Eugene waiting for art installations to open riverfront park; summer championships hard deadline

There are some holes in the ground delaying the opening of Eugene's new Downtown Riverfront Park.

Supply chain issues and other snags have delayed the opening of the 3½-acre park, part of a larger project to reconnect downtown Eugene to the Willamette River. The park initially was expected to open in July 2021 but has seen myriad reasons for delay.

The latest is a large hole and smaller gaps in the sidewalk where art installations will go.

Installing those pieces — a steam ring and sidewalk pieces all made of bronze — is critical for visitor safety, Emily Proudfoot said during a Jan. 18 seminar sponsored by the Lane County Master Gardener Association.

Proudfoot, a landscape architect for the city and the lead on the park project, said the art should be arriving soon but didn't hazard a concrete estimate for an opening date.

The park does have to be open for the World Athletics Championships track and field event, which starts July 15 and will include a festival hosted in the park. That will happen, Proudfoot said.

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"In the meantime, we’re finishing up a lot of tiny details that I think are going to make it really successful when it opens," she said.

The park will stretch about a third of a mile along the Willamette River between the DeFazio Bridge to southeast of the former Eugene Water & Electric Board steam plant and East Eighth Avenue.

The project includes re-grading the riverbank, pulling the bike path away from the bank, building more overlooks and a wooden deck, and engaging artists to create interpretive pieces.

Those art pieces showcase the depth of history on the site, Proudfoot said, with installations highlighting three themes of the river:

• Industry: A steam ring representing a cut-through of a turbine symbolizes the steam plant, which helped heat downtown until a little more than a decade ago. Light and mist will come out of the grate, which will go into what's now a hole in the south overlook.

• Ecology: Bronze pieces embedded through a pedestrian walkway follow the course of the Willamette River. Five pieces raised up onto a seating area will tell stories of the history of the river.

• Culture: A multilevel fountain will tell the story of the "across the bridge" community, the city's first Black neighborhood that was forced to relocate for the building of the Ferry Street Bridge. The fountain will include stories about what it was like to be Black in Eugene at that time.

Another overlook has a structure topped with metal ribbons mimicking the topography of the riverbed just down the bank.

That's in place now, Proudfoot said, and is reflective. She compared its surface to Cloud Gate, better known as "The Bean," in Chicago.

Though the city is waiting on art installations to open the park, the rest of the space has been completely transformed since the city bought the property from EWEB and razed nearly all the buildings, Proudfoot said.

What was once a bike path at the top of the riverbank that squished people between a fence and the steep bank is now a "beautiful layering of experiences," she said.

There's a two-way bike path, a meandering pedestrian path and a boardwalk and viewing decks.

It's a "really beautiful space to be in and appreciate the river," Proudfoot said.

There's also some connected green space that's set to be a 1-acre plaza. The city has gotten state dollars to fill a funding gap for the plaza, which city staff previously had talked about scaling back because of cost limitations.

Construction on that should start in 2024, Proudfoot said.

Editor's note: This story was updated to reflect the correct starting date of the World Athletics Championships, which is July 15.

Contact city government watchdog Megan Banta at mbanta@registerguard.com. Follow her on Twitter @MeganBanta_1.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Eugene waiting for art to fill holes and open Downtown Riverfront Park