Out-of-state investors and local businesses continue to see Eugene-Springfield as a good bet, judged by the construction projects they are pursuing here.

• The student-housing construction steamroller: In a city of sky-high rents for all — students and non-students — these new units must be counted a blessing. When students move into them, they free up space in older rental housing — or other new high-rises further from campus. In 2025, developers broke ground on two student-apartment towers a block from the University of Oregon. They’ll be ready in 2027. 

Another student-housing developer is tentatively slated to buy the shuttered PeaceHealth University District hospital site once PeaceHealth tears down the buildings. The aesthetics of many of these new student blocks are questionable, especially the narrow sidewalks and feeble landscaping allowed by the city. But their utility in the metro area’s expensive housing market is hard to knock.

• Amazon, begone! The metro area’s protest-inclined residents found a new cause: fighting the massive local parcel distribution center — assumed to be for Amazon — planned near the Eugene Airport. There’s much to protest these days: Trump, ICE, Flock cameras and now Amazon’s facility. The developer’s consultants still need building and wetlands-filling permits. Construction may start in 2026.

• Shout it from the Treetops: Bill Cornog’s purchase and ongoing rehabilitation of the Treetops mansion in the Fairmount Boulevard area near the UO was tops in the feel-good news category. The run-down 115-year-old mansion is being restored by Texas-based Cornog, who has deep ties to Eugene and bought the property from the UO. Cornog tells Eugene Weekly he aims “to honor Treetops’ 100-plus year legacy while positioning it to be Lane County’s premiere meeting/entertainment space for the next 100 years.” 

Starting in March, contractors will remove all exterior siding and windows, plus gut much of the interior, he says. They’ll use period-accurate materials for replacement work, and create rooms that “you’d expect in a high-end hotel,” he says. Cornog wants to get the place listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

• Chad Drive off Coburg Road in northeast Eugene will be hopping in 2026: Eugene Gastroenterology Consultants has begun building a new home for itself there; soon to follow will be Slocum Orthopedics, which this month received planning approval to build a surgery center on Chad; a West Linn developer is securing permits to build a behavioral health clinic for the federal Veterans Administration, to serve Lane County-area vets. The developer will lease the 20,000-square-foot building to the VA for 15 years, according to the lease agreement obtained by Eugene Weekly under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The VA will pay rent of $1.27 million a year for each of the first five years, then more for subsequent years, according to the lease. 

Also in the works on Chad, a climbing gym in the vacant former printing press building of The Register-Guard. The gym, a project of Elevation Bouldering Gym owner Michael Hudson, received a key city approval, a conditional use permit, in November. 

• VRC hopes to score: Sports-products consumers liked the news that Dick’s Sporting Goods may open a Dick’s House of Sport store at Valley River Center in Eugene. The mall’s owner, Macerich, would construct the 105,000-square-foot two-story building at the main entrance to the mall, for lease to Dick’s, according to preliminary plans. Dick’s and Macerich are working on particulars. No final deal or construction start date has been announced.

• Just the Rx: McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center in 2025 picked a west Eugene site for its planned standalone emergency department. That’s important news for Eugene, given PeaceHealth’s full-scale retreat from the state’s second-largest city. It’s unclear when construction might start. “The project remains in the planning phase,” McKenzie-Willamette says in a statement to Eugene Weekly. “We look forward to continued progress in 2026.”

• On the market: The biggest vacant office building in the metro area, the former Royal Caribbean cruise booking center in Springfield, was formally put on the market earlier this year by its New Jersey owners. But does anyone want it? Travel Lane County, the local tourism advocacy group, says it would make a great sports center. The owners are asking $18 million. Who’s got that kind of change lying around? 

However, the owners have a new incentive to unload the place. They’ve owned it since 2008, with Royal Caribbean as a tenant. Royal Caribbean departed in 2019, but under its lease, the Florida-based cruise giant had to continue paying rent, utilities, insurance and property taxes until Dec. 22, 2025. That means the New Jersey owners are now on the hook for all those carrying costs. The property taxes alone are $219,000 a year.

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.