Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR)

civic challenges tell ups & downs.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

It was neck and neck during five days of online voting, but ultimately readers of The Register-Guard declared the ongoing "hospital tales" involving PeaceHealth and McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center to be the top local story of 2007.

Running a very close second: the twists and turns of redevelopment strategies for downtown Eugene.

Construction continued apace on PeaceHealth's mammoth new hospital, RiverBend, slated to open in north Springfield next August. But we suspect the year's biggest hospital news, in the eyes of many readers, was the acknowledgment by McKenzie-Willamette's new corporate owners that they are looking at alternative sites for a new hospital in addition to the back nine holes of the RiverRidge Golf Course.

That site, off North Delta Highway in north Eugene, has drawn stiff opposition from neighbors and the city of Eugene's planning commission.

A total of 215 readers responded to the newspaper's invitation to rate the year's top local stories. Nearly twice as many readers identified downtown as the year's top story as did those who cited hospital developments, yet the latter earned more total votes in a 1-through-10 scoring scheme. Our speculation: Most readers felt the hospitals merited mention somewhere in their top 10 lists, while downtown's fate was seen by many as either really big news - or barely news at all.

The self-selected reader poll is unequivocally unscientific - but no more so than each year's newsroom poll (see related story). Readers were asked to identify their top 10 stories from a list of 25 culled from this year's front pages of The Register-Guard.

A few readers e-mailed story topics missing from the online list: an investigative report on Pacific Seafoods owner Frank Dulcich; the efforts of local residents to preserve the Amazon Creek headwaters and Madison Meadow; and the state...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!