For anyone who's ever lived Eugene, or attended the UofO in the last 60+ years, sad news today.
After years of activism to save our WPA-constructed wooden grandstand, Civic Stadium, fire was reported at 5.26pm Monday afternoon. All 3 local TV stations are carrying live feed, social media are also "ablaze"! It's about 6.30 now and the structure is completely gone.
This used to be the home of the San Diego Padres' AA(?) farm team, but owners moved to newer digs about 5 years ago, on part of the University of Oregon's Autzen Stadium complex. We did not follow them to plastic-land.
The structure of very-old-growth timber was fully engaged within 5-10 minutes. My family sat through years of games there, in weather as hot and dry as today (90), and it never caught fire before! Frankly, I'm wondering just how extensive an arson investigation is going to be done!
There had been many years of harsh contention about what to do with the hard-to-maintain structure and prime real estate, after the team moved out, with would-be developers on one side, and community activists who wanted to save part of our town's history on the other. A solution had just been reached within the last 6 months which would preserve public control, which was NOT on the developers' side.