In the past few months, a park has started emerging along the riverfront downtown.

Where there was dirt and concrete in February, there’s now an overlook with the start of a pavilion. A boardwalk and most of what will be the riverwalk curve along the bank of the Willamette River across from Alton Baker Park.

The 3-acre park, part of the larger riverfront project, is set to open in mid-August, said Emily Proudfoot, a principal landscape architect for the city who’s managing the park project.

Staff had hoped for a July opening, but Proudfoot said between delivery delays and hot weather, that’s been pushed back to August.

Still, the park is almost completed, Proudfoot said during a news conference earlier this month, drawing a round of applause.

A 1-acre plaza will follow later, with construction starting in 2023. And, thanks to state funding, it will match the community’s vision rather than being scaled back because of cost limitations.

‘Most ambitious park project ever’

Transforming the edge of the former Eugene Water & Electric Board operations yard into a world-class park has been the city’s “most ambitious park project ever,” Proudfoot said.

The project, now set to cost around $18 million in total, includes re-grading the riverbank, pulling the bike path away from the bank, building more overlooks and a wooden deck, and engaging artists to create interpretive pieces.

The park will stretch about a third of a mile, from the DeFazio Bridge to east of the former steam plant and Eighth Avenue.

It will have multiple overlooks, including one at the end of an extended Fifth Avenue, where the city held a press conference at the beginning of July.

That overlook will be the most striking, Proudfoot said earlier this year.

At the overlooks and throughout the park, there will be interpretive artwork. The pieces all will be cast in bronze and center around the three themes of the river — industry, ecology and culture.

State funding will help city build plaza as envisioned

Through the park is set to open soon, the city is delaying construction on a 1-acre plaza.

That work will start in 2023, Proudfoot said, when there are eyes on the park once residential buildings start going up.

Until then, she said, the city will put in a simple lawn with open paths, lighting and benches.

What the plaza will look like has been in limbo for months as the city looked to fill a funding gap.

Officials had approved $4 million in funding for the plaza but needed to set aside another $4.5 million to build what community members said they want to see, Will Dowdy told councilors this year.

Dowdy, who co-heads community development efforts, told officials the city could still build the plaza with the $4 million but wouldn’t have been able to include the water features and other items residents said they want during public engagement on the project.

Then the local delegation to the Oregon Legislature stepped in.

Among $11 million in state funding going to the city for various projects is $5 million to close the funding gap for the phase of the park project that includes the plaza and playground.

That will enable the city to make an investment in the future and “the city we want to be,” Mayor Lucy Vinis said.

“It’s huge for us to be able to fulfill our hope,” she said, and “enormously powerful” to give the community something wonderful to look forward to in the coming years.

That hope has been in the community for a long time, said State Rep. Nancy Nathanson, a Democrat who represents part of Eugene and unincorporated areas north of the city.

“It can take a long, long time to transform a physical space and dig up the ground and dig up the money to achieve really big ideas,” Nathanson said.

For more than 20 years, she said, the city has had the goal of connecting the downtown to the river and making it so people at the river’s edge would know they’re in a great city and people in the downtown would know they’re near a great river.

“That’s what this place has created,” she said of the park.

The money will help the city put in the water features and other items on the community’s wish list, but plans don’t yet include an item state Sen. James Manning wants to see.

“I wanted to put up a merry-go-round,” Manning said, prompting chuckles.

Manning, a Democrat who represents the north and west parts of Eugene along with Santa Clara and Junction City, said he isn’t throwing the idea in the trash just yet and while he doesn’t have the answers now, he’ll be following up.