Eugene Hearings Official <br />June 29, 2016 <br />Page 6 <br />and horizontally separated from the highway to a degree that sufficiently mitigates aesthetic <br />impacts along the highway that might otherwise occur. <br />Although pedestrian access to the site is only possible from Valley River Drive, a safe and <br />convenient connection between the hotel and the sidewalk along Valley River Drive will be <br />provided by constructing a raised pedestrian walkway along the west side of the shared <br />driveway. This improvement has been designed to avoid any conflicts with the existing pattern <br />of circulation to and within the parking area for the McGrath's Fish House restaurant. <br />Given these considerations, the site plan has been designed to efficiently account for and <br />integrate existing patterns of development abutting the site, satisfy the need for access to and <br />circulation within the site (for both private vehicles and emergency response vehicles), and avoid <br />impacts to resource areas and existing utility easements. Regardless of whether Valley River <br />Drive or Delta Highway/I-105 is considered to be the "primary adjacent street", allowing parking <br />between the hotel and either street is necessary in order to achieve these efficiencies. The fact <br />that an existing parking area is situated between the site and Valley River Drive negates the <br />potential for alternate design benefits, while the vegetation buffer and terrain difference between <br />the site and highway effectively mitigate any aesthetic impacts along the site's highway frontage. <br />Therefore, the subject Adjustment Review request should be approved. <br />Valley River Inn Issue 5: EC 9.2173(6)(d) - On-Street Pedestrian Circulation <br />The standard that VRI invokes here is EC 9.2173(6)(d), a standard for large commercial facilities <br />that requires: <br />"Internal pedestrian walkways provided in conformance with subsection (a) above <br />shall provide weather protection features such as awnings or arcades within 30 <br />feet of all customer entrances." <br />VRI says this standard applies to every location where a person can enter or leave the building <br />and, furthermore, that each protective feature must be 30 feet long. That is, VRI reads the 30- <br />foot description as relating to the length of the feature, not its location. <br />The Applicant's post-hearing Exhibits Al through A3 show an awning detail that can be located <br />at all three building entrances. The Applicant requests conditioning to require this feature, or a <br />substantially similar feature, at each building entrance. <br />VRI's demand that the code requires the awning detail to be 30 feet long misreads the code. The <br />text and context of this standard better supports reading "within 30 feet" to describe the location <br />of the feature, not the minimum length of the feature. EC 9.2173(6)(d) appears in context with a <br />total of six "On-Site Pedestrian Circulation" features. Those other five standards are the <br />"immediate family" context for the weather protection standard in (d). What is plain from <br />looking that the five siblings in (6) is that when the code wants a feature to have a certain <br />