“There’s so much trash and debris and needles and feces,” says Tod Breslau, the owner of the hip Campfire Hotel on Northeast Third Street, who also built Portland’s Jupiter Hotel. “We are constantly using the police non-emergency number.” But that hasn’t deterred people like Breslau and Alexander from charging ahead with a dream for what the district stands to be. It’s a vision that started when Bend expanded its urban-growth boundary in 2016, a process that also included rezoning the BCD to encourage high-density, infill development. Alexander, who moved to Oregon in no small part for its progressive city-planning laws, was the first to embrace the new vision by investing in several smaller lots. His office — located inside a new 14,000-square-foot co-working space that’s also headquarters for Sunlight Solar, which owns the building — sports all the amenities that active Bendites prefer: interior bike racks, showers, two kitchens. The building, one of the first to come into the district when workers broke ground on it in 2020, is also net-zero on energy. Meanwhile, one lot to the east and next to a homeless camp, Alexander points out the salvaged remains of a large metal shed, a somewhat historical structure from Bend’s timber-mill days that most recently housed a popular cafe and music spot called Spoken Moto. That cafe was shuttered after a new 313-unit residential and commercial project called the Jackstraw, by Killian Pacific came in on the 4.7-acre site near Bend’s Box Factory. Alexander paid $1 for the building and trucked it a few miles north to the BCD, where it now sits elevated on wood blocks called cribbing. Alexander calls this site the Catalyst, and it sits right where the new Hawthorne Overcrossing will touch down on the east side of the highway. Soon this will be the new home of the Dogwood at the Pine Shed, a cocktail bar relocating into the district after 10 years downtown, where increasing rents have some business owners eyeing the BCD with greater interest. “It’s an opportunity to be a part of what’s to come,” Dogwood owners Doug and Phoebe Pedersen said in an email. DVA Advertising also relocated into the district with a new 8,000-square-foot building that serves as a microcosm of what the city seeks, with professional offices sitting over a manufacturing warehouse and showroom for Imagine Stoneworks. Combined, the two businesses employ about 30 people, many of whom would prefer to walk to lunch and linger in the area after work. “I can tell you that Lucy’s Taco Shop, Laughing Planet and several food trucks in the area are definitely benefiting from our location here,” says DVA’s Justin Yax, one of four investors in the building. To get the Catalyst going, a site that will also include food and music about 100 paces away, Bend’s Sustainability Fund awarded Alexander a $450,000 grant. “It’s a project that will help make the area sticky,” Alexander says. “It gives people a reason to stay.” It’s no secret that downtowns across the country are struggling to rekindle foot traffic as people work from home, a post-pandemic trend that has left prime, street-level commercial spaces around the nation boarded up and vacant. The BCD, however, offers the city a blank state to rethink how cities approach mixed-use development in an urban core. “These first five to 10 years are going to be pretty pivotal,” says Ben Hemson, the City of Bend’s economic development manager. “It’s like we’re in our 20s right now and figuring out how to invest in our 401(k)s so we can be sitting pretty down the road.” Instead of working in vertical silos — think individual buildings with offices and apartments over retail and entertainment — Bend is trying to think horizontally, too. Picture a new apartment building next to an automobile mechanic who can afford to stay in the same garage the business has been in for 40 years. Thinking horizontally ultimately means finding ways to protect the industrial, maker-space nature that currently defines the area even as new infrastructure projects and a shift in zoning has primed the district Approximate location of the new Hawthorne Overcrossing, which will be a pedestrian- and cycling-only bridge Project PDX bought a former Les Schwab Tire Center with plans to build two five-story buildings with about 200 residences on the site. Downtown Bend U.S. 97 Parkway BNSF railroad tracks 30
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTcxMjMwNg==