On Dec. 3, 2024, a worker from a Eugene consulting firm drove to two quiet sideroads near the Eugene Airport and, in close to freezing temperatures, stuck two plastic signs in a grassy field.

The 2-foot by 3-foot signs stated a public neighborhood meeting was set for Dec. 17 via Zoom to explain a plan to construct a huge building in the field, and to solicit comment. 

Whether anyone read the signs on the thinly traveled roads is unknown.

The consultant also sent invites to adjacent property owners — mostly owners of hangars at the airport, some manufacturers and an auto junk yard.

The Dec. 17 meeting was quick. It opened at 5:45 pm. Only two members of the public joined. A consultant took nine minutes to explain the project. Then it was question time. Only one attendee piped up: Would the building be served by a sewer line? It would, the consultant replied. And with that, the meeting was over. It lasted 13 minutes.

Under the Eugene City Code, the point of the event was to alert the public and seek comment. It was the only public interface required by the city for the massive project. Yet no media and very few residents knew it was taking place.

Absurdist theater

Kafkaesque? Maybe. But it was a crucial part of the plan to build a 320,000-square-foot parcel-distribution center on 85 acres along Highway 99, for a company now widely assumed to be Amazon. Under the city code, the city could not process building permits until the consultant had put up the signs, sent the invites and held the meeting. 

The public didn’t find out about the mega-warehouse plan until Eugene Weekly learned of it and published an article in late January. Subsequent EW articles expanded on the potential traffic, air pollution and economic effects of the project.

Now, many hundreds of area residents strongly oppose the development, even as the city is finalizing some building permits. The latest sign of community sentiment: Several dozen people spoke out in frustration at the Nov. 11 Eugene City Council session. They don’t want an Amazon mega-warehouse in Eugene. And they’re steamed at what they see as a docile City Council, and a city administration that has provided minimal chance for meaningful public comment.

If the council were serious about stopping the Amazon project and similar mega-warehouses, it could amend the zoning rules for the special industrial area around the airport and prohibit new businesses that are exclusively warehousing and wholesaling, speaker Anne Lardner said Monday.

The city’s ho-hum handling of this huge and obviously controversial project highlights a dysfunction among city elected and administration leaders, said speaker Stan Taylor. “The need for the public to weigh in is not at the back end, but at the front end,” Taylor told the council. “There has been no opportunity really for public input at the front end.”

Contrary to vision

The parcel-delivery warehouse project clearly flies in the face of the city’s written vision for the new special industrial area around the airport, speakers said. That vision calls for high-quality innovative and sustainable manufacturing and similar industry, they said.

The scant city-mandated public-alert process raises questions about how city residents will find out if more big corporations plan major construction on the 650 acres of privately owned farmland around the airport that the council has opened to industrial development. 

The council in 2018 expanded Eugene’s urban growth boundary with the specific goal of turning those 650 rural acres into a sprawling complex of major industrial manufacturing facilities, with as many as 6,000 new jobs. It’s called the Clear Lake Industrial area. City leaders tout it as the centerpiece of Eugene’s job-growth strategy. The purported Amazon warehouse wants to be its first occupant.

But in the boundary expansion process, city leaders bypassed any idea that residents city-wide should be alerted well in advance to any major development proposals.

The warehouse project’s consultants still need to complete building and wetlands-fill permits. It’s unclear when construction will start.

An allowable use

Some city councilors are satisfied with the public process thus far. Council President Greg Evans, whose ward includes the airport area, says he’s heard from many residents who are “anxious” about the project. “We have all seen our email boxes be filled up with this,” he tells Eugene Weekly.

But, he says, “In general, I’m supportive of the development.” 

The warehouse is an allowable use for the site and appears to comply with all applicable rules, he says. The warehouse is projected to employ a few hundred workers sorting packages and driving a fleet of hundreds of trucks to deliver them to Lane County area homes and businesses. The facility will bring “entry-level jobs that a lot of our students that are graduating from Willamette [high school] and North Eugene [high school] will be able to move into fairly quickly,” Evans says.

“We need the employment, we need the [property] tax revenue,” he adds.

Critics are welcome to speak up at council meetings, he says. But city councilors “really don’t have a stake in facilitating a community discussion” around this project, he adds. “I would leave that to nonprofits and other [activist groups] that have a heightened interest in this.”

More public input

The details about the Dec. 17 meeting come from a 16-page report the consultant, The Satre Group, sent to the city to prove it had held the meeting. Eugene Weekly obtained the report via a public records request.

Public ire this year has soared as residents learned more about the project. 

“Bringing an Amazon facility into Eugene is something that many citizens would object to, and I think this should have been recognized by the mayor and city manager,” says Eugene resident Stephen Keese. The project should have been publicized “to all city wards and neighborhood associations,” he says.

This summer, more than 400 residents sent emails and letters to the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency opposing an air pollution permit the project needs — and LRAPA granted — for the warehouse’s fleet of up to 1,000 trucks.

An Amazon spokesperson won’t confirm or deny to Eugene Weekly if it is an Amazon project, and the project’s consultants won’t comment.

“The secrecy of the development serves as an example of larger problems of transparency within our community. We still do not have 100 percent confirmation that it is Amazon, and to me, that is absolutely unacceptable,” says Hannah Diebert, a University of Oregon undergraduate student and member of an anti-Amazon group at the UO.

Narrow rules

Rules the council adopted in 2017 for the Clear Lake industrial area mandated the Dec. 17, 2024, “neighborhood meeting.” But the rules are narrow.

They don’t spell out where signs must be posted. Satre placed them along quiet stretches of Greenhill Road and Awbrey Lane, rather than along heavily travelled Highway 99, which fronts the purported Amazon site. A Satre official did not respond to Eugene Weekly.

The code required Satre to invite the airport area’s official city neighborhood group. That’s the Industrial Corridor Community Organization. But that group is inactive and leaderless. So there was no one for Satre to contact. Few people live in the geographic area designated for that group. It’s just businesses. By contrast, many other official Eugene neighborhood groups have active leaders and residents.

Plus, the code doesn’t require a developer to change its plans in response to public comment.

The mega-warehouse is an allowed use in the Clear Lake zone. But it’s a far cry from what council members and planning staff have envisioned. 

In public presentations from 2016 to 2018, they said the zone would focus on attracting manufacturers such as high-tech, bio-tech, food and other companies that have higher-wage jobs. No one from the city ever explained that the code language would also permit a giant local parcel-delivery warehouse staffed mainly by entry-level delivery drivers.

Bricks $ Mortar is a column anchored by Christian Wihtol, who worked as an editor and writer at The Register-Guard in Eugene 1990-2018, much of the time focused on real estate, economic development and business. Reach him at Christian@EugeneWeekly.com.