Monday, November 12, 2007

RIP Breeze & Wurzels' The Plaza, We hardly knew ye.

ALERT ADDENDUM:

MLS 2706478 price was reduced to $335K yesterday, or $99/sf! The UNTHINKABLE has happened! The $100/sf price point has been breached!


BEM came up with the idea of a "tombstone" for failed, floundering, and otherwise imploding RE projects in Central Oregon. This was just a month or two ago, and there really didn't seem to be a lot of grist for this mill, but what a difference a 20 degree drop in temps makes.

Things usually don't go from Totally Fine to Completely Destroyed, there are usually rumblings in the industry circles, and "unfounded" rumors first, and these things usually grow more intense right before the end. Rarely are really good sized projects run in an administrative vacuum where bad news is not ultimately leaked. Sometimes it's public record paired with just common sense that should tell you that something is really wrong.

The following is a post by "Guest" over on BendBB:

This article ran in the Bulletin August of 05. At the time, the estimate to complete the project was 11M (261K per unit)

Now they have a 20.3 M first, a 3M second, and 1.13 M in liens. They still have 38 units for sale which means each one has 642K against it, and to top it off most of the interiors are not finished

How on earth does something get that far over budget?

Luxury condos in the works
Old Mill project features units on single level
By Eric Flowers
Last modified: August 31. 2005 8:19AM PST
Local developers broke ground this week on an estimated $11 million luxury condominium project in the Old Mill District.

A four-story 42-unit building that overlooks the Old Mill shops and the Deschutes River, The Plaza is the first condominium project of its kind in Bend, said Becky Breeze, who bought the roughly one-acre lot for the project less than two years ago.

Unlike other multi-level townhome-style projects, the units at the Plaza are laid out on a single floor, Breeze said.

The Plaza is being developed by Breeze's husband and son through their company, Harvest. Breeze is handling the project's marketing and sales.

"It's an unusual project for Central Oregon," Breeze said. "There was just a need for a strictly residential condominium project. There are so many baby boomers and most of them don't want to have to mow lawns and have a lot of maintenance."

The project, which will be finished next fall, is one of the first in a wave of upscale condominium projects planned in Bend.

The single-level units in The Plaza will feature designer appliances, granite countertops and mountain views. The smallest condominiums units in the project are 1,600 square feet. The largest units are 2,000 square feet, said Breeze. There will also be a 1,500-square-foot party room with a plasma television available for owners.

Prices range from $500,000 to $900,000, Breeze said.

"It's really geared to the person who wants total luxury coming out of a beautiful home and wants to be able to take off on vacation and not have to worry about their house," Breeze said.


And another "Guest" post shows someone did a little extra analysis on the financing:

Anybody whose feeling a little stressed about making their payments should look at this alligator- your troubles will seem pretty manageable.

At the start of the year the first mortgage was increased to $20,316,00.00 and they took out a second for $3,000,00.00 Assuming 8.5% on the first and 10% on the second, interest only payments are $194,050. per month.
They’ve sold 4 units and have 38 available. The property taxes on the remaining units run about $22,000 per month. Insurance, utilities, and association expenses run about another 20 grand each month.
On top of all that, the nationwide ad campaign eats another 75K monthly.

This thing has generated 3.2 M in gross sales and is burning through $311,000.00 a month in expenses. See any problems?


The Plaza is clearly a project destined for the Central Oregon tombstone dustbin. Breeze & Wurzel are what I call MEO's: Mount Everest Optimists. This is the simple statistical Grim Reaper claiming the requisite number of victims in rarefied atmospheres. And the percentage extinguished goes up geometrically with altitude. If Everest was 1,000 ft taller, the number of dead on it's slopes would be quadrupled, at least. I've heard Everest would be physically unclimbable were it 1,000 ft taller.

This is really a sad phenomenon. Central Oregon is populated with some really decent, hard working people, and like everywhere it has it's intolerable assholes. But this Bubble we had seemed to convince a huge number of people, that Optimism In The Face Conditions Contrary To Commonsense was a sustainable, preferable, and superior "lifestyle". I know several people who were doing the RE thing on the side back in 2005. It was the Easy Gateway To Millions... in only 2hrs a day!

The "sad" part of this is that there are a lot of "normals" -- people just trying to get along, raise a family, have a life -- who are having their dreams crushed. These aren't the Media Darlings that seem to elicit unending waves of schadenfreude from so many, but the second tier; subcontractors, and other small independents that suckle at the tit of the local RE juggernaut.

Even Breeze, who has flat-out lied to the local media and whose overly optimistic ebullient outlook for all things RE tends to make her the white hot target of much grave-dancing, is actually a very nice person who came to Bend decades ago, when RE was as dead as it is Hot today. She actually built up an extremely prosperous RE brokerage from nothing. And much of it was probably due to a bullheaded optimism in the face of conditions that would have convinced most to give up.

I guess I don't want to go overboard in prosecuting Breeze as some sort of industry behemoth that's been a permanent fixture of Bends corrupt RE elite, she's really not. She built up a business from nothing, and employed many people who made a payroll of millions over the years. What Breeze has done for Bend is actually very admirable.

That's really what is so awful about this Bubble. It took people like Breeze, who aren't really trying (IMO) impose their will on the population with some demonic purpose, made them believe that conditions abounded around them for an easy ascent to the pinnacle of what became an "Everest" of sorts, in Bends 2005-2006 RE market. And not only were people seeming to easily scamper to the top, they seemed to reach some sort of ephemeral "phantom peak", 1,000ft higher than had ever reached before. People seemed to be achieving The Impossible in such high numbers, that the Old Limitations no longer applied; there seemed to be a New Paradigm being born of what was truly possible in Bend. Maybe... just maybe, Everyone Really Could Be Rich!

