McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center’s push to build a standalone emergency department in west Eugene has become tangled in city land-use regulations.
Thus far, 16 months after McKenzie-Willamette’s CEO announced the plan, the hospital and its project developer have not yet submitted a planning application that city staff have deemed complete.
A big part of the problem: the West 6th Avenue site the Springfield hospital and Eugene developer Nathan Philips picked is not zoned to allow a hospital building outright. So, Philips must go through the complex process of getting a conditional use permit in which the city examines the project’s traffic, environmental and other impacts, and sets restrictions. Plus, Philips wants the city to waive some of its development rules, such as for sidewalk trees, parking lot landscaping and main-entrance location, meaning he needs what’s called a “major adjustment review” permit.
The city last fall rejected as incomplete Philips’ application for both permits. Late last month, he submitted new, beefier applications. But the city hasn’t reviewed them yet, let alone determined whether they are complete or when or if it might approve them.
For residents anxious to see a McKenzie-Willamette ED in Eugene, the delay may be frustrating. For residents who live near the chosen site, the delay provides a respite. Neighborhood residents have said they don’t want the increased traffic the facility would bring. Plus, they say, the city had planned to create a greenway along Grant Street — one of the streets the ED would face — to make the area calmer, safer and more walkable. The ED’s not compatible with the greenway, they say.
The chosen two-acre site is a paved parking lot owned by a nearby car dealership.
Ready to go
Philips tells Eugene Weekly he’s ready to start building.
“We expect to begin construction when the [conditional use permit] is approved,” he says in a brief email.
But in his application to the city, he warns he may face delays raising money to build the place.
Typically, Eugene conditional-use and adjustment-review permits expire after 18 months. Once they expire, a developer must resubmit, potentially facing new restrictions the city may have implemented in the interim.
Philips apparently wants to avoid that.
In his latest application, Philips asks that the permits be good for 10 years, giving him “sufficient time to pursue and secure appropriate funding.”
Philips tells Eugene Weekly: “We requested extended approval to maximize flexibility.”
That 10-year timeline is an increase from his conditional use permit application last fall, when Philips asked the city to promise the permits would last for five years, for the same reasons.
Long time coming
After PeaceHealth in 2023 said it would close its University District hospital in Eugene, McKenzie-Willamette’s then-CEO David Butler in September 2024 announced his plan for a standalone West Eugene emergency department. Philips and McKenzie-Willamette then picked the site and began working up designs for the 19,000-square-foot facility. Obligatory steps included a formal meeting with city staff last June, and an August public neighborhood meeting at which community members faulted the proposal.
In September, Philips submitted a 139-page application for the conditional-use and adjustment-review permits for the community-commercial-zoned site.
But a month later, the city rejected both applications as incomplete on many fronts, including: They didn’t explain carpool and vanpool parking; lacked a complete stormwater analysis; needed a better traffic safety analysis; needed better on-site pedestrian paths and landscaping in parking lots; and needed a better description of perimeter fencing that met city height limits.
In response, Philips late last month filed a new application, this one running to 186 pages.
It asks the city to waive a handful of its development rules. Philips wants the main entrance to face on-site parking, rather than a public street; he wants fewer street trees, to make it safer for ambulances to come and go; and less parking lot landscaping.
It’s not immediately clear how long the city will take to process the new applications.
Neither McKenzie-Willamette nor Philips will explain the details of their development arrangement. It appears to entail Philips raising the money, through investor capital and commercial loans, to build the roughly $16 million facility, and then leasing it to McKenzie-Willamette.
Philips is an experienced real estate developer and landlord who owns a number of medical buildings in Eugene-Springfield, including a medical office building next to McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center in Springfield.
McKenzie-Willamette declined to respond to a Eugene Weekly inquiry about the status of the west Eugene project, except to say: “At this time we do not have any further updates.”
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.