City plans artsy look for street downtown.

Byline: Jack Moran The Register-Guard

Those high-pitched "clinking" noises heard at Broadway and Willamette Street in downtown Eugene will soon disappear - along with several thousand bricks that became Broadway's travel lanes in 2002 when vehicle traffic returned to the downtown street after a 31-year hiatus.

The inch-thin, patio-style bricks were originally installed by the city in 1996 for pedestrian-only use as part of the project creating Broadway Plaza. But now they're crumbling. City officials blame the failure on the pounding the bricks have taken from vehicles since Broadway reopened.

The brick layer "just wasn't built to handle traffic loads," said Patrick Cox, a city engineer in charge of a project to replace the short section of roadway. Plans call for removing the bricks and replacing them with decorative, multicolored concrete.

Cox said Eugene officials in 2002 decided against replacing Broadway's bricks when they opened the street to vehicular traffic, because they wanted to preserve as much of the plaza's original design as possible.

But loosened and cracked bricks were "noticed almost immediately, and it's gotten worse over time," Cox said.

It's not that city officials didn't realize the bricks might not stand up to heavier use.

"What happened was that people crossed their fingers and hoped it would work," Cox said.

City road crews have kept a close eye on the brick stretch, pasting together unstable sections with unsightly black asphalt patches. Still, some of the bricks are loose enough to pick up. And every time a car or truck rumbles across the street, the movement of bricks causes clinking sounds to ring out.

Eugene officials have finally decided that enough is enough. They've budgeted $140,000 for the replacement project, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 10, a day after downtown's Eugene Celebration ends. The job is expected to take about four weeks to complete.

Broadway Plaza's original designer, Scott Wylie of Springfield, has been rehired by the city to help create an attractive - and sturdy - concrete street.

Wylie's plan calls for the use of six different colors of concrete that change from purple to orange as the design moves away from the intersection of Broadway and Willamette.

"One of the challenges was coming up with something that works visually with the brick design," Wylie said. "What we have echoes some of the geometry of the brick layout."

The project's contractor, Brown Contracting of Eugene, will be responsible for the concrete pouring. Workers will be careful to adhere to Wylie's vision.

With just 3,600 square feet of roadway set to be replaced, Cox said he considers the job to be "a tiny road project, but a huge piece of art" that requires the cooperation of technical engineers, construction workers and a designer with a creative touch.

While Willamette Street and the sidewalks surrounding the intersection will remain open during the replacement project, closures along Broadway are planned. Cox said a precise schedule has not been established, but that he expects Broadway to be shut down east of Willamette for about two weeks, then closed west of the intersection for several days.

Even if ongoing plans for redeveloping West Broadway come to fruition, Cox said he believes the new, multicolored cement roadway will remain.

"We anticipate this road will be good for generations, and not just for a few years," he said.