historic Fairmount neighborhood’s stability and quality as is required by the approval criteria. 

That is exactly what we did in the East Campus requirement plan amendments in 2004 and the Matt Knight Arena application. Both ended up with a plan everybody could live with.

And I believe this is possible here, given the development in this case is not time-critical. So to achieve this end, we have only really one choice remaining—because of the quasi-judicial process—and that is to deny the application. 

If we do not do that, we are very likely headed for a LUBA appeal, delays, more rancor, and divisiveness. 

So I worked with the city attorney’s office, Lauren Sommers, to craft a motion to deny the applications due to noncompliance with approval criteria, and I move to direct city manager to bring back written decisions supporting the denial. 

We should all be clear that this issue is not about housing as the U of O would have us believe. The number of students has been relatively flat for quite some time, and is expected to be so over the foreseeable future so this is really about the impacts on the Fairmount neighborhood.

While we need more housing it doesn’t have to come in the form of high-rise seven-story dorms in an established historic neighborhood without any additional standards or requirements to address those impacts from it.

The reality is that the U of O can right now build middle- and high-density housing in the area without any amendments to the East Campus plan. But they’ve decided they want to be allowed to build seven-story dorms adjacent to homes without any additional requirements to address the impacts on the historic Fairmount neighborhood. 

This is in direct contradiction to Comprehensive Plan Policy A.25, which requires a balancing of development interests with ‘increasing the stability and quality of older residential neighborhoods,’ through measures such as traffic calming, parking requirements, and other that support plan densities. 

The amendments would allow the height of a new potential dorms and other institutional facilities to go from 45 feet to 85 feet adjacent to neighbor’s backyards, and we saw that in the scale model that’s in our Council offices. 

Instead, as the Fairmont Neighbors suggest, the applicant could maintain the buffer area by incorporating transitional increasing heights as they step back from the neighborhood and as we have already on the old Joe Romania Chevrolet lot in the 19th Avenue area south of the University. 

In addition, the substantial impacts on the neighborhood of the additional 800 beds in a potential new dorm on top of the already-being-constructed 800 beds are not being addressed under this proposal. 

To be clear, this amount of people is like the equivalent of adding the entire populace of the city of Coburg in the Fairmount neighborhood. 

It’s important to realize that the traffic and parking impacts are not only from the additional students, but from the numerous workers, the maintenance and repair vehicles, service and delivery vehicles, waste hauling, Lyfts and Ubers, drop-offs and pick-offs and visitors. And the impact would be profound on the neighborhood. 

So in summary, the proposal raises building heights, allows large dorms, makes no provision for addressing all those resulting impacts on the neighborhood, and makes the proposal inconsistent with the approval criteria. 

The proposal would double the height, scale, and size and occupancy in the Fairmont neighborhood from what is allowable today. And the impact on the traffic and parking associated with the functioning of the new dorms would also be inconsistent with the refinement plan and the approval criteria. 

And then finally, the sheer volume and quality of the opposing testimony and written comment in this proceeding, since October of last year, is one more final indicator that applicants have failed to meet the required burden of proof that their application is consistent with the approval criteria.

So therefore, I move to deny the applications to noncompliance with approval criteria, and I move to direct the city manager to bring back written decisions supporting the denial.

Presenter: Councilor Eliza Kashinsky:

Councilor Eliza Kashinsky: Thank you, Councilor Zelenka. And I appreciate you bringing up at the front of this conversation that this is a quasi-judicial decision. And so the question before us is not whether or not we think the University’s proposal for dorms is a good proposal or a bad proposal, or whether we think that those impacts would be this or that. It is: Does that meet the approval criteria? 

And I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the approval criteria and looking at what the language is and what the proposal is. And in my opinion, they have met that approval criteria.

In particular—and I could sort of go through point by point. each one and the concerns that got brought up—but I will just pull one out because I only have a couple of minutes. 

One of the concerns that was brought up was approval criteria surrounding compliance with the existing refinement plan, which calls for transition between the university uses and the residential uses. It doesn’t specify what that transition has to look like. And looking at this language, what is a meaningful transition is to some degree in the eye of beholder. It’s not a specific set of criteria.

And when I look at the transition that is included in this proposal, and compare it to transitions between higher- and lower-intensity uses in other parts of the city, if you look at what the transition standards are for R1 abutting R4 in the city, what is proposed in this proposal is significantly more transitioning. I guess there’s more of a stepback. There’s more of a change there.

I think it is likely that no matter what decision we make, this is going to go to LUBA either way. I think there’s a fair chance that if we make a wrong decision here, the University will bring us to LUBA.

And so I’m looking at where I think that we have the best opportunity to be able to successfully defend our decision at LUBA. And so I am unfortunately not going to be able to vote for Councilor Zelenka’s motion. Thank you. 

Councilor Alan Zelenka: I appreciate that, Councilor Kashinsky. The refinement plan does indeed call for a transition of heights. And it’s not specific because the specificity of that is actually in the ordinance.

So if you just read the refinement plan, you wouldn’t see that. But if you read the entirety of all the documents associated with it, you’d see that there was a specific plan with specific numbers in it that’s not in the refinement plan but in the ordinance.

So in that sense this does exactly violate that, inconsistent with what is the entirety of the refinement plan which includes the adopting ordinance.

Presenter: Councilor Lyndsie Leech: 

Councilor Lyndsie Leech: I’ve spent some time with this as well and I am in favor of Councilor Zelenka’s motion because I have seen a lot of these votes over the last few years. What I haven’t seen is one that asks us to rezone the property, to change the refinement plan, to change the height limitations, to change an overlay zone, all in one. 

And when we’re looking at these state goals, I think we have to look at this as a comprehensive, ‘What are we changing in this neighborhood that is going to really impact?’ 

And why do we have a refinement plan? Why do we have, you know, a comprehensive plan, if we are just going to be able to take this to a completely different place?

You know, we are doing neighborhood planning in other neighborhoods. What is the point if in one fell swoop that we can just say, ‘You can do this project how you want’ and regardless of how the neighborhood and the impacts to all of these sets of code that we have set for a reason. 

So I am going to be in favor of denying this application. And I’m hopeful that we can go back to the drawing board and we can approve something that looks like something that the neighbors, the neighborhood, the community, the University, that we all can come together because I think it’s completely possible. 

So I appreciate you, Councilor Zelenka, for bringing this up. 

Mayor Kaarin Knudson: We have three in the affirmative, and five against, and so the motion fails. I’ll now turn to the Council vice president to put another motion forward. 

Councilor Eliza Kashinsky: I move to approve the ordinance amending the Fairmount University of Oregon Special Area study, amending the Eugene Code, and rezoning the property that is included as Attachment B in this agenda item summary. (Second)

Mayor Kaarin Knudson: Thank you. Any discussion from Council? Seeing none, I’ll now take a vote for this motion. Councilors, please lock in your votes. Then the motion passes with a vote of 5-3. 

Presenter: Councilor Matt Keating joins Councilors Zelenka and Leech in voting to reject the package and send it back for discussion between the University and the neighborhood. Instead, the East Campus package will now likely head to the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA). You’re listening to KEPW 97.3, WholeCommunity.News.