As he retires, city planning and development director reflects on Hynix, housing and hops

This interview was conducted in person before Denny Braud’s last day working for the city of Eugene on Friday, Feb. 20. His answers have been lightly edited for clarity. 

Lookout Eugene-Springfield: You started your career with Eugene in 1989 as a member of the Community Development Division’s Business Assistance Team. What was that like?

Denny Braud: [The BAT Team was] kind of a full suite of economic development services. We published the book on how to start a business in Eugene and Lane County [outlining] “Here’s all the permits. Here’s how you do this.” We had BAT-visors. They were a group of community members in different business expertise. They would volunteer an hour of free time just to sit down with any business who needed help. 

It had this brand that everyone could connect to and understand, like, “Oh, the city really cares about economic development. Look at all these things they’re doing to help us.” The loan program was part of the suite of things we offered at the BAT Team, so that was my first job. You get to go into someone’s business where they’re manufacturing bicycles or whatever it is, and you see how it’s all made. That resonated with me. I love walking into a business, and they had almost no expectations that someone from the government could actually help, and I wanted to make them wrong. I work for all those people, that’s how I see my purpose.

My purpose is to do something out there for people out in the community, whether it’s building affordable housing or economic development, whatever. That’s why I’ve been here this long. You know, the three microbreweries that are probably the first name brands — Ninkasi, Oakshire and Hop Valley — I worked on all three of them, and every time I drink a beer, I can connect with it. They’ve all become really, really successful. It’s cool to be in an Arizona Diamondbacks stadium and you’re drinking a Hop Valley beer. 

Walk me through the various positions you’ve held over the years in the department. Which one was your favorite?

The position I am now feels good because of the leadership. It’s different than when it was boots on the ground actually trying to make stuff happen.

I think of it as pockets. I’ve spent a lot of my professional energy and effort trying to make downtown a better place. The Whiteaker neighborhood is the other one. The Red Apple Market was the first big project I worked on, because Safeway had closed and all of a sudden, the neighborhood had no groceries. We worked really hard to buy that property, and then we found the Bruns family to redevelop the market. I worked with Sweet Life and the breweries. And now the Whit is thriving. 

West Eugene is the other, the industrial area. Pretty early in my career, I started working in the Enterprise Zone Program, which is tax abatement out in west Eugene for industrial development, and that brought me to bigger projects. The first big one was when Hynix was first coming to town. [I was] in front of City Council and trying to convince them that a $60 million tax exemption for Hynix to build a factory here was a good thing. There’s [now] a whole bunch of businesses out there, Bike Friday and Custom Craftworks, [which] became like the leading massage table company in the world as far as quality. 

There was a period in my career where I was doing really high-level work, but I didn’t supervise anyone. The stakes kept getting higher and higher, and they were on the front page in the newspaper. I took on big downtown redevelopment projects because I had the financing acumen, understanding how lending and tax credits and all those things work. I don’t consider myself to be an expert on economic development. I was kind of always the go-to person. 

Can you speak to some of the biggest transformations in the city from the time that you started, to now? 

The university is one of them. The [university’s] facilities put us on the map. [With] Riverfront, you look at all these buildings that come out of the landscape that weren’t here 15 years ago. The towers, the student housing, the Fifth Street Market expansion, City Hall, the courthouse. The cool thing about it is we kind of had a vision — reconnect downtown to the river. And the fact that we’ve actually done it, and you see all these things that have popped up and changed the whole landscape of this east side of downtown, that’s probably the biggest transformation.

How has more commercial student housing affected Eugene?

We suffer from the debate about what housing is good and what housing is bad. We think in a continuum of housing, so all the way from homeless shelter to market-rate, high-end housing and everything in between, which is affordable housing, subsidized, middle housing, student housing, multifamily housing, McMansion. The reality is, in order to solve the housing crisis, we need all of those. We really shouldn’t be arguing over what’s good and what’s bad.

There are obviously things on that spectrum that aren’t good, if it’s poor quality or in the wrong location, I get it. But to continually debate — and there’s debate in every one of those — we have to get over that if we’re going to make progress.

It’s basic economics. If the supply is constrained, and you don’t want homeless shelters, and you don’t want ADUs [accessory dwelling units], and you don’t want student housing, and you don’t want new subdivisions with high-end housing, and you don’t want student housing on Franklin Boulevard, you have a supply problem. When you have a supply problem, the cost keeps going up, and everyone keeps complaining about how we can’t contain the price of housing. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My hope would be that we finally embrace that we need housing, as long as it’s well thought-out and well-designed. It needs to be comprehensive — it’s not just homeownership, it’s not just rental, it’s all of it. If we don’t do it, this place is going to become a really expensive place to live. It already is, but it’s going to get worse. 

Why is now the time for retirement? What are your next steps? 

A good friend who also retired before me — she was on the exec team — said, “Denny, when you get to this time, make sure you’re running toward something, you’re not running away from something.” I definitely feel like I’m running toward something, and that “towards something” is my grandkids. Being a grandparent is special. 

I am tired, because [when] you do this a long time, there are many, many days in this job where you feel like you’re swimming upstream, because a lot of the community is not always working with you. It’s time for someone else that has the energy to keep fighting the good fight and getting stuff done and all the things that I love doing.