YaPoAh Terrace

Last crawled date: 2 years, 12 months ago

The tallest building in downtown Eugene, Oregon at 212 feet. 'Ya Po Ah' means 'Very high place' in the language of the Kalapuya indians, who inhabited the Willamette valley prior to the arrival of the Euro-American settlers. Ya Po Ah was the name used by the tribe for what is now called Skinner Butte, in honor of Eugene Skinner, the founder of Eugene City. He erected his first log cabin on the western slopes of the butte as to avoid the frequent floods of the Willamette river to the north, per the advice of the friendly Kalapuya. Ya Po Ah Terrace is an 18 story, 222 unit apartment building located on the southern slopes of Skinner Butte, overlooking downtown Eugene. Often not known is that Ya Po Ah also houses a performance hall, library, salon and convenience stores. Constructed in 1968, public outcry over the building's size led to laws being passed soon after, limiting the height and number of floors of buildings in downtown Eugene. This was a measure taken to preserve, among other things, the views of nearby mountain ranges. Up until the end of the 1990s these measures had fostered the inbility for denser and upward growth as the city's population kept growing, forcing urban sprawl outward which was then limited by the current urban growth boundaries. Only within the last decade has Eugene begun to amend some of these measures to promote denser growth within the city's core. #Eugene #OR #Oregon #ya_po_ah #yapoah