From:jbelcher@efn.org <br />To:Eugene RR-SC Plan <br />Subject:FW: Please consider this as you deliberate on the River Road/Santa Clara Neiighborhood Plan and Code <br />Amendements <br />Date:Wednesday, April 10, 2024 4:05:45 PM <br />Attachments:20240409 Testimony.docx <br />[EXTERNAL ] <br />Resending, previous attempt ha period at end of address <br /> <br />Jon Belcher (he/him) jbelcher@efn.org <br /> <br />From: jbelcher@efn.org <jbelcher@efn.org> <br />Sent: Tuesday, April 9, 2024 6:45 PM <br />To: Mayor & Council (MayorCouncilandCityManager@eugene-or.gov) <br /><MayorCouncilandCityManager@eugene-or.gov>; 'RRSCPlan@eugene-or.gov.' <RRSCPlan@eugene- <br />or.gov.> <br />Subject: Please consider this as you deliberate on the River Road/Santa Clara Neiighborhood Plan <br />and Code Amendements <br /> <br />The RR/SC neighborhood plan was initiated in the fall of 2017 after years of capacity building by <br />resident volunteers. We hit the ground running and had record attendance at our community forums. <br />Six months into the process we were asked to fold the RR/SC Corridor Plan into our work-staff told <br />us it would provide the extra oomph (code language related to use, transitions between uses, <br />compatibility with the existing built environment, feasibility testing) and guidelines to help us densify <br />significantly but sensitively while creating a more vibrant and walkable corridor. We walked the <br />corridor, invited every business to participate and identified the challenges and opportunities of each <br />block. This work was to be implemented within ¼ mile each side of River Road. The Corridor Plan <br />alone took us over one year to finish and resulted in fine-grained lot by lot analysis of current usage <br />and hoped-for future usage with new zoning to implement that vision. This work made it clear that <br />height limitations and ground floor commercial in C-2 zoned multi-story housing developments were <br />the most effective way to move us toward a walkable corridor and our new zoning was going to make <br />that happen. We wouldn’t have to watch all our C-2 property go to multi-story housing without the <br />commercial development needed to serve the increased population and then wait for “market <br />forces” to dictate redevelopment later on. <br /> <br />State mandates around housing and the city’s shift to a “one size fits all” city-wide corridor zoning <br />focus made our detailed zoning work unusable at the time, but the basic tenets that underlie the work <br />are still valid and desperately needed. The default C-2 zoning does nothing to address neighborhood <br />concerns or implement the vision expressed by the thousands that participated. In response staff <br />proposed a much-diminished list of amendments to existing (not new zoning) that try to get at the <br />heart of the issues held most dearly in the land-use component of the plan. We ask you to adopt <br />these amendments and add back code requiring ground level commercial in C-2 zoned multi story