And people seemed to reach, or come close to reaching this impossible peak before reality came crashing down on them, and the crashing, at first fairly slow in coming -- early 2007 -- has accelerated with breathtaking rapidity. Sometimes it feels like I am watching someone through a telescope struggle for their lives on an ascent that I warned them about was a bad idea, but they went anyway. It's really easy to say "I Told You So!", in times like this, and I almost certainly will again. But we should also remember that Becky and others who are asphyxiating and will probably ultimately perish in the collapse of Bends mega-Bubble, are experiencing an extremely unpleasant philosophical remorse about choices they made that will probably in all likelihood end their careers, as they know it.

I don't know, I just seem to try to put myself in Beckys' shoes once in awhile, and try to realize that she is suffering a crushing defeat after a life of struggle to achieve some measure of stature & recognition in her life. She really is a producer, and is a decent person who has achieved a lot.

Maybe there's not much to be done for Becky and other like her, who will continue to founder on the slopes of an ascent that was destined to claim almost anyone who attempted it. And incredibly there are still believers who think that they can also achieve the Impossible. I find this just sad. There will be so much misery created by this process. And it just seems like that there should be at least a modicum of respect for the dead & dying.

But enough whining. Breeze made her choice, and it's coming back to haunt her. The Plaza certainly deserves a place on the Bend Bubble 2 Mausoleum Tombstone. Although not dead entirely, The Plaza is certainly comatose with no hope of ever being resurrected. It was put on an Umpqua rebreather Iron Lung, but the corpse is starting to necrose and be picked apart, and the first buzzard to arrive is Kenneth Dalke laying claim to a limb of the rotting Plaza corpse. There will be more. But all these carrion feeders will have to wait in line, because Umpqua will get first shot at gorging on the corpse when they pull the plug.

So it is with some measure of regret, but also devious schadenfreude delight, that I announce The Plaza as the first entry in the BendBubble2 RE Bubble Bursting of The Dead tombstone. There will be more. Sorry Becky... But I Told You So.

RIP Plaza -- You never had a chance, and like the 8-legged girl, you'll ultimately be ripped apart. Section 8 housing? Old Folks Home? That's anybody's guess, and it's up to Umpqua Bank to decide. God Bless You, you 8-legged freak.

Moving on...

There's an interesting post on Duncans blog:

Had a woman in the store who works for Morgan Stanley. They've moved to the fourth floor of the Franklin Crossing building.

She told me she's worked for them since they were Reynolds; then Reynolds, Dean Witter, etc. etc. Been in Bend since 1988, so she's seen many of the changes. That's a long time, I give her that, especially to keep the same job. But:

"You just missed most of the trauma that downtown went through in the '80's," I said. "We were just coming out of the trough around '88. But I will say, almost all of the old guard that were here then are gone."

And, as these things go, I asked her what she thought of the housing market. I asked her if she had ever heard of the housing blogs, and she hadn't. (I've yet to run into a housing person who has.) But when I mentioned that I thought, with so many jobs related to housing, that there was a possibility that the population of Bend could even drop, she shook her head decisively.

"Too many wealthy people are moving to town," she said.

"Yeah, but Bend is too big to fill with only rich people. How many are we getting per month? 10 millionaires, twenty millionaires? It just can't be enough. They might be building their custom homes, but what about the rest?"

She more of less dismissed my argument. "There is some real big money coming to town. I know."

This is basically the Bend is the Next Aspen argument. Of course, Duncan attempted to illustrate that Not Everyone Is Hyper-Wealthy. Dismissed immediately, as usual. Now, I've explained ad nauseum, why Bend CANNOT be The Next Aspen, it's a mathematical certainty and any rudimentary analysis of economic facts quickly will tell any reality based researcher the same.

My comment to this post was as follows:

This woman's grasp of the "macro" economic picture of Bend is viewed thru the windshield of a Hummer -- the unsavory bits are hermetically sealed OUT.


Sometimes I am in awe of people's ability to filter out those aspects of reality that they find unpleasant. Or how a pervasive environment slanted in one direction -- like extreme wealth -- can so permeate one's Paradigm Of Life so throughly, that they become unable to imagine anything else.

This woman, much like Becky Breeze is so immersed in a paradigm of prosperity that she seems unable to imagine anything else. And what's more amazing is that this eternal optimism is completely pervasive in Bend. Except on this blog, perhaps. People seem absolutely convinced that Bend can become some sort of economic miracle where everyone is hyper-wealthy, some sort of Central Oregon Dubai.

I am continuously amazed by this. People's ability to ignore warning after warning, and soldier on as if nothing is wrong. I think that from a business perspective, I am a lot like Duncan: hoping beyond hope for the best... but always, ALWAYS keeping a wary eye on the horizon for storm clouds. Extended periods of Good Times should be enjoyed. But never should they be misconstrued as permanent. Good times like good weather out at sea or on a mountain side, especially Ebullient Good Times, ALWAYS END.

And in a similar vein, it is clear what the local medias reaction to the economic wasteland being created here is:

1) Act as if it is 3 years old, and that they well acknowledged it long ago & in fact predicted it
2) The Plunge is so long in tooth, that is has to be Near The End

Of course this is total bullshit. The Bulletin & KTVZ barely acknowledged anything except perhaps a Slight Slowdown for the past 3 years. Now that this thing has turned into a full-fledged rout, well They Knew It The Whole Time, and besides that Good Times Are Again Imminent. Anyone with a brain cell knows full well this is bullshit.

And Near The End? Well, I guess The End is closer than it was. We're at NASDAQ 4,000, after the absolute peak of 5,050 back in 2000, if we can use that Bubble as an analogy. Sure, we are closer to The End, but the end is down around 1,200. There is wave upon wave of pain still to come.

