You’d think in a town that calls itself Track Town USA and is home to university that birthed Nike founder Phil Knight and the 2015 Rose Bowl champion would be an easy market to raise funds for one of the town’s most iconic stadiums. This however was not the case for Civic Stadium in Eugene, Oregon that after nearly a decade in limbo finally knows what its future entails.
Civic Stadium will be transformed from a ballpark to a multi-use facility that will be home for numerous local soccer clubs as well as a field house that will be used by local youth sports organization Kidsports. The ballpark was once home to the Eugene Emeralds from 1969 until their departure in 2009.
The group that gave Civic Stadium its new future is known as Eugene Civic Alliance. Last year when Civic Stadium was being sold by its former owner the Eugene School District 4J, it was the City of Eugene that came away with the winning bid over the Eugene YMCA and Fred Meyer’s. The City of Eugene purchased the property with pretenses that a citizen-led group would then purchase Civic Stadium from them and renovates the stadium rather than demolish it. That group was the Eugene Civic Alliance.
[vimeo 112528267 w=500 h=281]
According to Eugene Civic Alliance advisory board member Nancy Webber, local attorney Art Johnson first imagined the Eugene Civic Alliance, which had its first meeting last March. The Eugene Civic Alliance now consists of nineteen members including Market Of Choice President Rick Wright, Kidsports Executive Director Bev Smith, and Chief Justice of the U.S. Federal District of Oregon Ann Aiken.
The City of Eugene agreed to buy the Civic Stadium property for $4.5 million and resell the stadium to the Eugene Civic Alliance if they came up with the funds by the end of the year to renovate the stadium.
Eugene Civic Alliance had an agreement with City of Eugene that involved the purchase of the stadium alone for $3 million that they had raised by the end of 2014 but many of the donors wanted the entire property in order to make the multi-use facility they originally envisioned said Webber.
The yearend deadline was extended to the end of February, which was enough time for the Eugene Civic Alliance to raise the remaining $1.2 million it needed in order to purchase the property and create the vision. According to Webber, seventy percent of the money raised came from donors outside the nineteen Eugene Civic Alliance advisory board members.
Webber expressed the importance of the Kidsports field house in addition to the stadium as it serves an important need in the community. “More than 15,000 kids play one or more sports through Kidsports every year. Active kids are healthier, happier and do better in school. Elementary students today get only about 50 minutes of physical education per week—far less than they need to be fit and gain lifelong movement skills and well below the 60 minutes of daily exercise recommended by the Centers for Disease Control.” Webber further went on to say, “As schools have reduced physical education, Kidsports has stepped up to fill the void. But facilities are in short supply. We simply don’t have the courts and fields to meet demand. The new field house will be a major step forward.”
Civic Stadium already has numerous potential tenants for after the stadium is renovated says Webber, including Lane United Football Club and Northwest Christian University, both of whom are currently playing at the Willamalane Center in Springfield. First on the agenda for the renovation is putting a new roof on the grandstand to stop further decay due to rain. According to Dennis Hebert, co-founder of Friends of Civic Stadium, which has been working with the Eugene Civic Alliance and the renovation of the stadium, the goal is to have the stadium portion of the project done in time for the start of Lane United FC’s 2016 season which will most likely start in May.