City party starts end of the mall.

Byline: MARK BAKER The Register-Guard

The downtown mall is dead.

Thirty-two years after its completion, the last chunk of the Eugene Mall - a three-block stretch of Broadway between Charnelton and Oak streets - will reopen to motor vehicle traffic Monday morning.

On a Eugene Celebration weekend when walkers still ruled, most seemed to welcome Broadway's new look.

"I think it's beautiful," said Patt Rollins of Eugene, as she walked with friends Saturday morning along Broadway, its two skinny lanes divided by a landscaped median. "I absolutely think it's high time to open the street. For the business owners downtown, we have to revitalize it. And if it's traffic that revitalizes it, then so be it."

Indeed, this year's Celebration signals more than the 20th anniversary of the event that we now call "Northwest of Normal." It marks the hopeful rejuvenation of Eugene's downtown business core, city officials and business leaders said.

"I think it's going to mean a lot from an economic standpoint and an image standpoint," said Russ Brink, executive director of Downtown Eugene Inc., a nonprofit association that supports property and business owners downtown. "The mall had become synonymous with the failure of downtown. But we don't have to talk about that anymore, because the mall's gone."

City leaders will hold a grand opening on Oct. 4 at 5:30 p.m. at the Broadway Plaza, corner of Broadway and Willamette Street, to officially recognize Broadway's reopening and the mall's death.

Eugene voters passed a ballot measure last September that gave the city the go-ahead to reopen and redesign Broadway, and to find the funding for the project.

The city provided $700,000 in road development funds and the county about $1.3 million, Mayor Jim Torrey said. In addition, Downtown Eugene Inc. helped raise $200,000 from downtown property owners, Brink said.

Reopening Broadway to traffic is no miracle cure for downtown's economic woes, leaders acknowledge, but it's a start in the right direction.

"It's not a panacea," said City Councilor Scott Meisner, whose Ward 7 includes the three-block stretch of Broadway. "But I think it's part of the solution. This combined with the public library opening will make a difference."

Meisner sees irony in celebrating the reopening of Broadway, when in reality, "it's a closing celebration." A closing of the last part of a pedestrian mall that some believe killed business downtown.

The mall was supposed to be "a new and innovative approach" when city leaders developed the idea in the 1960s, said Denny Braud, a city project manager who oversaw Broadway's reopening. "And of course we all know it hasn't turned out that way."

There are still a half-dozen empty storefronts on Broadway between Charnelton and Oak streets, Brink said, and the Centre Court Building - formerly a J.C. Penney department store - at the corner of Broadway and Willamette has no tenants.

"I think adjacent buildings will redevelop (now)," Brink said. "And I think there will be increased economic activity that we would not have seen without the reopening of the street."

Eugene City Councilor Betty Taylor, a lone council opponent of the reopening, said she still doesn't think the project was worth the cost.

"It's not a magic thing," she said.

"I hope it results in what people want, but I liked the mall the way it was."

During the Eugene Celebration, the Broadway Plaza has been filled with tables, food and beverage booths and a stage for performers.

But come Monday morning, cars will glide across the plaza's bricks.

Taylor had other ideas for Broadway, such as devoting the street to a different school each week for musical and art activities "which would have gotten a lot of people downtown," or to display children's artwork in empty storefront windows.

But Councilor David Kelly is all for the reopening.

"We feel it's a significant step forward for revitalization," he said. "I'm really glad we instigated it and I'm glad the voters passed it. It fits into the overall downtown plan for the future."

Three years ago, Torrey told citizens in a State of the City address that the only way to "make downtown work" was to reopen Broadway. The last part of the old mall still had an unwelcome feel to many, he said.

After voters approved the project last year, Torrey told then-City Manager Jim Johnson and new Public Works Director Kurt Corey that the work needed to be done by this year's Celebration. `To Kurt Corey's credit, he said, `We can do it.'

"I could not be more happy about that," Torrey said. "What we now have is going to be the revitalization of downtown. I urge the citizens of Eugene to just drive down there. It will make that part of the city open to everyone now."