Eugene, Ore., Residents Debate Whole Foods Development

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

Mar. 13–The civic debate over the proposed Whole Foods Market development in downtown Eugene will reach a fever pitch this evening, when the City Council hears from opponents and supporters of the project.

To backers, the development is just what the city center needs: a large private investment, along with a public parking garage, that can trigger more downtown renovation.

“We view this as much larger than just a decision about Whole Foods and the parking garage,” said Terry Connolly, government affairs director for the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce. “We think it is a great window of opportunity for the city to seize upon a chance that would lead to even greater things downtown in the not-too-distant future.”

To critics, the private-public project is a slap-in-the-face to locally owned natural food stores, runs contrary to the city’s goal of nurturing environmentally friendly businesses, and is part of a trend that threatens to rob Eugene of its individuality.

“I would like to ask our city officials, ‘In what way is subsidizing Whole Foods Market good stewardship of our community?’ ” Gavin McComas, owner of Sundance Natural Foods on Hilyard Street in Eugene, said last week. “We don’t have to submit to the corporatization of our town.”

City councilors will hear those views and others today, prior to their scheduled decision on Wednesday to proceed with the project or not.

Whole Foods Market would provide its own parking above its store. However, city staff, including City Manager Dennis Taylor, are recommending that the city pay for an $8 million public garage next to the store in order to provide more parking on the east side of downtown.

Whole Foods and the store’s prospective Eugene landlord like the idea of a public parking garage next door.

The plan has inspired residents to comment, with many of them sending their views to city councilors and Mayor Kitty Piercy through phone calls and e-mails.

Besides fears about Whole Foods drawing away business from local merchants, some opponents on Monday are expected to question the city’s claim that another automobile-accommodating parking garage is needed downtown. Still others will criticize the city’s plan to hire the store’s proposed developer, Gerding Edlen of Portland, to build the parking garage without putting the contract out for public bid.

Kevin Matthews, president of the Friends of Eugene, said his group doesn’t oppose the Whole Foods store as long as it operates on a “level playing field” with other businesses. Some local grocery store owners say the public garage amounts to an unfair subsidy. Matthews’ group objects to the city’s role in the adjacent city parking garage, including the city proposal that the construction contract be awarded without seeking bids.

“The city has to justify why this is a special case” to avoid the public bidding requirement, Matthew said.

Under the proposed development agreement, the city would pay the developers up to $7 million for a 260-stall parking garage with ground-level retail space.

The city’s total cost, including moving utility lines and debt service, would be more than $8 million.

The council’s upcoming deliberations will focus on whether they can award the parking garage contract to the developer without seeking bids from other firms.

Associate City Planner Nan Laurence said city code gives the council the ability to make an exception to the public bidding rules if it determines that the exception would lead to “substantial cost savings for the city or the public,” promote the public interest, and not encourage “favoritism or substantially diminish competition.”

Laurence and other city planners estimate that the parking garage would be built more quickly and for less cost if Gerding Edlen and its general contractor, Lease Crutcher Lewis, were hired to build it without allowing other firms to bid for the project.

Having both the store and parking garage designed and built at the same time by firms familiar with the site should save the city money over conventionally bid projects, Laurence said. The staff report to the council doesn’t specify the exact savings, however.

What will happen if the city declines to pay for a public parking garage?

The lease between prospective landlord Broadway & Pearl Associates and Whole Foods Market calls for the store to be part of a private-public development including a public parking garage, said Jenny Ulum, a spokewoman for the landlord.

Without the city-funded public parking garage, “we would have to go back” to Whole Foods and try to “reconfigure the project,” she said.

“Any significant changes to the design will require renegotiating the lease, which will delay the project and put it at risk,” Ulum said.

The project had been presented to Whole Foods as including a city-funded parking garage because that’s what both Broadway & Pearl Associates and city staff favored, Ulum said.

Meanwhile, Eugene philanthropist Jim Ralph feels sort of like a forgotten part of the proposed development.

Ralph and his wife, Ginevra, are co-founders of the Oregon Festival of American Music, and they were instrumental in the creation of the affiliated John G. Shedd Institute for the Arts, at East Broadway and High Street, immediately west of the proposed Whole Foods store.

The Ralphs own a parking lot on part of the block to the north of the store site that would be used for the city parking garage.

They want to trade their quarter-block parcel — at the southeast corner of East Eighth Avenue and High Street — for the city’s quarter block on the southwest corner of the intersection.

The Ralphs hope to use that land to one day build a new music school immediately north of the Shedd.

The city meanwhile, would use the Ralph’s former property for the parking garage along with land from Oregonians Credit Union, which would stay on the block, at East Eighth Avenue and Mill Street, in one of the parking garage’s proposed retail spaces.

Jim Ralph supports the Whole Foods project and related land swap because of what it could do for The Shedd. However, the public parking garage also would help the entire area, he said.

City planners 10 years ago identified the block where the Ralphs purchased their lot as the site for a possible parking garage, Ralph said.

Parking in the area is “tight” during the day, he said.

“The people who are arguing that parking isn’t needed there are talking out of the tops of their hats,” Ralph said. “They can’t possibly be talking from experience. At least what they’re saying isn’t consistent with our experience here over the last four years.”

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