Editor’s Note: We’re posting this news from way-back because although it pokes a bit of fun at our vision, we seem to have accomplished our goals. (And no, no one has tried the toilet water.) This originally ran in the Register-Guard’s Real Estate Notebook on June 13, 2006.
Jeff Wilson-Charles is pioneering a green colony on the high- profile south bank of the Willamette River, next to the Ferry Street Bridge.
He's breaking ground this week on a $2.6 million, five- apartment, two-shop complex on a tiny, 7,000-square-foot lot.
But this is only the start of a village of stores and residences he's got planned for this and surrounding blocks, including the ground where Peabody's Pub and the Eugene Moving and Storage building now stand.
He's driving a team of designers, architects and builders to be as green as possible in the design and materials they use. So the first complex of buildings will also be the first in Eugene to use rainwater to flush the toilets.
The floors on all three stories will be warmed with a circulating water system that draws its heat from 300 feet below ground.
And the 25,000 board feet of timber used in the project will come from hazard and windfall trees that will be photographed and named - "Char" for one struck by lightning and "Lefty" for one growing at a list - before they're cut.
Wilson-Charles' vision for the project extends to the kind of lifestyle he hopes the buildings will foster.
He has hired a landscape architect to create a Sunset magazine- type courtyard, where he envisions educated residents who are interested in one another supping together on wild salmon and organic broccoli and basking in the warmth of community.
"It's just going to feel very gardenesque and not particularly commercial," Wilson-Charles said. "It's not going to have flowering kale and rhododendrons and a bunch of bark-o-mulch. It's going to feel like you want your backyard to feel like."
These may not be the types of details in the forefront of most developers' minds, but Wilson-Charles, 49, is not your average developer.
He's a goat farmer turned organic restaurateur (the old Stella on Willamette Street) turned wine maker (Territorial) turned developer, and this is his first project.
Wilson-Charles became a developer when he decided he should diversify his family's wealth into something "less theoretical" than stocks.
"The Federal Reserve chairman has sushi for lunch, so that means we're going to devalue the dollar and everybody's stock falls?" he said.
Wilson-Charles and his wife, Victoria, live in a 100-year-old farmhouse in Crow that was featured in the November 2004 edition of Better Homes & Gardens.
His business' name is Three Muses Group -TMG - after his three daughters, Tenaya, Makai and Glyn.
The younger girls attend Oak Hill School, he said, where the children are taught to respect themselves, respect others and respect the environment.
'It's not 'Respect the environment unless it costs too much,' ' Wilson-Charles said. "You have to run your business, your life and your development with the values you're trying to instill in your kids."
The first-time developer has a set of principles he wants to see writ into the plaster, timber and piping of his buildings. And he's willing to wait a little longer and spend a little more to see it done, say the architects, engineers and builders who work for him.
It's taken Wilson-Charles and his team five years to ready the first phase, and he doesn't seem to mind that.
He said it took him a while to build relationships and to figure out what configurations would be most likely to work for possible tenants. He hopes subsequent phases will go faster.
"We're going to be really old or we're going to have to speed it up," he joked Tuesday in conversation with general contractor Jesse Elliott with 2G Construction.
The exact size of the completed project hasn't been determined yet - Wilson-Charles is still acquiring some of the property.
Wilson-Charles said he is willing to wait 45 years to reach the payback on his investment, while typical investors expect payback at 20 to 30 years.
Also, Wilson-Charles said, the buildings have to stand a minimum of 100 years. "You see so many things slapped up these days that you know really aren't meant to last. I know I'm being sort of egotistical, but I want this to last forever," he said.
The professionals that Wilson-Charles hired said they're willing to take the time to keep the newbie developer happy because the relationships they build now will carry over to future projects - and they enjoy Wilson-Charles' willingness to try out new environmental ideas.
"You're pushing everybody's boundaries. This is far-reaching stuff," said Gene Johnson, engineer for Architecture & Engineering.
The first phase is "green" enough to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, standards, but Wilson-Charles said the certification would cost $30,000 and he'd rather spend the money on additional innovations.
It's the toilets that have the team most excited.
The design will direct 18,000 gallons of the 60,000 gallons of water expected to fall on the project roofs each year into a pair of cisterns.
The water will pass through three filters - including one that will zap it with ultraviolet light - and then be cued for when toilets flush in the apartments and commercial spaces.
That means a savings of pristine water in the McKenzie for drinking and for fish, Wilson-Charles said.
Tenants in the luxury apartments (estimated rent: $1,500 monthly) shouldn't see any difference in their toilet water.
The filters will take care of any foreign objects.
Still, the Department of Environmental Quality is requiring Wilson-Charles to post a sign on each of the toilets warning occupants not to drink the water.