How can downtown Eugene be better? They have ideas

Downtown Eugene has problems. 

A lack of “market rate” housing, geared toward professionals with disposable income to spend after work. Unhoused people struggling with behavioral issues and substance abuse. Empty storefronts. Undeveloped lots.

The list goes on, and was the center of discussion at a quarterly policy forum hosted by the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce on June 12. 

“We are not interested in performative positivity,” said Brittany Quick-Warner, the Chamber of Commerce’s president and chief executive. “I don’t think it helps. I actually think it oftentimes smooths over the hard truths that we have to face as a community.”

Here’s what five community leaders said during the forum:

Kaarin Knudson, mayor of Eugene

For Knudson, the mayor of Eugene and an architect by trade, the problem in downtown Eugene goes back to the basics of urban design. 

There are two sides of each street that face each other, and they’re in conversation. 

Too often, those conversations are disjointed, with interesting locales across the street from empty storefronts. 

Knudson called for longer-term civic projects and more urban design “moments” downtown that make the area feel like a vibrant community. “There are not a lot of places in our downtown that feel this way,” she said. “But there could be.”

The next step is the redevelopment of the vacant downtown North Butterfly Lot, located at the southwest corner of East Seventh Avenue and Oak Street, into a mixed-use retail and residential building. That project is accepting requests for qualifications from development teams by July 31, before moving onto requesting specific proposals.

Her recommendations for the city overall included:

• More density and street activity with downtown buildings.
• Active street edges, designed for engagement with the pedestrians.

Rob Bennett, real estate developer

Bennett said the financial numbers don’t add up for the type of housing he said was long overdue for downtown — market-rate units, as opposed to lower-income housing already in place.

“Eugene’s downtown core has not had a new housing project built without public assistance since the 1950s and no new market-rate residential buildings that I could find in the last 25 years,” Bennett said.

A cramped environment boosts construction costs, Bennett said. But he also shared ideas about how to make housing development more financially feasible by adjusting a downtown tax abatement program known as the Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption, or MUPTE.

“The public benefit criteria in the MUPTE program adds economic challenges for us. Thirty percent moderate income rent lowers our income potential for the building,” Bennett said, referring to a requirement that – unless owners want to pay a fee – at least 30% of units be set aside for people with moderate incomes.

Benefits of adding downtown housing would include safer streets and higher long-term tax revenue, Bennett said, but public support is crucial.

“Without more support, I don’t believe anything gets built down here in the core. Supporting early projects in distressed areas is about making the math work,” he said.

Bennett’s other ideas for how the city could support downtown housing developers:

• A low-interest loan program.
• Infrastructure improvements to offset construction costs.

Ray Brown, downtown Eugene incident commander, Eugene Police Department

Brown described new approaches taken by police downtown in response to the unhoused population.

Arrests have almost quadrupled, up to 103 compared to 27 in 2024 from January to June, according to Brown.

The bump in downtown arrests follows priorities set by the city’s police leadership to focus on criminal trespass, Chief Chris Skinner’s “number one crime prevention goal” for 2025.

For the purposes of criminal trespass, Brown explained that businesses basically “own that out to the curb line,” meaning that people seeking shelter or hanging out in alcoves, the backsides of businesses or overhangs now may be arrested.

“Instead of simply moving somebody along – people, generally, they get a warning,” Brown said. “And they will get a citation. Then they will be taken into custody. But it is usually a multiple-pronged approach, where we first try to educate and let people know that, ‘Well, you may have thought this was an OK place to sit and hang out, but the fact of the matter is, this is private property.’”

That’s “not to say that our goal is to arrest our way out of the situation,” he said.

He also described a pilot program begun in April of last year in which behavioral health specialists respond with officers downtown. So far, the team has made contacts with 369 people, Brown said.

“The co-responder team is out there to offer people that are in these challenging situations, with mental health and substance abuse disorders, to help them find ways out of the challenging problems that they’re in,” he said.

Dave Moss, executive director, Eugene Symphony

Moss stressed that arts and culture aren’t a bonus for a revitalized downtown, but a catalyst. 

He drew on his experiences as the chief executive of the Honolulu-based Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, where in a neglected Chinatown he had to hire security to escort visitors to the theater. But he said overall security was improved not by relying on guards, but by encouraging businesses to stay open with staggered hours when they would typically close, increasing overall foot traffic. 

“Presence drives safety, and safety drives economic recovery. Culture didn’t come after the area was fixed,” he said. “It was part of the solution.”

He also stressed active investment in culture, especially as federal grants from the National Endowment for the Arts are pulled while state funding disproportionately benefits Portland-based arts organizations. 

Moss outlined his recommendations for the city, which include:

• Exploring public-private partnerships, including to better develop the Cuthbert Amphitheater as a major venue.
• Supporting Eugene’s resident companies in major venues, which pays local artists and vendors rather than national touring acts. 

Jameson Auten, CEO of Lane Transit District

Downtown is the heartbeat of the Lane County transit system, Auten said. He pointed to the Eugene station as the center of the system’s “hub and spoke” model. 

But that means most of its routes go through downtown. In addition to the bus, bike lanes and pedestrian walkways closely tie downtown health to transit, Auten said.

That means addressing the environment, including unhoused people who rely on public transit to move throughout the city. Auten pointed to a change last year, a shift in on-board carry rules limiting the size and number of bags people can bring on the bus, which was primarily targeted at people who rely on can and bottle recycling redemption for income. 

LTD leaders started by bringing a “very frank question” to unhoused people directly, and later brought housing services and other resources for unhoused people to Eugene Station.

He described the solution as a balance between getting travel time down, improving the ridership experience and getting people comfortable enough to get out of private vehicles.

“We’re working with the community to solve those kinds of dynamics as well,” he said. 

Auten’s downtown recommendations were to: 

• Diversify ridership on the bus, to appeal to people who would typically drive cars.
• Improve bus service design to better serve people outside of the “hub and spoke” dynamic, which routes most rides through downtown Eugene.