Riverfront Park Plaza
With the recent opening of the Downtown Riverfront Park, we are turning our attention to the adjacent future plaza space.
Plaza design will be completed in 2023, with one year of construction anticipated to begin in Spring of 2024. When the riverfront property is fully developed, the one-acre park plaza will be nestled between multi-family housing buildings and a restaurant.
Tell Your Millrace Story!
An interpretive art piece based on Millrace history is being created for the future Downtown Riverfront Plaza. It will tell stories about time spent in, on, or along the Millrace and other waterways in Eugene.
The Millrace was a stream originally dug as a water engine to power early industry such as saw and flour mills. It later became a popular recreation spot for canoeing and ice skating. The Millrace currently outfalls back into the Willamette River through large pipes running beneath the new Riverfront Park.
The interpretive art piece will feature embedded and engraved or bronze text. Reflecting a variety of different voices and languages, the words will be typeset expressively into patterns or ripples in or around the plaza water feature. This text will weave together quotations from newspaper clippings, songs, poetry and, ideally, your words too.
Do you have memories or experiences from the Millrace or other waterways in Eugene that you’d like to share? Your words will be a valuable addition to our collective histories within the new piece!