EUGENE — On a rainy mid-November afternoon, the only sound coming from vacant building lots clustered along the Willamette River is the insistent honking of a flock of geese. Gone are the hardhats, toolbelts and backhoes that for the past couple of years marked the beginning of the long-awaited conversion of industrial land along the river to badly needed housing.
Work has ground to a halt on the redevelopment of several lots that are slated to link the city’s downtown to the University of Oregon and alleviate a housing shortage in the state’s second-largest city. Developers hoped to build more than 1,000 new units on the property, but after completing the second apartment building on the site in mid-June, they have put down their hammers.
At issue: a dispute between the developer, Eugene Riverfront District LLC, and the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries over whether the privately funded portions of the project should pay prevailing wage. BOLI is the arbiter of Oregon’s prevailing wage law. That law requires in part that if a project uses more than $750,000 in public funds, the project’s developers must pay “prevailing,” for example, union wages, to workers on the project…