Colin Dean, AIA
Eugene Section Director
Update from AIA Eugene on in-Person Events and the Fate of the Octagon
Well, the “dog days of summer” are certainly here! I hope everyone is taking any opportunity they can to safely enjoy the remaining sunny days and warm temperatures on tap for us this season.
AIA Eugene members are also experiencing some mental “Dog Days” of their own. Like all of you, I know we’re feeling the impact of not being able to see each other face to face on a regular basis. We really miss the camaraderie that goes along with our in-person events (a new term in our COVID world); lunch and learns, building tours and committee events. Most of all, we miss our friends. We want to see our colleagues in a meaningful way.
We hope there is an end in sight, and that we’ll be getting back together sooner rather than later. If you haven’t already taken an opportunity to get vaccinated, we hope you might consider it. It gives us our best chance, currently, of getting back together in-person and being able to share so many of those meaningful interactions we miss sorely in this moment.
If you are still weighing the costs or benefits of inoculation, please know we aren’t here to proselytize. We just want to let you know that we can’t wait to get back together, and anything any of us can do to help that happen is deeply appreciated. We are all in this together and we miss your faces. Please do everything you can to move the needle.
While we have so much to look forward to in the coming months, namely the AIA/ASLA Summer picnic and the 31st Annual People’s Choice Awards in the fall, it’s with great sadness that I share with you that we will soon be saying goodbye to our home, the Octagon. Our leaseholder, Summit Bank, has informed us that they’re unable to offer a lease renewal at the end of our current term ending September 30, 2022. To help ease our transition, we’ll have an option for an additional 6-month lease (on a month-to-month basis) at our current rent. While it’s not news we hoped to hear, we are glad that Summit Bank has been such a good partner for the last handful of years and will extend to us up to another year and a half to develop our new office solution. We will make this a topic of discussion at upcoming meetings of which all AIAO members are welcome to join. We hope our Eugene cohort will take a seat at the table to inform and provide vision for our next move.
I hope that, in the upcoming months, we’ll be able to properly celebrate, commemorate, and close our relationship to the AIA Eugene Octagon. It has served us well, and we’ll look forward to our next move as a Section. We hope that all of AIA Oregon will participate with us as we host our upcoming events – our Annual Picnic on August 26 is a great time to join us, and we’ll have plenty to talk about. Until then, stay safe – and thank you for everything you do. I look forward to seeing you soon.