Developers share plans for new emergency department in west Eugene

Developers shared plans for McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center’s proposed stand-alone emergency department in west Eugene with neighborhood residents on Wednesday, Aug. 20.

The one-story, 18,800-square-foot building will sit at 1850 W. Sixth Ave., replacing a parking lot on Grant Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues.

The facility is scheduled to open for 24/7 service in winter or spring 2027. According to project leaders and a plan review submitted to the Oregon Health Authority, the facility will include 12 treatment rooms, two trauma rooms, a laboratory, pharmacy services, behavioral health services and diagnostic radiology services — including X-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds.

Jonathan Wright, a McKenzie-Willamette attending physician who will serve as the department’s medical director, said the facility is expected to serve between 40 and 50 patients a day. 

“Essentially, the department’s going to be equipped with everything that we would need to manage any emergent condition,” Wright said.

The project is still in early stages. Wednesday’s meeting, hosted at the Eugene Faith Center, was required by the city to gather community input before developers apply for a conditional use permit, which seeks permission for land use that isn’t automatically allowed by the property’s zoning.

Attendees included McKenzie-Willamette interim CEO Gregory Brentano, developers from WG Development, and architects and designers from GMA Architects. A handful of neighbors and members of the Chambers Westside Neighborhood Association also attended.

Once built, the facility would restore emergency services to an area that’s been without a local hospital since PeaceHealth closed its University District emergency room in 2023. 

Currently, Eugene residents must travel to Springfield to visit McKenzie-Willamette or PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend. Since the University District closure, patient volumes and wait times at both hospitals have surged. 

McKenzie-Willamette’s former CEO first announced plans for the new department in 2024. The hospital is operated by for-profit firm Quorum Health Corp.

“We desperately need an emergency department,” Sandra Stevens, a nearby resident, said before the meeting.

Project details

Wright said he expects one physician to work in the emergency department, supported by nurse practitioners, physician assistants, registered nurses and certified technologists. 

“You’ll probably have two or three providers at any given point in time, and that continues to stagger based on when the volumes increase and decrease,” Wright said. 

According to the plan review dated April 2025, each shift will also include: three licensed independent providers, eight registered nurses, one unit secretary, one emergency technician, one security officer, two registration clerks, one pharmacist, one CT technologist, one X-ray technician, one ultrasound technician, two phlebotomists, one environmental services worker and one facility administrator.

The emergency department will handle a range of cases — from minor procedures like wound stapling and fracture treatments to more serious ones, like care for second- and third-degree burns — according to the plan review. 

Unlike a hospital, the emergency department will be accessible only via ground transportation, meaning patients will either walk in themselves or arrive by ambulance. There will be no helicopter airlifts. 

The facility also won’t admit patients for overnight care. Ambulances will transfer those needing long-term or specialized treatment to nearby hospitals.

“Having this emergency room here in west Eugene is going to free time for EMS, EMTs, fire, ambulance crews not having to transport so far,” senior principal architect Daniel Klute said. 

Plans call for three driveways — on Sixth Avenue, Grant Street and Seventh Avenue — to provide access for both emergency and patient vehicles.

The facility’s construction cost has not been finalized, Klute said. McKenzie-Willamette’s schematic review estimated new construction for the project at just over $16 million. 

Zoning and land use logistics

The property is zoned as C-2, or community commercial. 

Developers must obtain a Type III conditional use permit, which evaluates whether a proposed use is compatible with its surroundings. They also plan to submit adjustment reviews requesting exceptions to certain land use rules.

Neighborhood meetings like Wednesday’s are required by the city as part of the conditional use permit process.

“The city staff has confirmed that even though this doesn’t necessarily look like a large-scale hospital, that they do consider this a hospital, and therefore we need to go through the conditional use permit process,” said Zach Galloway, a senior planner with TBG Architects + Planners, who led Wednesday’s presentation. 

City code requires buildings in C-2 zones to fall between 5 and 15 feet from the street. It also requires structures with frontage on more than one street to provide at least one main entrance oriented to a street.

Developers want the emergency department’s main entrance to face west, toward the parking lot and away from Grant Street, rather than on the busy arterials on Sixth and Seventh. They will request an adjustment to allow the inward-facing entrance.

Kelly Sandow, the project’s transportation engineer with Sandow Engineering, added that the city standard for the site allows one driveway. Developers are requesting three, citing the need to disperse traffic and provide smoother access for emergency vehicles.

The team may also request exceptions to landscaping and parking rules, Galloway said. 

Neighbors’ concerns 

Traffic was residents’ top concern, especially along Sixth and Seventh avenues.

Eli Brown, the chair of the Chambers Westside Neighbors association, said about 49,000 cars travel those arterials every day, according to city data. 

Sandow said the city is not requiring a traffic impact analysis, so the team is mostly focusing on the function of driveways and adjacent intersections. No changes are planned to the streets themselves, she said.

Brown asked how developers are accounting for a future greenway on Grant Street from West Fifth to West 15th avenues, a project funded by a 2022 street repair bond measure. The city’s implementation of the greenways will occur in 2029, Brown said.

City of Eugene senior transportation planner Reed Dunbar described the greenways to The Register-Guard in 2023 as “‘low-speed, low-volume streets that are prioritized for walking and bicycling,’” featuring speed humps, traffic markings and wayfinding signage.

In response, Galloway said the planned greenways didn’t come up in developers’ earlier project consultation meeting with city staff, but the team will look into it. 

Brown did not return requests for comment from Lookout Eugene-Springfield. 

“It’s extremely disappointing because if it’s one of the few instances where there was a commitment, there is a commitment, from the city to fund something that is for pedestrians,” Brown told TV station KVAL on Wednesday.

Brown also asked developers why they chose this specific site.

Developer Nathan Philips said the team considered many potential sites, but felt the selected one was the strongest choice because of its willing owner, lack of many nearby residences and strong “transportation patterns” for entering and exiting the facility.

Klute added that the pool of available land zoned for hospital use was very limited. 

Brown also asked why developers didn’t apply to rezone other properties instead of requesting exceptions. In response, Klute said that process “takes a decade.”

What comes next?

The project’s design team will use the community comments to inform developers’ final application, which will bundle the conditional use permit and the adjustment reviews. Developers plan to submit the application in the “coming weeks,” Galloway said.

The city review process will take four to five months, including a formal review, a public hearing and a final decision.

“All these discretionary processes in the middle of it kind of cause unknown periods of time,” Klute said.