Arlie & Company

Arlie & Co. says it is moving ahead with building up the third and fourth city blocks of its 11-block “urban village” in northeast Eugene.

The Eugene-based company says it plans to add 118 living units in that phase. The company initially earmarked those blocks for condominiums, but is reconsidering that plan in light of the flagging condo market.

In April, for example, 212 condominiums were listed for sale in the Eugene-Springfield area. Nine units sold that month.

“It’s really a question of timing more than anything — trying to see where the bottom to the market is,” said Arlie marketing director Sadie Dressekie.

Company officials will meet with city planners today to roll out plans for the new urban-style blocks, which will hold multiple three- and four-story buildings totaling 118 new living units.

Some buildings may have parking garages underneath. Some will feature combined working and living spaces.

The new blocks include a quarter-acre lot that the company plans to ring with apartment and/or condominium buildings and to designate as a park with a fountain for both gazing and water play.

Park walkways are to be embedded with text, although the company hasn’t decided which words from literature, poetry or other sources it might use.

The quotations reflect the literary theme in the street names in the Crescent Village development: Longfellow Place, Kipling Way, Tennyson Avenue, Melville Way and Lord Byron Place.

That was company co-owner Suzanne Arlie’s idea, Dressekie said.

The company is exploring whether to ask the city to maintain the pocket park as a public space or to keep it private, said Teresa Bishow, the company’s planning manager.

“We don’t know what the city response will be. It’s challenging when you do an urban plaza. Are they public or privately owned and who maintains them? What are the decisions that have to be made? We have a lot to talk with the city about,” she said.

With the exception of a couple of buildings that are now or soon to be under way, construction on most of the third and fourth blocks will begin in about a year, Bishow said.

The company has not yet projected a completion date for that section, but the build-out of the entire 40-acre Crescent Village development is slated for 2012.

For the coming phase, if the company opts to bring some or many of the units onto the market as apartments rather than condos, the demand should be “very good,” Dressekie said.

The development’s first four-story apartment building opened in November and was filled two months ago, she said.

The second four-story apartment building opened May 6 and is now half full, she said.

The company is marketing those units at $749 monthly for a 471-square-foot studio on up to $1,798 for a premium three-bedroom, two-bath top floor loft.

“They basically are the top of the market. Somebody has to be the top of the market, and those are extremely nice units,” said Rick Duncan, a real estate analyst with appraiser Duncan & Brown in Eugene.

Gas prices of $4-plus per gallon make urban-style living with shopping underneath attractive, Dressekie said. “People are seeing not just the lifestyle benefits of living in a place like this but also the benefit on their pocketbook,” she said.

The company plans about 100 more living units in the fifth and sixth blocks, which are just north of the third and fourth blocks.

A series of office projects will fill in the vacant blocks to the west — when companies come looking for build-to-suit properties.

“Our goal is to always have projects opening up and being occupied, in the queue, under construction and on the drawing board,” Bishow said.

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Urban Village Begins Next Phase