Summer is coming! Get ready for some nighttime noise, downtown Eugene residents!

Powerwashing noise, to be exact.

Lane Transit District plans to powerwash parts of its downtown bus hub at Willamette Street and 11th Avenue. For safety reasons, it wants to do the work at night, between 9 pm and 6 am.

The transit agency has asked the city for a temporary noise variance to do the work in the wee hours. The cleaning would take place June 14 to August 28.

Will it disturb anyone? Perhaps.

The station is across 11th from the Olive Plaza senior housing high-rise, and kitty-corner from the Lane Community College dorms.

The powerwashing will be done on structural steel elements of the bus station, to prep them for painting, says LTD spokesperson Anni Katz.

The station has a lot of exposed steel, mostly on elaborate entryway arches and outdoor covered passenger shelter structures.

Nighttime powerwashing “minimizes disruption to daily operations, reduces impacts to riders and the general public, and allows crews to work safely and efficiently in areas with high [daytime] foot traffic,” Katz says in an email. The agency has done the washing and painting work several times since it opened the station in 1998, she says.

Take 5 on 6th

A franchisee of Take 5, a North Carolina-based giant in the oil and lube service business, is looking to build an outlet in west Eugene, the chain’s first in Western Oregon.

Take 5 has about 1,200 drive-through oil change centers across North America, but only a single one in Oregon, in Ontario at the eastern edge of the state, according to Take 5’s website.

The chain has several Oregon centers on the drawing boards, including the one planned for West 6th Avenue and Chambers Street in west Eugene, business filings indicate. About half of Take 5’s outlets are owned by the company, and the other half by franchisees. The west Eugene one would be owned by a franchisee and is slated to be built this year, says Diana Jacobson, a spokesperson for Take 5.

Eugene already has a slew of places that offer oil changes. These include Lube It USA, Valvoline Instant Oil Change, Walmart Auto Services and Jiffy Lube, plus many full-service auto businesses. No matter.

The proposed site is a vacant half-acre lot owned by Eugene businessman Lutfi Thabet.

Thabet bought the half-acre and an adjacent vacant half-acre for an undisclosed sum in 2018, the deeds show.

The parcel is at the southeast corner of the Chambers/6th intersection.

It’s a very busy spot. Five blocks to the north, Chambers turns into the Chambers Connector bridge, and then into River Road. West 6th carries traffic westward out of central Eugene and up Highway 99.

That neighborhood seems to be a happening place. A block to the west of the proposed lube site is a vacant lot where McKenzie Willamette Medical Center plans to build a standalone emergency department.

Take 5 is part of publicly traded Driven Brands, a conglomerate of auto-related service and parts companies.

The proposed site is zoned community commercial. Oil change operations are allowed in that zone. The identity of the franchisee is unclear. A Portland development company has asked the city to confirm that a Take 5 is allowed on the land.

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.