Find inspiration, think big and imagine the possibilities for Ems and middle housing

The recent talk about building a baseball stadium at the Lane Events Center seems to be framed as an emergency.

A Register-Guard story mentions a “time crunch” and “no time to waste.” Lane County Commissioners say they hope a ballpark can provide revenue to support the other buildings in the LEC. It sounds like the intention is to preserve the LEC by shoe-horning more commercial activity into a finite space.

Perhaps it is time to think big, to step back and look at the larger Eugene-Springfield metropolitan area.

The site of the Lane Events Center, formerly the Lane County Fairgrounds, was chosen in the early 20th century, when the locale was at the edge of town. Today it is surrounded by residential neighborhoods, and the through-streets are regularly busy.

This is not the place for a baseball stadium hosting a long-season Minor League team, musical concerts and other events featuring crowds, noise and heavy traffic. But it could be the perfect place for a different project: a pre-planned middle-housing neighborhood, fully integrated into the surrounding residential area, with greenery and perhaps even the adjacent stretch of Amazon Creek transitioned back to moving water, a place where children play and families gather.

But where would the stadium go? Where would the events center buildings go? Transition the LEC over time to an area with room to grow: Lane Community College.

The space for the stadium is already there. Just build it on the existing LCC ballpark site. Space for other events that traditionally have been held at the Events Center could be rented or leased in some of the existing campus buildings. New ones could be built both on campus and the surrounding area.

Using LCC for activities beyond college coursework is not new. The campus used to be vibrant and active at all times. But as funding dried up in the 2000s, it became a ghost town on evenings and weekends, well before the pandemic. I taught there for nearly 20 years, and over the last decade administrators have actively solicited ideas in what they called an entrepreneurial spirit.

The surrounding area is already growing. Springfield has been reinventing its downtown, Glenwood is being transformed, and the strip of Franklin Boulevard that turns south to LCC is ripe for whatever people might be thinking. This Springfield-Glenwood-LCC “T-corridor” could become a vibrant multi-use region that actually was part of the original vision for metropolitan growth when LCC was built in the 1960s.

Before you dismiss this as pie-in-the-sky thinking, consider what this community has done before, sometimes against overwhelming odds.

In the 1870s, Eugene didn’t have enough money to pay for the University of Oregon’s first building, so farmers brought in whatever could be converted to cash: pigs, chickens and cows, a box of apples, a bushel of wheat.

In 1938, during the depths of the Great Depression, Eugene citizens voted to tax themselves and buy a hill south of town so that it wouldn’t be logged off and turned into a grazing pasture for goats. We now call it Spencer Butte Park.

In the 1950s, citizens chose not to pave over a section of swampy land in south Eugene and keep it as a narrow greenway that followed a creek — today’s Amazon Park.

And the Willamette River, which has just been celebrated with a new waterfront park, was declared in the early 1960s as too polluted for swimming. Then the citizens of Oregon decided to clean it up, and in 1972 the river was featured on the cover of National Geographic magazine as “A River Restored.”

No doubt there are practical matters and challenges I cannot address here. But imagine what it could be.

Imagine those concrete parking lots along 13th Avenue between Jefferson and Tyler streets turned into housing and greenery and living space.

Imagine LCC returning to its vibrant role in the community, a center not only for learning but for community activities, year-round, any day of the week.

Imagine a 60-year-old vision of development meshing with a contemporary vision of sustainability and livability. Imagine our descendants looking back with appreciation at our farsighted decisions.

The first step might be the easiest. There is a baseball field at Lane Community College with plenty of parking, bus service and freeway access. Turn it into a stadium. Then imagine what else is possible.

Steve McQuiddy is the author of Here On the Edge, a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He lives in Eugene.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Find inspiration, imagine the possibilities for Ems and middle housing