Again, I am stunned that "Experts", people far smarter than Becky Breeze, Duncans stock broker, any other Bend developer, or the NAR economist, who have predicted time & time again that housing would descend into a soft landing. It is only in the past 2-3 months that all the soothsayers and other experts, even The Fed Chairman, are even starting to acknowledge that the housing market is so, SO much worse than they could have possibly imagined.

And it's just starting. The NASDAQ analogy will hold. Discretionary sellers will become pressured discretionary sellers will become non-discretionary sellers will become price-slashing sellers will become forced liquidation sellers will become bank foreclosures. There are a pittance of people in those last 2 categories compared to what's coming.

And Bend promises to put the average Bubble market to shame. The implosion here will be so catastrophic, it will just boggle the mind. Now, it seems that Yes, I've been saying this FOREVER, and the Perma-Optimists have countered for just as long that Bend Is Different, Bend is Hyper-Wealthy, Bend is the Next Aspen, and a litany of other for why Bend will escape the housing collapse relatively unscathed. I simply ask that you compare the track record of this blog for Real Prediction with that of other media outlets in the area, not post hoc revisionism, like The Bulletin.

I am not a pessimist, nor optimist, I am a Realist. I simply try to observe without bias what is happening around me, study peoples motivations & optimization of their own situation, and try to project an outcome. Bends economy is simple to analyze: At it's heart is the fact that Income is miles below Costs, we are a town caught in an inflationary cost spiral and wages have not budged. Selfish optimization dictates people will leave, costs will implode, incomes will explode higher, or some combination of these. This is the primary equation of life in this town.

Wages have shown no impetus to go up around here, and if anything seem like they will remain flat or go down. So, it seems rational to assume that people will leave until there is some sort of cost parity. Businesses are already leaving, planning to leave, or simply shutting down. For entities for whom the calculation is purely financial, the answer is "We're Leaving". This stock broker in Duncans' store seems to believe that Aspen can exist within Bend, and maybe it can. Look at NYC, there is a higher concentration of billionaires there than anywhere on Earth. But NYC CANNOT become Aspen, a city of 9 million billionaires. Bend CAN have a core of wealthy, but it will ALWAYS be a small core. What this woman, and many others do not seem to understand, is that Bend, if it is to remain a viable working town of 80K+ people, has to reach some sort of Wage/Cost parity, or there will be population flight. We can't ALL be Generals.

And we are not there. Costs (ie home prices) will continue to decline until some measure of the population can economically sustain themselves. It's just a fact. And the recent mortgage turmoil is going to make this geometrically harder in places like Bend. They have closed the Jumbo loan window where Bendites have been queuing up there for the past 3-4 years to make ends meet. We have not even come CLOSE to feeling our full measure of the housing fallout pain. Thinking that we will rebound in ANY WAY in the near future, is simply blind hope, and it'll never happen.

Who's been right so far?

I'll repeat the advice I have been giving for months, advice many have dismissed as almost pathological: If you want to sell your house, there will be about 100-200 people who will be able to buy it over the next year. These people will have the choice from thousands of homes available now, and ones coming on the market, as well as a vast black-market of dark matter homes that are available, but not Officially For Sale. If you really want to sell and MUST SELL, you must price your home 25% below area PPSF comps, now. Your house is NOT special and neither are you, that's just reality. Some of you DO have special properties, but not in a good way, like The Plaza, the Shire, almost any condo around. These are white elephant properties that will require a minimum cut in half today, or more. Your "COST" is not a buyers concern... only the rock bottom will sell, and even then you'll have to be lucky.

Here are some PPSF declines from Feb of this year thru Oct, I posted over on BendBB:


Ponderosa Cascade $207.50/sf (-20.8%)
Upper Terrace (The Plaza) $400.15/sf (-19.2%)
Deschutes River Ranch $372.00/sf (-17.1%)
Darnel Estates $144.00/sf (-15.5%)
Woodside Ranch $266.58/sf (-15.7%)
Wyndemere $337.75/sf (-14.9%)
Shevlin Meadows $200.50/sf (-15.4%)


Those are brutal declines, and what's amazing is that most of the declines are in the final 60 days of that period. No one got truly desperate until September. "Upper Terrace" is a proxy for The Plaza. Darnel Estates is a flipper bait, McMansion paradise over on the East side, with a lovely view of 27th street. These are the sort of hypoxia- driven fantasies dreamed up by Kool-Aid addled builders during the Bubble.

So, how bad could it possibly get?

Look at this listing in Desert Skies. $102/sf on brand new flipper bait crap. This is standard issue flipper bait: No window frames, cheap fixtures, 1 yr half-life flooring, and every other shortcut they could muster. This thing was built in 2005 and is not even close to it's wear-driven degradation nadir. This house, and the vast bulk of Bend housing built in the past 4-5 years, WILL NOT AGE WELL.

So it's $102/sf today, it was listed in May for $399,900, or $118/sf. Where will it be in a few years when this place is a ghost town of rundown flipper bait McMansions, with a flipper owner sick & tired of making tax payments, utility payments, upkeep & every other expense with no hope of EVER breaking even? My guess is FAR LESS than $100/sf. My guess is $50-60/sf. Nice, pre-flipper stuff with a big yard? $80-90/sf. Upper middle class BT, Awbrey stuff? $110-120/sf. Primo, Pronghorn stuff? Maybe $200-300/sf. There will be some who truly don't give a crap about mortgage rates or dropping $2 mill on a loss-leader house, cuz they got 100X that just sitting in the bank. But that is .01% of the population.

