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Planners Weigh Whole Foods Benefits, Economic Impact on Small Businesses

Posted on: Wednesday, 15 March 2006, 18:00 CST

By Edward Russo, The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore.

Mar. 15--Jim Hunt plugged a Pearl Street parking meter with coins on Tuesday, two blocks from where Eugene officials hope to see a public parking garage rise with a Whole Foods Market.

Hunt said he would welcome another parking garage in downtown Eugene because looking for a parking spot in the heart of the city can be sort of, well, a hunt.

"Sometimes, there is no parking at all," he said. "So you have to go out of your way to find a place, and you have to walk a distance."

Motorists such as Hunt may want to see more parking downtown, but today's decision by the Eugene City Council on whether to build the parking garage on East Eighth Avenue promises to be a difficult one for some councilors.

The private-public proposal gives councilors weighty topics to consider, including competition for local merchants, downtown parking and an exception to public bidding rules.

"There are a lot of complexities to the issues," Councilor David Kelly said Tuesday. "Everything from should the city provide any parking downtown, to, is this a good location for additional parking downtown? Is the no-bid contract appropriate? I could go on and on."

The Whole Foods Market would be on the block bounded by East Broadway, High Street, East Eighth Avenue and Mill Street. The block, one of the entries to downtown, now houses an International House of Pancakes, other buildings and parking lots.

Whole Foods, based in Austin, Texas, would provide 240 parking spaces for shoppers above its store. But city staff members want an $8 million, 260-spot public garage next to the store in order to serve the area. They also hope the garage would trigger more interest by other developers in downtown.

Development opponents fear that Whole Foods, the nation's largest natural foods retailer, will hurt local food merchants. They question the city's role in providing the public parking garage, calling it an unfair subsidy to an out-of-state corpora- tion.

Councilors are facing intense pressure to reject the city's involvement in the project. More than 200 people descended on City Hall on Monday night to be at the public hearing on the proposal. Of the 76 people who spoke on the topic, 49 people objected to Whole Foods and the city's role in the development.

The lobbying continued on Tuesday, in the form of calls and e-mails, said Kelly, who represents the downtown area where Whole Foods wants to go.

Eben Fodor, a community planning consultant working for Eugene's natural food stores and other local merchants opposed to Whole Foods, estimated that the big outlet would generate $46 million in annual sales. That's $46 million taken away from such merchants as Market of Choice, Sundance Natural Foods, Newman's Fish Co. and other local stores, he said.

"It does represent a very serious threat to the viability of our cherished food stores," Fodor said.

The lease between the prospective landlord, Broadway & Pearl Associates of Eugene, and Whole Foods Market calls for the store, with its parking, to be built as part of a development that includes a public garage.

Broadway & Pearl Associates is an investment group led by Eugene businessman Dan Giustina.

Broadway & Pearl Associates and Gerding Edlen are to pay $14 million for the 52,867-square-foot Whole Foods store and 240 spaces built on ramps above the store.

Under long-standing city policy aimed at encouraging development downtown, retailers who open up shop downtown are not required to provide any parking. If Whole Foods were to build the same sized store elsewhere in Eugene, its would have to provide from 118 to 197 parking spaces, said Nan Laurence, an associate city planner.

City planners are recommending that the council hire Gerding Edlen to construct the 260-stall public garage with 5,000-square-feet of retail space without putting the proposal out for bid. The public's estimated cost: $8 million.

Fodor said some of the public parking garage will be used by Whole Foods shoppers. That equals a subsidy to the retailer, he said.

Jenny Ulum, a spokeswoman for the developers, said that some Whole Foods shoppers probably will use the public garage, along with the parking spaces provided by Whole Foods. However, the main purpose of the public parking structure is to serve the east end of downtown, including the developing federal courthouse area, Ulum said.

"We would hope that the people who use the city's parking garage will shop throughout downtown, and that this (garage) will be the jumping off point for them," she said.

Fodor questioned the statements of city planners that the garage is needed to meet parking demand in east downtown.

The city's parking garage surveys show that the six downtown parking structures are only slightly more than half full from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays, he said.

Fodor added that federal General Services Administration officials are not demanding parking to serve the under-construction federal courthouse, at East Eighth Avenue and Mill Street.

"There is no demonstrable need for more parking in this area," Fodor said.

Yet U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan on Tuesday said he hopes the city builds the garage next to Whole Foods so some of it can be used by federal employees and courthouse visitors.

The new courthouse will have only 80 spaces under the building. For security reasons, none of those spaces will be used by the public, Hogan said.

The GSA generally does not build public parking garages, he said.

"We are relying on others to make parking available," Hogan said.

A previously approved downtown plan called for public parking garages to help revitalize downtown, city planners said.

In 2002, a parking study identified the proposed Whole Foods block as a possible site for a garage, said Mike Sullivan, the city's community development manager.

If the Whole Foods store is built, it will eliminate several parking spaces in existing surface parking lots, creating more demand for parking in the east end of downtown, said Laurence, the city planner.

"For growth management, sustainability and downtown density reasons, we want to see the redevelopment of surface parking lots," she said. "It's supported by every downtown document. And as those parking lots are developed, demand for parking increases and supply decreases."

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Source: The Register Guard

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