Gilham Park, 1997 - Laserfiche WebLink

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MEMORANDUM November xx, 1992 TO: Micheal Gleason FROM: Chris Andersen, Jan Childs SUBJECT: Gilham Park Trade An opportunity exists to improve the location of Gilham Park in the Willa- kenzie Area. The Willakenzie Refinement Plan, adopted more recently than the Eugene Parks and Recreation Plan, identifies a park location east of Gilham School, central to a neighborhood bounded by major arterial streets. Fur- ther, the Willakenzie Plan does not recognize the Gilham Road site as a park location. A developer, in response to the Willakenzie Plan, has offered to trade the current site on Gilham Road for the parcel east of the school designated in the Willakenzie Plan. In order to allow road construction next summer, he is asking for a prompt response. We believe we can move ahead by administrative authority (no review /approval needed by commissions or Council), based on this proposal being consistent with the provisions of the Willakenzie Plan. The Parks Plan, in its next update, would be amended to be consistent with this aspect of the Willakenzie Plan. The Parks Plan contains policies supportive of this move, notably on page 14: C.5 When possible, locate neighborhood parks in the center of neighbor- hoods served, to encourage access by foot or bicycle. C.7 Continue to evaluate properties originally purchased as parklands that may no longer be needed, and determine their sale or exchange value for parklands needed in other areas. A staff member involved with parkland acquisition in the '70's indicated that, to a certain degree, some of the acquisitions amounted to landbanking. Without actual street layouts known, it was felt that refinements could come later as development plans became known. We are now at that time. Two issues keep this from being the simplest trade, but are not judged suffi- cient enough to not proceed. First is that the new park site needs to be only half the size of the current one. An opportunity exists to transfer the value of the other half (3 acres, m /1) to another location targeted for a neighborhood park in both plans. While the developer has offered a price substantially above market in an attempt to cast the most positive image to the traae,''we are proposing that he simply purchase the second site and deed it to t City to avoid any technical problems arising from a pure land sale. The second issue is that the current site is used for a dog off -leash area. While interest has not been the same as in south Eugene, staff expect that area residents would want to retain that feature at one of the new sites.