already redirected increases in property taxes through a tax-increment financing scheme into a $1.4 million coffer for improvements in the area. The total TIF amount could reach as much as $195 million by around 2050. Along with grants and public funding to tap, early-phase plans call for $60 million in revitalization projects that will include a bike-pedestrian bridge that will arch over the parkway and railroad tracks to link the BCD with downtown to the west, a move that will literally, as well as symbolically, bridge an east-west divide that has long plagued the community. Taylor Development, Brooks Resources and Project PDX have snapped up desirable properties with intentions of constructing mixeduse buildings that will likely take advantage of rules that allow increased building heights of up to 85 feet and reduced-minimum on-site parking requirements. Main east-west connector streets like Greenwood Avenue and Franklin Avenue will be redesigned and spiffed up with strollable underpasses, sidewalks and greenery to slow traffic and encourage more walking, cycling and lingering. If all goes as planned, the BCD over the next three decades will transform itself into something akin to Portland’s Pearl District, an urban-renewal area that embraces its industrial character while providing services, entertainment and homes for a wide range of income levels. “Bend is yearning for a place that feels real to the touch rather than the tourist-centric spaces where everything is prim and proper,” says Kurt Alexander, a developer and co-founder of the Bend Central District Business Association, a nonprofit championing development in the district. “We want to lean into it being more rugged.” On a recent afternoon, Alexander, the principal behind Petrich Properties, showed a visitor around a portion of the district, which is indeed rugged. A man with skin baked to elephant hide dozed in a patch of cheatgrass between two distressed parking lots. Across the street sat an incongruous but well-kept single-family home that Alexander owns and jokingly — and quite affectionately — calls his “crack house.” This is our chance to put on those big pants and become a small city. The change is upon us.” KURT ALEXANDER, A DEVELOPER AND CO-FOUNDER OF THE BEND CENTRAL DISTRICT BUSINESS ASSOCIATION Ben Hemson, Bend’s economic development manager Corie Harlan, the cities and towns program manager for nonprofit Central Oregon LandWatch Kirk Schueler, president and CEO of Brooks Resources 29
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