That's why I say slash it 25% TODAY. In Desert Skies (Skeeze?), that's $75/sf TODAY, and doesn't that beat $50/sf 4 years from now? Add in the mortgage, utilities, upkeep in the meantime, and $75/sf today is a HUGE BARGAIN. And you need to stop re-running the Hyper-Optimist scenario over & over in your head. It's time to get real. Bend is NOT different. Companies here that have to make realistic monetary decisions are LEAVING, never, EVER to return. We are 18 months BEHIND the curve on the most catastrophic loss of wealth this country has seen in a generation. Your house is one of THOUSANDS, it is NOT SPECIAL, there are HUNDREDS just like it.

The market is collapsing. If you've made the transition from Discretionary Seller to Pressured Discretionary Seller, are you really going to wait until your in Forced Liquidation mode to sell? That's when someone else will make the decisions, not you. Look at those numbers again: Some of the Best of The Best have cut 20% since Feb, which have been relatively Good Times compared to what's coming, and they STILL CANNOT SELL.

The Bend RE market is like a supermarket: Each item is something on the shelf. Revenue at this market has been cut by 50-70% percent. It's crunch time. It's Do Or Die. Only the absolute Best Stuff At Dead Rock Bottom prices even has a chance of selling. Your middling priced house is awash in a sea of other items that only have one thing in common: THEY'LL NEVER SELL unless they are Dead Rock Bottom.

Have a look at BendBB's list of price changes, and you'll notice one thing starting to become a rarity: The single digit percent markdown. EVERYBODY is slashing prices by double digits, Everybody. Then look at sales volume: They still are not selling at current prices. Look at this listing by Debbie "Sotheby's" Tebbs: TEN price cuts totaling 24% (this is understated really, because if you check BendBB's data, you see that back on Apr 28, Debbie actually INCREASED the price of this dog from $2.5MM to $2.9MM! Unbelievable.), down to $1.9MM down from a $2.5MM listing price and STILL it will not sell. This town will be overrun by huge 5,000sf McMansions that no one wants.

I'll say it again: Slash your prices TODAY by 25% below comp PPSF's. If you don't, you'll NEVER sell. Realize that Desert Skies IS GOING to $50/sf. Newport Market Eco-Lux putrid crap? $80/sf, if you are VERY LUCKY. Awbrey? $120/sf. Skyliner? Maybe $80/sf. We WILL BE CUT IN HALF SOON. The Bad Part? It'll keep going after that!

Remember that weird little log home in Promise Lane I talked about as a "Good Deal" several posts back? Well, it's either been pulled or sold, because it's gone. And it was a good deal at around $120/sf. That house today probably could not fetch $100/sf. The seller was Smart Enough to undercut the market, not a little, A LOT, and got 'er sold.

But we're in Collapse Mode now. Selling At Any Price has just gotten 10X as hard. Any comparison to even the recent past is void. Especially if your home is "worth" over $417K. If you're there, well God help you. People like Becky Breeze, Randy Sebastian, and others are going to be financially ravaged by this truth.

And don't be fooled by the stock market, which is holding up apparently extremely well, considering what's happening in this country. But look closer. I was looking in my change jar, and found near the bottom the Best Performing Investment I've made this decade: A Canadian $20 bill I got back on a 2004 vacation. Probably doubled in value. Looking at the US stock market through the Canadian dollar, and just about any other currency except the dollar reveals the Truth: The US stock market has advanced only about 5% since 2003 in Canadian dollar terms due to a wildly devaluing US currency. And China, the Worlds New Central Banker WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS. They own TRILLIONS (well, maybe just a single crappy trillion now) in US treasuries, and are tired of watching their investments be debased by easy US Fed Chairmen. You wanna see economic fireworks? You watch the Chinese reaction to any future Fed easing. They'll flood the World in treasuries, push rates thru the roof, and throw the World into an immediate recession, something that is virtually inevitable now.

Duncans stock broker customer, Bend RE types, and other perma-optimists don't seem to realize this. Driving forward using the rear-view mirror is DEATH. Bend will collapse. And this isn't a compartmentalized collapse that is contained to RE: it'll spread EVERYWHERE. Just watch: Businesses closing is effect of an untenable economic situation. It'll continue & accelerate.

Bend media has decided to do Bend citizens a horrible disservice, and take a head-buried-in-sand approach. they are ignoring The Single Biggest, Most Important Story in Bend In A Generation: The Housing Collapse. Believe me, THIS is The Story for which Bend will ultimately become Infamous.

Now for a few postscript comments:

Well, the dream has died, Sally Heatherton is No More.

For the few short weeks we debated her identity, we laughed, we cried, and we laughed some more. Bend will be a little less Marvelous for her passing.

What I thought to be Most Marvelous is that Sally was "real" enough, that many recognized her as someone they knew. I think she was born out of the antithesis of the Clothesline Woman, who has herself become an icon of the dwindling decency and commonsense folk of Bend. So it is a sad irony that the Clothesline Woman is being squeezed out by the Sally Heathertons of the World.

So while Sally has passed on, she actually lives on a little in all the many big haired, big boobed, fake butt Escalade-driving mega skanks that now overrun Bend. There really are people in Bend in large numbers as genuinely horrendous as Sally Heatherton. So next time you see one of these Whorey Abominations say, "Oh Hi Sally. Thanks for wrecking this town for everyone. Can I help you out with your bags, you fake tittied bitch?"

I look at BendBB's data, which really kicks butt, several times a week trying to spot trends, mainly in the area of outliers, what is going up or down the most. For awhile there was no real geographic trend, no area that really stood out. Although the SW area was an area of a large number of declines, the averages were not really huge.

But the West side is having what appears to be a real rout take hold recently. I did a "FULL JOIN" on May and Oct data, and found that the biggest declines are mainly grouped in the Awbrey area. That horrible Eco-Lux-Modern travesty in Grandview (near Newport Mkt) has been whacked for over 17%. 5 reductions in Westside Meadows account for the largest decline in listing prices at -18.7%. If lots are allowed in the calculation, the North Rim of Awbrey pops almost to the top with a whopping 36 reductions for an average beating of 18.2%. Of course, The Plaza is near the top of almost any reduction average, no matter how you slice it, at -17%.

