EUGENE, Ore. — On Wednesday April 23, Eugene’s affordable housing committee held a meeting to discuss the new apartment building set to be built on S. Garden Way, Park Run. The purpose of the meeting was to determine how feasible it is for the AHTFAC to provide funding for this project by scoring Park Run out of 10 in different categories.
The four-story building will be 135,000 square feet, hosting a total of 158 units, of which there will be 97 one, 35 two and six three bedroom apartments, along with 20 studio apartments. Eight of these units – with two of each size – will meet Type A accessibility standards making them adaptable for residents with disabilities.
One concern raised by committee member, Carmel Perez Snyder, was the amount of parking Park Run is requesting.
“It’s a lot of parking,” said Perez Snyder. “My question is if we can have no parking availability for single-family units or smaller units, why can’t we, at minimum, add four more units for development?”
This question was addressed by a representative for Park Run, Thomas.
“The justification for having less parking, at least with affordable housing, is that there’s the assumption that the demographic we serve is less likely to have cars, but we don’t always see that,” Thomas said. “The demographic we serve needs cars to get to work.”
Thomas then concluded, “I think going back in time, if there was an opportunity to reduce parking, we may take it upon ourselves to do that. But, this project is far enough along that we’re gonna maintain the parking we have.”
As it is affordable housing, Park Run is set to have roughly 29 units be affordable to those who make 30% of the area median income. The other 129 will be affordable to those who make 60% as well.
At the end of the meeting, the evaluation subcommittee gave their scores for Park Run. The average scores for each category – pending the decision of subcommittee member John Barofsky, who could not attend – were: project concept & design, 8.00; site feasibility, 8.00; population and services, 8.33; cost benefit, 8.33; financial feasibility, 8.67; and organizational experience, 8.67.
These scores serve as a recommendation for the city council to review when they meet on May 8.
“Essentially they’ll rank them on like a scale of like, ‘this is the first one that we think ranks the highest for funding, this is the next one, and the next one.’ And then we fund the first one to the amount they’ve asked for. If there’s still money left over, then it would go to the second ranked applicants, and so on,” housing tools analyst Laura Hammond said.
There are currently four proposals on the table this year, those being Park Run, River Road Apartments, The Lucy and Floral Hill.