The Oregon Ducks’ new indoor football practice facility is one step closer to becoming a reality.

The Eugene city council voted to authorize City Manager Sarah Medary to finalize an agreement with the University of Oregon on a proposed land swap, which will allow UO to reroute Leo Harris Parkway and build a new 170,000-square-foot indoor practice facility and maintain two outdoor practice fields.

The swap calls for UO to trade eight acres south of the Willamette River to the city for four acres of undeveloped land across from the UO athletics complex, which the university previously owned in the 1970s and ‘80s.

While outlining terms of the proposed exchange, Denny Braud, the Eugene city planning & development administration executive director, said the land the city was acquiring is “a beautiful piece of property” of “pretty comparable value” to that being reacquired by UO.

It’s yet to be determined how the city intends to use the land it will acquire once the deal is finalized.

Monday’s hourlong discussion about the proposed exchange centered on the affect to parking, especially adjacent to the Eugene Science Center, and the $1 million UO has pledged toward a joint project “of mutually agreed upon community benefit” with the city.

The indoor facility project was announced in Oct. 2021 and was scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2024, though it’s not clear whether the 15-plus months of negotiations with the city has altered that timeline.

—The Oregonian