It appears that the West side is joining is the carnage. I wonder how this bodes for Tetherow?

And a final Paul-doh prediction: Inventory will fall some over the Winter, but not nearly as much as in years past. There is TONS of dark matter (unlisted) RE being held in abeyance in Bend. It's everywhere.

Look at BendBB's "New Listings" pages, and you'll see a lot of stuff that has been completed forever, will just pop onto MLS. And folks they are STILL building out there. The "Builders Gone Wild" nightmare scenario, seems to have some traction. Have no illusions, this Winter is going to be Hell. We'll see Months of Inventory that just blow you away. It's already near a year and a half, and that's with just the front edge of the credit contagion factored in.

It's going to be carnage. And what's truly shameful is The Bulletin & KTVZ & the rest are taking a head-in-the-sand approach to the Biggest News Story in Bends History. Shame on You!

253 comments:

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IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Here is a quote from David Fosters website

While the market adjusts, only those properties that have the best location, the best "curb appeal", are in the best condition, and are the best value for the price range and neighborhood are the ones that are most likely to sell. The days of just hanging a for-sale sign outside and having buyers beat a path to your door are over - good marketing and positioning will be important. In some cases there will be only two solutions for sellers - time or price.

David is basically saying what is obvious to me & many others: Only rock-ass bottom will sell. "The best value for the price range" is code for The Lowest Priced Home In The Neighborhood.

But even that will probably not work anymore. Volume is going away, and there's no one left to buy even the cheapest homes. You've got to differentiate yourself in a sea of homes, where there are many who are in a race to the bottom. There was not a race to rock bottom 60-90 days ago, but there sure as hell is now. And it will get more aggressive & bloodthirsty.

I KNOW there are some reading this RIGHT NOW, who bought into the NASDAQ bubble. And to This DAY, still are holding shares of Sun Microsystems, or some other completely busted stock. Go have a look at JAVA, or some other post bust loser, and you will get an idea of what is coming down the pike here in Bend. JAVA is 1/10th the price it was 7 years ago, when people were scrambling to buy it... now at 1/10th the price no one wants it. Dead money for 7 years, and it'll NEVER recover to bubble highs in our lifetimes.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Wow! I didn't even see it till just now! MLS 2706478 was dropped yesterday to $335,000, or a MIND NUMBING $99/sf!

IT HAS HAPPENED! Flipper Bait BEWARE! The $100/sf price point HAS BEEN BREACHED!

Congratulations Desert SKEEZE Flippers!

Maybe the breach of the $100/sf barrier should go on the RIP Bend Bubble Tombstone. Man, $99/sf! Hell, 6 months ago that was UNTHINKABLE!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

And that listing is PRIMO FLIPPER BAIT. Vast SEAS of this stuff pollute Bend streets thicker'n empty buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken bones at a hillbilly reunion. This stuff is everywhere.

THIS is exactly how we'll hit lower $200's medians. This town is chocked full of 1,800-2,200 flipper bait shitholes, just like this Desert Skeeze piece of shit. This stuff is probably worth LESS that this rotting Desert Skeeze crap pile. $90/sf X 2,000sf is a mind numbing $180K, a 50% haircut from where much of this crap sold just a year ago.

$100/sf puts Bend medians at $200K RIGHT NOW. You watch. It's HAPPENING NOW.

Anonymous said...

Bend will get hit very hard. It always gets hit hard. Look even on this forum 90% of the folks haven't been around. Most of the boosters have been around less than ten years.

Bend was number #1 for two years, this means it will be the biggest to fall. This is a simple fact. Also Bend was over-sold. A simple fact.

There has been a lot of progress in the past month, on behalf of the media. The SORE has actually brought SDC into the light. This is a BIG change, this is the essence of the ponzi scheme of Bend.

Too many homes, too much debt, huge SDC costs due, as Hummel himself said before he resigned, Bend is going to get hit with a BiG tax bill to pay for what didn't get paid for during the boom.

A 50% drop in RE prices from 2005 will be NO problem. This is not a bad thing. The rich in Bend are going to get hit very hard. Most of our rich are equity rich, not income rich, they're burning through their equity very quickly. Many have huge homes in town, and 'cabins' in Brasada, Pronghorn,... None of this stuff can sell, none of it can be rented.

The little guy in Bend knows how to live in his car, or in Redmond, and work a $7/hr job in Bend, he'll see a little drop, but not big.

Bend is going to see the biggest recession since 1983, but the last one was a blue-collar recession, this one will be a 'rich persons recession' we had one back in the late 1800's.

Bend priced itself out of the market for real people, of course I have long said that a home in Bend can only be sold for 4X, e.g. our income is perhaps $40k/household, that's $160k affordability. Our city tried to drive all these people away, they only built homes for the 'rich'.

Now the rich will leave in mass, and the 'poor' can rent the rich mens homes. The poor cannot afford to heat the big homes, so they'll sit empty.

Just talking facts here, there is no enjoyment, or emotion. Just facts.

The next 3-5 years will be a rich mans recession in bend.

Little people homes down -20%, rich mans homes down +50%, and many of them will become ghost-town property's.

***

Check out the SORE this week in Print, the printed the most hard-core comments about SDC I have ever written, and yet they mention that these comments go #1 use on their website. This shows that most people in Bend now know what's been going on.

The talk will soon start.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Hell, I could probably go outside, throw a rock and hit 20 subdivs predicated on the idea of selling 1,800/sf flipper bait dogshit for $299K ($166/sf). And that is after multiple price cuts. That Desert Skeeze shithole puts all that vast sea of Flipper Bait 40% DOWN from here.

