200,000,000 Downtown?
So the word is out. It seems dowtown Eugene is low hanging fruit for a group of investors. Several years ago developers from out of state made a killing putting together and then re-selling the new Riverbend hospital site in Springfield. This time the target is our downtown area. The recent article in the Register-Guard seems to urge us to "buy in" to this grand vision of a utopian urban zone, where somehow all the former problems of downtown Eugene will be swept away with a magical dose of cash. There's nothing wrong with investing in downtown Eugene, but I predict there will be no miracle cure. The homeless teens aren't going to mysteriously vanish overnight. The junkies and pushers will just move over a few blocks until they feel comfortable. Sorry Register-Guard, but throwing money at a problem does not make it go away.
posted by Editor at 5:02 PM
3 Comments:
You can say that again! I'm old enough to remember when "dragging the gut" from one end of Willamette to the other was the root of all evil. The pedestrian mall downtown (closed to traffic) was going to rid downtown of all undesirable elements. I was also here when re-opening downtown to traffic was going to rid downtown of all undesirable elements.
But hey! Downtown could definitely use some new investment. You can't blame the movers and shakers from using "the evil out there" to stampeede people in the direction they want them to go.
12:05 PM
Apparently not a lot going on in Eugene. This seems pretty dead.
6:23 PM
Downtown could MAYBE use some investment (debatable ... Broadway is hardly a ghost town and who cares about a handful of vacancies) ... but if we the people are paying for it, we the people should own it.
This current proposal is a big fat pork BBQ. It's not outright crooked like the Connor-Woolley scheme but its a pure come-one-come-all giveaway of taxpayer money for no discernable purpose beyond making a few people richer on our dime.
Speaking as a central Eugene resident, I do not need to see one penny of public money spent on still more parkign garages, grocery stores, multiplexes and high-end condos. These four things we already have in spades.
3:12 PM
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