Neigh­bor­hood lead­ers argue against sub­di­vi­sion in Eugene

Alan Torres, Eugene Register-Guard | USA TODAY NETWORK

10 Sep 2026

The Register-Guard covered the 9/2 Town Hall with a WELL-WRITTEN and WELL RESEARCHED front page article covering all the major points of our opposition to Floral Hill Terrace. THANK YOU reporter Alan Torres! Read the article below.
Write a Letter to the Editor thanking them for the good coverage and pointing out the issues that matter the most to you. (See the bottom of this article for more media resources.)

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Lead­ers of a Eugene neigh­bor­hood asso­ci­ation laid out their case against an afford­able hous­ing project planned in the east hills at a packed meet­ing Sept. 2.

The planned Floral Hill Ter­race devel­op­ment would sub­divide a 3.9-acre lot off Floral Hill Drive east of Hendricks Park to cre­ate 16 single-fam­ily homes and six four-plexes in four rows. The 40-units of hous­ing would range in price between $230,000 and $275,000.

Mem­bers of the Laurel Hill Val­ley neigh­bor­hood asso­ci­ation com­mit­tee that stud­ied the project laid out their con­cerns with it the devel­op­ment and other people agreed with presenters, say­ing they thought developer DevNW should pur­sue another loc­a­tion for the project.

Neigh­bor­hood lead­ers made the case that:

● The 40-unit devel­op­ment would be too dense for the nar­row side­walk-less Floral Hill Drive, which is 17feet wide at its nar­row­est points.

● The Laurel Hill Val­ley’s status as a fire risk area makes it unsuit­able for such a dense devel­op­ment, espe­cially when the design DevNW has sub­mit­ted only plans for one entrance/exit to the sub­di­vi­sion.

● The road and water infra­struc­ture are too old.

● The struc­ture under which the homes must be pur­chased is unfair to the people who would buy them.

Nar­row road a con­cern

A recur­ring opin­ion expressed by people at the meet­ing was the view that Floral Hill Ter­race would be too dense for where it’s planned, par­tic­u­larly because of the nar­row size of Floral Hill Drive.

Presenters said the increased traffic, both dur­ing con­struc­tion and once people are liv­ing there, would make the street unsafe. Res­id­ents were con­cerned about reg­u­lar traffic pos­ing a risk and the poten­tial for traffic to delay emer­gency response, par­tic­u­larly if people are try­ing to evac­u­ate while fire­fight­ers are try­ing to enter the area.

They poin­ted out that with approx­im­ately 80 homes on the street already, the sub­di­vi­sion may rep­res­ent roughly a 50% increase in res­id­ents and traffic.

Karen Saxe, senior dir­ector of policy, advocacy and strategy for DevNW, said that des­pite the oppos­i­tion shown at the meet­ing, she’s also heard from res­id­ents who sup­port the devel­op­ment. That includes the seller, who Saxe described as an adja­cent prop­erty owner “who envi­sioned a mod­er­ate-income neigh­bor­hood like the one in which he grew up.”

Saxe objec­ted to the idea the project is too dense, say­ing that land use laws would allow DevNW to pur­sue up to 56 homes on the lot and it is plan­ning 40 instead.

DevNW plans to widen Floral Hill Drive adja­cent to the sub­di­vi­sion, but not on the rest of the street. Saxe said “addi­tional street improve­ment would be up to the City of Eugene.” The city’s Cap­ital Improve­ment Plan, which lists con­struc­tion projects planned through 2031, does not include any work on Floral Hill Drive.

Crit­ics cite fire risk

The Eugene Spring­field Fire Depart­ment recently pro­duced a regional fire plan that iden­ti­fied the Laurel Hill Val­ley neigh­bor­hood as a part of the “wild­land urban inter­face” where the city meets the forest and cre­ates a fire risk. Accord­ing to KVAL, last sum­mer there was a house fire on Floral Hill Drive and nar­row, wind­ing roads in the area meant the home was a total loss by the time fire­fight­ers arrived.

Laurel Hill Val­ley res­id­ents felt this fire risk is worsened by the area’s water infra­struc­ture, which they under­stand to be approx­im­ately 100 years old, as well as Eugene and Spring­field’s recent announce­ment that they plan to sep­ar­ate their fire depart­ments.