Damn... this Winter just got Ass Ugly.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I'll predict that Desert Skeeze listing will be gone soon. He's going to sell that shitpile. He's doing it right: 25% below everything else around.

And once that comp goes on the books, 10% down from that will be the new norm.

Then it's Wash, Rinse, Repeat... and watch it cascade lower.

Anonymous said...

Sometimes I am in awe of people's ability to filter out those aspects of reality that they find unpleasant.

A certain amount of this ability is probably essential to survival, but in many people it's overdeveloped to the point of being a pathology. This is especially true in America, where the cult of "positivity" reigns supreme and has for many decades. If you take a realistic view of things you run the risk of being ostracized both socially and in business.

Duncan McGeary said...

Take the picture of that house, reduce it to tombstone size, and write R.I.P. on it.

You've got your symbol.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

the cult of "positivity" reigns supreme

One almost SURE way to recognize this trait in someone, is when they answer in the affirmative using the term:

ABSOLUTELY

Their answer to everthing is, "ABSOLUTELY!"

Q: "Hey, I gotta go pee. You wanna go?"
A: "ABSOLUTELY!"

I mean, there's nothing really wrong with term ABSOLUTELY, but to answer even mundane questions with some sort of EXTREMIST POSITIVISM is just sort of strange. For a public display, watch Kayna Whitworth on KTVZ. Every answer in the affirmative is "ABSOLUTELY!"

Anonymous said...

Tebbs has a fire sale on her three homes in Broken Top, North Rim and Pronghorn.

2713632
2610909
2610884

Anonymous said...

Soon the Shire and Tuscany Pines will be added to the list.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Actually I can see these big square footage stuff going down harder than 2Ksf Flipper Bait. Cuz that triple flusher midpile Desert Skeeze piece of shit will probably rent for only $1,200-1,300/mo., and that's coming up on what you could buy a 2K Flipper Bait piece of crap out in one of these Siberian subdivs littering this town.

I'd much rather OWN 2K sf, than RENT 3,400sf at the same price.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Soon the Shire and Tuscany Pines will be added to the list.

I drove thru Tuscany Pines a week ago. What I love, is there is a sign REDIRECTING all the construction trucks thru the neighborhood next door. I would be FURIOUS if I lived there. I think it's WestView Villas by Pahlisch Homes. I can't believe they haven't told Tuscany Buttmunkees to blow it out their ass.

Bend Economy Man said...

I don't believe Becky Breeze deserves any ad hominem attacks for anything she's done. But neither do I believe she's just a "product of the business environment." She's put herself out there as a public figure, talking up her projects and the market and generally holding herself out as an authority on what kind of real estate people want in Bend.

I guess I put her in the same category as Patty Moss and Anthony Mozilo as people who have been out there spouting optimistic predictions and trying to sound like they know something the rest of the world doesn't, while at the same time, access-to-information-wise, they know better (and knew earlier) than the most pessimistic blogger where things were/are headed.

So I guess I just don't buy the argument that these folks can't be blamed for spouting BS because that's what they do. They're human beings, possessed of reason and analytical ability, or they wouldn't have ever become successful in the first place.

Sure, along the way they employed some people, bought some goods and services and did some financial good for others, but you can say the same thing about drug dealers or pirate DVD makers.

But even though Breeze, Moss, Mozilo and the like are the ones who get a platform in the media to spout unrealistically optimistic predictions and faux economic wisdom, substantially all the money that's at stake is other people's. When each of their respective houses of cards comes crashing down, dollar-wise the pain is borne mostly by the suckers--I mean, investors--who bought into the line of BS.

Unfortunately, with real estate projects set up the way they are with LLCs protecting developers from personal liability, when Umpqua needs to cover its losses on The Plaza it won't come after Becky Breeze; it'll have to recoup that money from its shareholders and its depositors and borrowers - people like you and me who've never been on The Bulletin's speed dial.

So while I agree that Breeze doesn't deserve to be called nasty names for her business decisions (her creditors might feel otherwise), I don't think she deserves the kid-glove treatment when we're talking about the denouement of the Bend real estate boom.

Anonymous said...

Renaissance Ridge is starting to drop their prices. This will put pressure on the other builders.

The housing and stock market are doing their best Wile E Coyote impression where he runs off the cliff and are at just right before gravity kicks in.

Folks, when gravity finally takes hold of these markets, the excess wealth in this town will be drained so fast that their asses will be turned inside out.

Bend Economy Man said...

Renaissance Ridge is starting to drop their prices. This will put pressure on the other builders.

These builders are all just scared to know where the REAL market price is. There's over 2000 houses and almost 1000 empty lots for sale in Bend, and houses are selling at the rate of 100 per month. At David Foster's reported current median of about $350K, there's $750,000,000 worth of houses for sale in Bend right now. At Bend's average household size of 2.42 persons, we'd need about 5,000 new people, like a 7% population increase, to eat up that inventory (and that doesn't even include FSBO and builder-direct-marketed homes).

No sky-is-falling bullshit here -- that just sounds extremely unlikely and anyone not wearing blinders has got to know that $750M and 5K people are not just going to show up in Bend in time to save the day.

So I'll just leave it to those who are browsing this forum to draw their own conclusions on what WILL happen.

Duncan McGeary said...

BEM,

Not to mention that even if we had 5000 people wanting to move here, they have to be able to sell their houses, and qualify for a loan. Then they have to be stupid enough not to wait for the price to drop.

Meanwhile, houses might start emptying out from hurting builders, sub-contractors and finance people.

And the Dark Matter that IHTBYB talks about. And the houses coming online.

