Civic Center and Millrace Park shared Designer with Failed Eugene Pedestrian Mall

Some readers here have objected to criticism of the landscaping at the Civic Center and along the Millrace, both earlier this month and also over the years.  The lack of activity in those spaces has over the years been a consistent theme.

In one sense they have a point, as it is not strictly speaking the landscaping itself that is only at issue.

It's grown in a lot (1974 & 2023)

Right now it's pretty lush and green. It could be a pleasant place; and if you like solitude, it might be a very inviting place.

The criticism is about context and edges, about the whole, and not necessarily about individual features in the landscape. It is about the way the area functions and the way the edges fail to supply users.

Here is an image from midday on Friday. It was gloriously sunny, and there was only one other person entering the area from the crosswalk at Trade and High.

Millrace Park on a weekday mid-afternoon

There was also one couple at an outside table at Gamberettis. So there were four of us total in the immediate area at that moment. Even at midafternoon on a weekday, there should be more activity!

How often do we see this level of activity?
March 12th, 1973

The designers certainly envisioned more activity.

Liberty and Trade are traffic sewers, and are very real barriers. On Trade across the street to the north is more surface parking. A surface lot fronts the SAIF building. It's not possible to analyze the park and path system realistically without also talking about adjacent land uses.

"Traffic system" and "parking structure"
Cars led the discussion, June 23rd, 1974

Back in 1972 the afternoon paper was near the crux. The wrote that planners "should consider the necessity of providing the kind of open space people will use as well as look at." They seemed to understand the concept of an ornamental emptiness, though they didn't focus enough on the edges of open spaces and on downtown residents' immediate proximity.

September 14th, 1972 (afternoon paper)

Proponents of the Millrace Park and whole ensemble of the Pringle Creek Urban Renewal area between the Civic Center and Willamette University replied a couple of months later.

November 28th, 1972

They said

[E]xamples of paved and green open areas can be cited which are used by people. It also appears that the use of open spaces is as dependent on the nature of the surrounding development as upon the open space itself....

At three locations the park widens into points of interest and activity in front of the Pringle Creek parking facility, in front of the SAIF office building, and adjacent to the elderly housing complex.

But we know now, as perhaps they did not, that the parking garage, office building with surface parking, and senior housing did not supply enough activity, that the "surrounding development" was not sufficiently active with pulses of different kinds of users, had too much parking, and that the state highway and near-highway of Liberty/Commercial constituted real barriers with unpleasant levels of traffic.

They did have questions about the quantity of housing, however.

December 27th, 1974

The afternoon paper talked about "310 units of 'garden apartments'" and noted that that "the only housing left in the Pringle Creek project is the 62 unit low-cost, elderly housing project." This was a real loss.

In some of the newspaper pieces was the name of the landscape architect for the Civic Center's Mirror Pond and Peace Plaza, for Millrace Park, and the rest of the path and park system. (It's also in the sign at Millrace Park, but that just never registered until now.)

The same designer! (Shrestha, see below)

It turns out, they had earlier designed the Eugene Pedestrian Mall, which ultimately failed and was removed.

Now abandoned pedestrian mall, Eugene, 1971
Looking west on Broadway at Willamette
(University of Oregon)

Here is the very same street, a half block away and in the other direction!

Looking east on Broadway, at alley via Twitter

I do not think Strong Towns when they retweeted this was aware of the street's history. Building facades have been restored, especially on that JC Penney building, which was in fact an A. E. Doyle design from 1928, and everything just looks so much different now. The mix of greenery, slower car traffic, and people walking and rolling works better than the earlier attempt banning cars and making a "park" of angular concrete.

Indeed, the first firm hired for that downtown mall project had stressed more mixed and calmed traffic and also more downtown residences. The City of Eugene fired them and hired the firm that would later do the Civic Center and Millrace Park complex. Here's some from the 2021 PhD dissertation of Subik Shrestha, Historical Inquiry into the Failure of Downtown Eugene's Pedestrian Mall Strategy to Revitalize the Retail Core, 1971-2002

Eugene had fired a firm with more mixed concepts

A later City official saw that first, abandoned plan and asked, "What the hell happened? That's exactly what should have been built."

The purity of a stroll garden or a pedestrian mall is often attractive. It certainly was for the landscape architect two generations ago. But the sentiment for a bit of jumble and mixture expressed by "in a world of stroads, be a street" is in the end more generative. Even with traffic and urban form, complex ecosystems are generally superior to ones simplified and purified. Parks are not merely containers for amenities and greenery. They have context and relations, need permeable edges and to attract multiple kinds of users, and we have to attend to those also.

Related, see:

• "Pringle Creek Urban Renewal District Nets Little over Inflation" (2012)
• "In the Shadow of Cars: Millrace Park at Pringle Plaza" (2013)
  
• "Stream of Mystery and too much Open Space: Shelton Ditch and Pringle Creek Paths" (2018)
• "The Sense of Good Cents: Ornament for the Mill Race's Emptiness" (2018)
• "Parking not Strolling was the Focus for the Pringle Creek Urban Renewal Area" (2023)