Birthing a neighborhood.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Not one spade of dirt has yet been turned, but the new federal courthouse neighborhood is slowly, surely taking shape in the minds of city planners.

It's hard to envision a gleaming, sleek new $70 million federal courthouse and surrounding clusters of housing, businesses, stores and restaurants on a site still occupied by a ramshackle old cannery. But a year of deliberations by city planning officials has produced design concepts that have broad promise and appeal.

Earlier this week, the Eugene Planning Commission wrapped up a final conceptual design for the new courthouse district. The plan calls for a new street parallel to railroad tracks running through the neighborhood that would help frame an internal grid of streets. It also provides for the revival of the long-buried Eugene Millrace. Vanished from the planning horizon is a new University of Oregon basketball arena, a pipe dream floated late in the planning process.

Of all the design challenges involved in planning the courthouse district, connecting it to the existing downtown from which it is now isolated is the most critical. For the new neighborhood to flourish, the city must make certain that the lifeblood of vehicular and pedestrian traffic can flow freely between the downtown and the new courthouse area.

Two schemes emerged to accomplish that job. The first would route all traffic from Sixth and Seventh avenues through the heart of the new neighborhood on a rebuilt Eighth Avenue. The second, which won the favor of the majority of planning commissioners, would put a new two-lane, one-way street along the railroad tracks. The new roadway would carry westbound traffic on Sixth Avenue and would intersect with Franklin Boulevard at Hilyard Street.

While the City Council will no doubt take a look at both options, the commission's choice of the Sixth Avenue realignment appears to be the right one. It would significantly ease traffic on Mill Street, which, in turn, would create better pedestrian crossings. More importantly, it would provide the framework for the internal grid of streets necessary to lay the groundwork for new development.

Critics of the plan protest that it would devour property that could be used for development, and that it would create an unnecessary barrier between the courthouse neighborhood and riverfront property that is viewed as a future growth area. The argument overlooks the hard reality that traffic flow is essential to the successful development of the district. Doubters need merely consider the work now underway to reopen West Broadway and restore traffic - and economic vitality - to that withered arm of the downtown mall.

The Sixth Avenue realignment also keeps options open for resurrecting the long-buried Eugene Millrace, which would run in a new channel near Ferry Street, east of the new courthouse. While the price tag for the millrace is high - estimates run as high as $20 million - city officials cannot afford to bypass the opportunity to create a pivotal amenity that would link the new neighborhood to the riverfront.

However, city planners should rethink some of millrace-overkill designs that would tie up much of the 4.1-acre triangle of city-owned land east of the courthouse for a broad millrace corridor that would include large walkways and plantings. The millrace should be kept in scale and be incorporated into the design with the idea of enhancing, and not limiting, the private development needed to produce tax revenue. City Council member Scott Meisner, another member of the Planning Commission, was justified in warning against "moving toward a theme park and not a neighborhood."

Meanwhile, the decision to drop a new UO basketball arena from the courthouse district mix was disappointing but understandable. With the university neck deep in its expansion of Autzen Stadium, the timing is not right for moving forward with a $100-million-plus replacement for venerable McArthur Court. An arena would also consume much of the space needed to build the mix of offices, cafes and housing needed to pay property taxes into the urban renewal district that will cover the cost of neighborhood improvements.

Eventually, although it's hard to picture it actually happening, a new courthouse will some day rise up at the old cannery site and around it a new neighborhood. The city's design work promises to make that day well worth the wait.