For a city as polished as Bend, the centrally located intersection of Northeast Second Street and Northeast Hawthorne Avenue stands out for its grit. Here, less than a mile from the boutique stores and $60 entrees of downtown, there are no blocks of twinkling structures boasting walls of expensive glazing. The streets that lead to this spot are weathered and rough with weeds exploiting the gaps. Stepping out of your car carries a whiff of urgency to be gone by nightfall. There are makeshift camps. People sleep on sidewalks. No, this is not the Bend of magazines and sunny tourist weekends. It is the underbelly of a rapidly growing city grappling with its neglected parts. But this corner, which also houses a BottleDrop recycling center and a hip hotel barricaded by a chain-link fence, sits at the geographical heart of one of the city’s most ambitious attempts to reimagine its urban core since the timber industry’s collapse. Dubbed the Bend Central District (BCD), this 196-acre light-industrial area, roughly defined by Northeast Fourth Street to the east and the U.S. 97 parkway and BNSF railroad tracks to the west, is well on its way — and not just on paper — to becoming a new commercial and residential core. When fully built out sometime in the next 30 years, the BCD will be home to nearly 2,000 new housing units — a 10,000% increase over what’s there today. Businesses will have thousands and thousands of square feet dedicated to commercial and office space, which will be enough for nearly 10,000 workers, a 385% leap from today. There could be theaters, community art spaces and even child care facilities. All of this will be linked by walkable, bike-friendly streets lined with greenery, pocket parks and pleasing lights right in the heart of town. “Bend is on the precipice of great change,” Kurt Alexander salvaged the metal structure that formerly housed Spoken Moto and had it trucked to the site he’s named The Catalyst. A $200 million revitalization effort in the heart of Bend signals the end of urban adolescence. GROWING UP says Corie Harlan, the cities and towns program manager for Central Oregon LandWatch, a nonprofit that has made unlikely alliances with developers interested in the area — the group’s preferred location for growth instead of pushing out into Bend’s urban-growth boundary. “We’re all just waiting for that first domino to fall,” she says. That first domino will likely be a large-scale residential project, two of which are well on their way through the design and permitting process. Combined, the two projects would bring more than a quarter of a million square feet of apartments and studios into the core area. “We need people to call this district home,” Harlan says. “Once that happens, I think everything will happen.” The scope of what’s happening across the entire district is staggering, even for Bend, a city that ballooned to 99,200 people in 2020, a 33% increase from the 2010 census. Roughly two years in, a new urban-renewal district has BY TIM NEVILLE | PHOTOS BY JASON E. KAPLAN 28
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