Arlie & Company

Press Releases

Scrap yard scrapped for retail space

Released: 02/19/2008

By Randi Bjornstad, The Register-Guard

 

A former scrap yard on the south side of West 11th Avenue will be transformed during the next few months into a new commercial center featuring a lube stop, six-bay gas station, restaurant with a drive-through, convenience store and as many as four small retail shops.

 

Sadie Dressekie, marketing manager for Arlie & Co., said the development firm has signed Oil Can Henry’s as a tenant in the 4.7-acre center and is talking with several other possible tenants.

 

Arlie already has developed an adjacent half-acre parcel with the My Coffee restaurant, at 3802 W. 11th Ave.

 

Dressekie said the first two tenants in the new commercial center, Oil Can Henry’s and the fuel station, should be up and running by early fall.

 

“We’re talking to a couple of companies about locating a restaurant there — we want it to be something more interesting than the usual kind of fast-food place that you often see out West 11th,” she said. “We think there are a lot of people who work in that area who would like to have more choices for a quick, but good, lunch.”

 

The new center has an additional advantage, as far as attracting nondriving customers, of being both on Lane Transit District’s bus line on the north and the bike path that runs along the Amazon Channel on the south, she said.

 

Preparing the commercial site for redevelopment involved quite a bit of environmental cleanup because of oil and other hazardous substances from the old scrap yard, Dressekie said.

 

“We had to do a lot of (reclamation) to satisfy the Department of Environmental Quality, to get a ‘no further action needed’ certification from them,” she said.

 

The retail space that will be built on the site could accommodate between one and four businesses, depending on size.

 

At this point, “we have nothing particular in mind about who will be going in there,” Dressekie said.

 

The build-out value of the project can not be estimated at this time, she said.

 

The city of Eugene recently approved a traffic impact analysis of the site, with the condition that two 35-foot full-access driveways be provided to West 11th Avenue.