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Eugene to explore options for'daylighting' buried millrace - The Register-Guard, Eugene, ... Page 1 of 2 <br /> www.registerguard.com I @ The Register-Guard, Eugene,Oregon <br /> November 11, 2003 <br /> Eugene to explore options for <br /> 'daylighting' buried millrace <br /> By Joe Mosley <br /> The Register-Guard <br /> The Eugene Millrace may yet see the light of day. <br /> In a unanimous vote, city councilors directed the staff Monday <br /> night to explore options for designing and financing a "full <br /> daylighting" of a quarter-mile section of the old waterway that <br /> has been buried for 51 years in a 30-inch pipe. <br /> Findings are to be brought back to the council next June. <br /> "One of the things this body ought to be in the business of, <br /> occasionally, is dreaming big," City Councilor David Kelly said. <br /> "And this is a big dream." <br /> As envisioned in tentative plans for the new federal courthouse <br /> neighborhood at the southeast end of the Ferry Street Bridge, <br /> an uncovered millrace would provide an open water feature <br /> flowing through property south and east of the courthouse. <br /> The project was compared Monday night to San Antonio's <br /> Riverwalk, but on a much smaller scale. The Riverwalk is a <br /> channel diverted from the San Antonio River, and has become <br /> that Texas city's center of nightlife and tourism. <br /> A preliminary estimate of the millrace project's costs is $20 <br /> million, although several councilors agreed that the only way it <br /> will happen is with broad-based community support and fund <br /> raising, combined with congressional assistance and possibly a <br /> bond measure. <br /> Councilors ruled out asking voters to pay for the entire project <br /> with a property tax-backed bond measure, but also rejected a <br /> cheaper alternative to the full-daylighting plan. <br /> The other option presented Monday night called for a series of <br /> perhaps four symbolic fountains and pools - at a cost of $4 <br /> million to $6 million - along the route of the buried millrace. <br /> "I feel like I was set up to hate that," Councilor Scott Meisner <br /> said. "It just doesn't do anything for me, at all." <br /> tMeisner said he would support further study of uncovering the <br /> millrace, but doesn't expect city officials and staff members to <br /> http://www.registerguard.com/cgi-bin/printStory.py?name=d 1.cr.millrace.1 1 1 1&date=20031... 11/12/03 <br />