As we start the new year, KLCC checked in with Christian Wihtol, who writes about real estate and commercial development for the Eugene Weekly. His most recent column confirms what has long been suspected: Amazon is planning to build a warehouse near the Eugene airport.
Rachael McDonald: You reported that Amazon purchased land off Highway 99 near the Eugene Airport. What else do you know about this project?
Christian Wihtol: Well, Rachael, I probably know too much. I've been writing about this story all year and the big mystery with it was who was behind the project. From the start I suspected it was Amazon, but only when Amazon actually bought the property on Dec.. 26 was the company's name there in black and white. So, it was nice to see and get that confirmed. The warehouse project, it's gonna be a total of 320,000 square feet, which is super big, on 85 acres, have a big conveyor belt system inside for receiving large volumes of packages that would be brought there by trailers and then sorting them for what's called the last mile distribution to local homes and businesses.
Amazon has a lot of these distribution centers nationally of different sizes. One of this size typically has a few hundred van drivers, a staff in the building sorting packages, running the conveyor belts. It's not particularly glamorous or high skill work. Greg Evans, a Eugene City council member, told me he expects the place to be a good place for kids just out of high school to go for work.
McDonald: There's concern from many members of the public about how this would affect the community. What are some of the objections people have to the project?
Wihtol: People have a whole lot of objections– pollution from the vehicles, potentially congestion ... on Highway 99, the filling of wetlands that are needed to be done in order for the project to proceed, that the jobs there would be humdrum, kind of parcel delivery work. And that having a package delivery warehouse on that site basically takes up valuable industrial zoned land that was, in theory, supposed to go toward building Eugene's economy with higher wage, higher scale, high-tech manufacturing type jobs. And plus a lot of people just don't like Amazon and Jeff Bezos, so there's been plenty for people to complain about.
McDonald: What options do opponents have at this point if they want to slow or even block this Amazon warehouse from being built?
Wihtol: Folks have the same option as they've had all along with this, which is basically to complain, to file comments with any number of public agencies. It’s really been their only option. And many hundreds of people have done that. They've filed complaints with the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency, the Eugene City Council, the Eugene Planning Commission, and now, the Oregon Department of State Lands, which oversees the wetlands filling. And none of this has had any impact. Though the state has not yet decided on the wetlands fill permit. And, it seems to me that nobody really is in a position to legally stop or significantly alter the project. That's in large part because of the way the city council zoned the land back in 2017 to 2018.
Back then, Eugene expanded its urban growth boundary to include about 650 acres of farmland around the airport, including the planned Amazon site. And the council specifically designated the land for industrial use, such as high tech manufacturing for higher wage jobs, and the land is actually a centerpiece for Eugene's economic development strategy to bring higher wage, higher skilled jobs to the area. But, when the city council, when it came time to them to approve the exact wording of the zoning rules. They also allowed standalone warehousing. So you get a parcel like Amazon is proposing to use for a distribution center. And the council could have avoided that by having standalone warehousing only if it was tied to manufacturing. But the council didn't do that. And so, I would not be surprised if we see more standalone warehouse distribution facilities proposed in that area.
McDonald: Well, as we embark on the new year, what are some other real estate developments that you are keeping an eye on?
Wihtol: Well, thank goodness there's other things than Amazon out there.
So, one thing I'm very interested in is what's going on with the PeaceHealth University District Hospital. So right now, PeaceHealth is doing this colossal asbestos removal project there. It's the single biggest asbestos removal project that's ever been done in Lane County. And when they get done with the asbestos removal, then they'll start to demolish the old hospital buildings. And once that demo is done, Landmark, a Georgia-based housing developer, has a tentative agreement to buy the cleared site and build student housing. And so the project that Landmark would build, if it goes ahead, would be nearly 2000 bedrooms in 526 units. And it would be Eugene's biggest student housing project. So investors, lenders, developers, so many of these people appear to have great confidence in the University of Oregon student market. Which is interesting because student enrollment has actually been flat over the past decade and they're kind of bumping up and down, maybe inching upward now.
I'm also keen to see this year if or when McKenzie-Willamette and its undisclosed development partner will proceed with building the standalone emergency department in West Eugene.
They picked a site and they had begun preliminary planning work and talking with Eugene City planners. But McKenzie-Willamette tells me that they're proceeding, but I haven't seen the major planning and building permit applications yet.
Another thing to watch is the former EWEB Riverfront site. The Portland developer Atkins Dane had been planning to start work on more apartment buildings there. They built, I believe, two, but they were planning more, but they are now in a dispute with the state over the wage rates that they have to pay contractors, and that's a story that's been reported on by the Oregon Journalism Project. So it'll be interesting to see if they proceed with that.
And finally, one of my most interesting things that I'm interested in is the former Royal Caribbean Facility and Gateway. So this is huge.
It's 160,000 square feet. And it's officially on the market. Is somebody gonna buy it? And if so, what are they gonna do with it?
McDonald: Well, we will be interested to see what you write about all of this as the year progresses.
Wihtol: Well, I'm looking forward to it because there's a lot going on.