It doesn't take much imagination to see a stock market fall, a terrorist attack, bad weather, any number of things aggravating the problem.

Bend Economy Man said...

It doesn't take much imagination to see a stock market fall, a terrorist attack, bad weather, any number of things aggravating the problem.

Agreed, but I don't even think you need any "what-ifs" on the negative side. The series of miracles that would happen on the positive side pretty much make Bend RE a "Hail Mary Pass" play right now, at best.

tim said...

>>Folks, when gravity finally takes hold of these markets, the excess wealth in this town will be drained so fast that their asses will be turned inside out.

Boy, you know it's got to be the end when people invoke the malfunctioning transporter scene from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Bend Economy Man said...

"series of miracles that would happen" = "series of miracles that would HAVE TO happen"

Duncan McGeary said...

Too many houses.

All the rest is commentary.

Duncan McGeary said...

I thought it was interesting that the Toll Brothers blamed other builders for building too many houses, instead of the credit crisis.

Anonymous said...

Schwab Gets Environmental Honor


Subscribe to Tire Review
November 08, 2007
Category: North America
(Akron/Tire Review) Les Schwab Tire Centers has received recognition for its environmental efforts with an award from the Association of Washington Business (AWB).
The AWB Environmental Excellence award honored the company’s work to educate and build partnerships that led to the clean up of waste tire piles throughout Washington.

“We are proud to receive this award,” Les Schwab CEO Dick Borgman said. “We know that great customer service means being responsive to each customer in our store and acting responsibly on behalf of the communities where we live and work. Our closed loop tire recovery program achieves both of these goals.”

Anonymous said...

Folks, when gravity finally takes hold of these markets, the excess wealth in this town will be drained so fast that their asses will be turned inside out.
*

Cunt's This is the quote of the day.

Some of us have called it 'amenity equity', or just dumb lucky equity, and I'm NOT talking RE, I'm talking the +$1M that they came to this shitty little town with. They bought, they just didn't buy a shit-hole in Bend, They bought a 'cabin' @ Pronghorn, and acreage in Prineville, and a lot @ Yarrow.

Excess wealth largely cali high-tech vulture capital cash,... post 1998. Come to Bend and lose it quicker than you can say "Les Schwab Corporate Welfare"

tim said...

>>They bought, they just didn't buy a shit-hole in Bend, They bought a 'cabin' @ Pronghorn, and acreage in Prineville, and a lot @ Yarrow.

Yep. I've stumbled into a couple Open Houses recently where it turns out that the owners had been "slumming" in a new $400k subdiv house while building their "real" house out on some land. Difficulty: two mortgages.

Anonymous said...

"And to This DAY, still are holding shares of Sun Microsystems, or some other completely busted stock. Go have a look at JAVA,..."
-------------

Hey, I resemble that remark!! And SUNW (at the time) was my CONSERVATIVE investment, since they actually had something called profits. My other stock was VERT, which instead of (just!) being down 90%, tanked 99.9%.

Reading this made me cry and laugh (at my stupidity) at the same time. And the same with that forced liquidation comment...no fun to get a margin call liquidation sale.

Ah, yes, the tech bubble does bring back memories. But a correction is in order:
"We're at NASDAQ 4,000, after the absolute peak of 5,050 back in 2000, if we can use that Bubble as an analogy. Sure, we are closer to The End, but the end is down around 1,200."
-----------

NASDAQ is at 2600, not 4000. The IXIC has doubled in 7 years, but is still down 50% from the top. I think we got another 7-10 years before we see another doubling to 5000.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

there's $750,000,000 worth of houses for sale in Bend right now

It's actually worse than that. Since the AVG = TOTAL/COUNT, it's the AVG X the total number of houses that equals the total dollar amount for sale. The AVG is $425K, so the total amt for sale is closer to $950MM.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

a terrorist attack...

We HAD that!

Bush invaded Iraq.

Lesson: It's always best to leave oil in the hands of a tyrannical despot... who ain't George Bush.

I would say that $100 oil is one of our bigger problems.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Too many houses.

All the rest is commentary.


You cut me deep, Shrek. You cut me real deep right ten.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

My other stock was VERT...

Wow, I actually had to look that one up. Good old Vertical Net, an economic mainstay. Down from what I can only presume is a double-quadruple backflip reverse split price of $85,000, down to a more manageable $2.58. Down 99.9969%.

That's GOTTA HOIT!

I'd wait for a bounce, and sell at $2.60.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

NASDAQ is at 2600, not 4000. The IXIC has doubled in 7 years, but is still down 50% from the top. I think we got another 7-10 years before we see another doubling to 5000.

No, I'm saying that if Bend will xperience something comparable to the NASDAQ implosion, and last Sept was the absolute Top, Bend RE right now is (IMO) near 4,000 in a NASDAQ rout ultimtely down to 1,200, or so. ie, we are about 1/4th of the way thru this thing.

Seems like nothings really happened, but Sept 2006 residential sold medians in Bend were ~$380,000... they are $319K today. There has been a decent decline already.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Cunt's This is the quote of the day.

He had me at Hello.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The Sum Total Asking Price of ALL RE for sale given BendBB's October data?

$2,388,876,389.00

Anonymous said...

You take a cool Billion for the lot?

Anonymous said...

. The AVG is $425K, so the total amt for sale is closer to $950MM.

*

Yes, but anything over $420k is jumbo, e.g. NO LOAN DILDO.

Thus, there is $1B in Bend RE ready to jump over the fucking cliff.

Anonymous said...


Folks, when gravity finally takes hold of these markets, the excess wealth in this town will be drained so fast that their asses will be turned inside out.


Cunt's This is the quote of the day.

***

These are poetic words "asses will be turned inside out", now what would a Breeze or Sebastian look like inverted?

