Whitaker neighborhood (Eugene: apartment, house, to buy)

[stuckinseattle]

Originally Posted by haggardhouseelf

VRC Mall is right across the river from the Whiteaker neighborhood. In fact, it's a pleasant walk through the Owen Rose Garden, across the pedestrian bridge where you'll get to stop and look out over the Willamette if you'd like, through a pretty park along bike trails and a community garden... presto - you're at the mall. My kids and I have walked and ridden our bikes this way many, many times. Especially when they were much younger and they loved to play at Sladden Park when there was a wading pool there in the summer. We lived up near Gilham Elementary and would ride our bikes down to Whiteaker - and this was when my youngest was about 3 years old - so if we can do that, surely grown people can walk across the bridge to go to the mall when they need to shop for... mall stuff.


You've also got shopping at the 5th st market at 5th and high st (bottom right of above map)... Fifth Street Public Market :: Home

Here are some more links to shops and places of interest in or very nearby the whiteaker:

New Day Bakery

more links

smith's books

Center for Appropriate Transport

upstart crow studios

REI

ninkasi brewery

more info

PRI yum!

last friday artwalk

first friday artwalk

go to yelp and enter the whiteaker neighborhood in eugene oregon and you'll find more stuff...

maybe this link will work...

there's more... but half the fun of living in eugene is discovering the good stuff for yourself!

haggardhouseelf, I know you mean well, but this kind of attitude is what makes Eugene impossible to live in for normal people - and I don't mean Steve Pickering-normal, I mean people who expect a normal level of goods and services for a city this size. The Whiteaker is a relatively dense neighborhood for a Western city and should be a walker's paradise. The stuff you're talking about is all over too large a radius, too decentralized, and it would be even if most of it didn't, well, suck. CAT? I don't know how they stay in business - oh wait, they don't, because they're not actually a for-profit business. A bunch of overpriced mediocre restaurants who think bad acoustics and uncomfortable seating are stylish? Upstart Crow Studios can't even maintain their facility, I stopped taking my kids there because the floor was ripped up. REI is for buying camping gear, why would I even do that offline, and anyway that's barely the Whiteaker anymore. Smith Family Bookstore is no more in the Whiteaker than it's on the Left Bank.

VRC mall is bleeding tenants, is missing one whole anchor store, and is a ***** to walk or bike to, particularly with kids. The only reason there aren't more deaths in that insane parking lot is that hardly anyone goes there so it's empty.

The thing in, this conversation never goes anywhere because it's clear that there are a lot of people in Eugene who don't think appreciating the retail and restaurant scene in a city is a matter of taste. You can't keep from making it obvious that you think it's a moral matter. You think you're better than other people cause you don't like to shop. I wish you'd all harness this selfrighteousness to something more useful, like getting the wading pond back at Sladden. It's been gone for years.

[Sizzle-Chest]

I see what you're saying, but the type of neighborhood you're describing takes time to establish itself. Today's Whiteaker only recently emerged from a low-income, mixed industrial, largely undesirable neighborhood to become Eugene's pet project, and with the help of several small businesses, it might someday be the sort of place you and other people would be interested in.

[Steve Pickering]

Recently nothing. The Whitaker area has been this way for nearly 70 years.

[Sizzle-Chest]

Originally Posted by Steve Pickering

Recently nothing. The Whitaker area has been this way for nearly 70 years.

No, Whiteaker has not been in the process of gentrification for the last 70 years.

BTW, do you even live in Eugene?

[Steve Pickering]

If you call that rabble gentry, you have a strange idea of who lives there.


As to living there. I was conceived in Glenwood in 1946. Lived in Eugene, Junction City, Creswell, Cottage Grove, Springfield, and Coburg. My mother is a Skinner born up Indian Creek outside of Deadwood, and my Grandmother is buried up there. Other grandparents and great or great great, are buried in Eugene, Mapleton, Pleasant Hill and Florence.

Most recently I lived at 16th and Polk. My father and Harry Leaton (Layton) opened the first Snappy Service in the mid forties, and My father, Harry, and I, opened the last (Number 8) on Christmas Day of 1963.

I was just in "The Whit" four times this last week alone. I'll be there Sunday and maybe Saturday too. Look for the 110 cubic inch V- Twin in front of Jesco. The 300 pound gorrilla on the seat will be me.

Any more questions.

[haggardhouseelf]

Originally Posted by stuckinseattle

.... I wish you'd all harness this selfrighteousness to something more useful, like getting the wading pond back at Sladden. It's been gone for years.

Yikes! Sorry if I touched a nerve stuck...

As far as the wading pool - here ya' go:Eugene Parks Foundation Initiatives - Spray Play Parks

It'll be so cool when these finally happen.

Positive change happens, you just gotta be willing to be patient, or part of the process to make it hurry up.

[Sizzle-Chest]

Originally Posted by Steve Pickering

Any more questions.

Nope, that first part about being conceived in Glenwood pretty much explains it all. I keed, I keed!

[Steve Pickering]

AT the time Glenwood was a rather upbeat version of Whitaker. All the big nightclubs were there.

[stuckinseattle]

Originally Posted by haggardhouseelf

Yikes! Sorry if I touched a nerve stuck...

As far as the wading pool - here ya' go:Eugene Parks Foundation Initiatives - Spray Play Parks

It'll be so cool when these finally happen.

Positive change happens, you just gotta be willing to be patient, or part of the process to make it hurry up.

Or people could just move someplace functional. Eugene is fine but it's lacking in a lot of things. Either I'll put up with it or I'll move. I don't want to be part of any process. I don't get this insistence that Eugene REALLY DOES HAVE x if you just *look real hard*, with this background attitude that you're better because you don't need/want x. It's one of the big reasons people are unhappy in the PNW, locals won't be honest about the tradeoffs.

[1208]

you need a wading pond? that is why you are always on here complaining? go stand in a creek. or the one they just built at Washington park. sheesh.