Saxe said DevNW plans to upgrade water infra­struc­ture serving the sub­di­vi­sion to code, and incor­por­ate fire-con­scious ele­ments into the devel­op­ment such as defens­ible space. She said that devel­op­ing the lot would ulti­mately make the street less of a fire risk because it would replace the “cur­rent field of dry grasses and dying trees.”

Laurel Hill Val­ley res­id­ents also said they thought the loc­a­tion for the sub­di­vi­sion is a land­slide risk, based on one of the doc­u­ments DevNW sub­mit­ted to the city.

The applic­a­tion DevNW sub­mit­ted was for a sub­di­vi­sion. Under the typ­ical land use pro­cess the city eval­u­ates the sub­di­vi­sion applic­a­tion for land-use com­pat­ib­il­ity, and future build­ing applic­a­tions would include eval­u­ations from Eugene Water & Elec­tric Board staff and the Eugene Spring­field Fire Mar­shal’s office.

Own­er­ship model under fire

Under Ore­gon’s Com­munity Land Trust Model, homeown­ers own their indi­vidual homes while the land under them is held in “com­mon.” The land is exempt but homeown­ers pay prop­erty taxes on the home and a monthly fee, in this case $125 per month for the single­fam­ily homes, to main­tain com­mon areas.

When a homeowner sells, they can only add 25% of the appre­ci­ated value. For example, if a home was bought for $200,000 and was worth $300,000 when sold, the homeowner could only sell it for up to $225,000.

Laurel Hill res­id­ents were crit­ical of this model and described it as one in which the “owner is tak­ing on risk and respons­ib­il­ity but not get­ting the rewards of full own­er­ship.”

Saxe described this is a way to keep homes afford­able for future gen­er­a­tions.

“CLT own­ers might not get as much appre­ci­ated value as from mar­ket-rate homeown­er­ship,” she said, but that model is only open to the people with the highest incomes. “We work with hun­dreds of aspir­ing first time buy­ers who have good credit and stable income — but their income is $70,000 per year, not $130,000 per year, so they’re stuck in the rental mar­ket until a CLT homes is avail­able.”

Developer resub­mit­ting applic­a­tion to city

In June, the city rejec­ted DevNW’s land use applic­a­tion for Floral Hill Ter­race as incom­plete. DevNW has until Decem­ber to resub­mit.

Floral Hill is an example of “middle hous­ing,” a broad cat­egory that includes any form of hous­ing denser than a single-fam­ily home but less dense than an apart­ment com­plex. In 2019, the Ore­gon Legis­lature passed House Bill 2001 which leg­al­ized middle hous­ing in single-fam­ily zones like this one.

The Ore­gon Legis­lature passed another pack­age of hous­ing reform bills this year, one of which estab­lished a stream­lined pro­cess for land use applic­a­tions for hous­ing devel­op­ments that meet cer­tain require­ments. DevNW is pur­su­ing that pro­cess.

Laurel Hill Val­ley res­id­ents strongly objec­ted to these laws, which they saw as undemo­cratic for tak­ing away the input they would have had if this project had been pro­posed earlier.

“We want to provide inform­a­tion, we want to make pub­lic com­ment, we want city appeal … those are all taken away,” said Joe Young, chair of Laurel Hill Val­ley Cit­izens’ Floral Hill Ter­race Response Com­mit­tee. “With the middle hous­ing laws … developers are steam­rolling com­munit­ies with infill dens­ity.”

Young said he shared the neigh­bor­hood’s con­cerns with city plan­ners and was told the pub­lic com­ment period isn’t yet open. As he under­stands it, there will be one 14-day com­ment period after the city deems the applic­a­tion com­plete, but that will be the only oppor­tun­ity for neigh­bors to weigh in.

There are wet­lands in the area, which means DevNW would likely need a Depart­ment of State Lands per­mit to dis­turb the wet­lands which could be appealed through the path used by oppon­ents of the Amazon ware­house.

Floral Hill Ter­race was passed over in the last round of city Afford­able Hous­ing Trust Fund awards but can apply again. It is cur­rently on the waitl­ist for pos­sible fund­ing from the state Local Innov­a­tion and Fast Track pro­gram.

Alan Torres cov­ers local gov­ern­ment for the Register-Guard. He can be reached by email at atorres@register­guard.com, on X @alan­fryet­orres or on Red­dit at u/AlfrytRG.

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