"Excess Wealth" Shit that is Bend, lucky morons at the right place, and right time. That money has long ago been spent at Merenda, a long time ago, now its just keeping the head out of water.

Bend Burns, and the City of Bend is still driving around a little truck that says "www.visitbend.com", obviously there are still dumb fucking fish out there, so thinks the Bend taxpayer.

The Natives Are Restless said...

"You take a cool Billion for the lot?"

It's still way overpriced at that.

Anonymous said...

“The legal system at home and the military apparatus abroad are two sides of the same phenomenon: both perpetuate American capitalism and the American way of life” (Quinney, 1974: xxvi).

Today these two systems are larger than ever and they spread themselves literally into every corner of the globe.[7] The “criminal justice industrial complex” encompasses more than just the criminal justice system and the private security industry.

Dick 'Cunt' Brogman for Governor

Anonymous said...

Visit Bend?

What's it Really Like?

Take a visit today, courtesy of the city of Bend, Oregon.

www.visitbend.com

Anonymous said...

"Ron Garzini said... "
-------------
What a sack of $%#@!

What I'm saying is "He is not my cup of tea".

Anonymous said...

"Fancy Accounting Saves Central Oregon for a Short Time"

Thanks to some snazzy accounting moves, this quarter's earnings at Countrywide Financial Corp. and Washington Mutual Inc. probably won't look as bad as they otherwise would. The flip side is that any resulting improvements will be purely cosmetic.

The balance-sheet maneuvers are a classic case of earnings management. Last quarter, both companies changed the asset- classifications for billions of dollars of mortgages to "held for investment" from "held for sale."

Anonymous said...

LLCs protecting developers from personal liability, when Umpqua needs to cover its losses on The Plaza it won't come after Becky Breeze;

***

Thanks, keep reminding folks about the LLC's. Brooks aka boss-hogg-hollern, has so many 1,000's of LLC's, in this area that his personal will never be touched. He Has LLC's pay his legal bills, there are so many LLC's @ NWXC that no human could manage them. Miller-Nash ( Super Lawyer ) is simply an example of awe.

Yes, Trillions of dollars will evaporate, and Billions of Central Oregon equity will evaporate. But where did it go? Did those who blew up the ponzi bubble get punished?

It's always a positive sum game. You can never lose. There is never a worry.

Trouble is ALL of YOU CUNTS are killing the golden goose. In time the 'INVESTOR' will go the way of the DODO. There will be NO money for nothing, and nobody will ever be trusted. Everybody wants +10%/yr on their retirement, and they're all handing out their money, and its been going down the drain for years.

No wonder the status-quo want to kill social-security, the future old-fart is being picked clean.

CPA's, Law Firms, are no different than hangmen of the past, just doing the killing for the king of the day.

Utility of this blog? Wise investing? Invest in prison funds, invest in security. I understand the "ProFunds" is doing a select funds package based on such. That bubble will burst, but not until 69% of the public is a security guard.

Anonymous said...


Duncan ask's "Why is that downtown will not be ready for the holidays? Why will it be looking like a construction zone?

. It's like a Bizzaro world of retail where it apparently seems like a good idea to be closed during the Summer and Christmas, but hurry to be open for the desert months of Jan-June. .

I don't thinks it's bizzare. Think about this, the money is no longer available, commercial REIT is shutdown, only the stuff on the line is currently on-line. Shutdown, or suspend and your 'draws' are over. Take your time, keep building drag it out, keep everyone busy,... Keep your subs busy, keep things moving along. Keep the new hotels moving, new penthouse condo's. Don't stop for a minute, someone might question the forward momentum.

There will be NO NEW money. Things will keep moving, the current stuff will slow down, the liens will go astronomic, as suppliers will start to worry. Some of these projects will get stopped, many of there commercial REITS have had tons of redemptions in the past few months. The money is gone. The banks, start realizing they're throwing good money after bad, many of the condos will become apartments, this is what is happening today in PDX.

WRT the city and little business, NOTE that Bend is NOT about YOU the little businessman, Bend is about the BIG picture "WWW.VISITBEND.COM". Nobody really cares whether a little guy pays his bills during the holiday, or whether another ma&pa biz goes south. What matters is that BIG projects are happening, and they keep everyone employed, and the BULL can report new BIG projects.

Keep everyone optimistic, nobody gives a SHIT if your store if covered by a street fair, or a semi.

Probably by Spring, things will be at a crawl, by then the new money will be almost impossible to squeeze, the suppliers will have extended maximum credit to all, the draws will no longer becoming. Much of the new stuff will be perpetually never-done, just like the Plaza today. The plywood all over downtown will be there for years, until someone steals it some night for building materials for a shed down in LA-PINES.

In summary,

1.) Keep the building moving forward as long as the banks keep making draws, these things will never be finished, thus that is an irrelevant concept.
2.) Nobody in City Government gives a shit about small business, because that is NOT who runs the town.

Get over all of Bend being incomplete buildings of concrete and plywood facades. This is the future for a long time.

Completion now means NO MORE MONEY, thus every building will now be literally drawing out each project as long as it can be milked. There is NO NEW MONEY coming to Bend.

Nothing will ever be completed, and nobody has any intention of completion, what would be the point of completing the Plaza?? All dressed up with nobody to blow, far better to just do a little work, and let the years pass by, and wait for the correction to create new demand.

Gradually sub's & contractors will move on.

Like I have said for a year, watch supplier liens, once our favorite supplier is sitting on 90 day non-payment liens, then its ALL cash for all supplys, and that is another reason that things are slow, and nothing will be done by xmas, because there is NO CASH.

The liquidity in this town has run dry, equity in RE means SHIT, Cash talks, bullshit walks, and most in bend are now walking.

Anonymous said...

"Ron Garzini said... "
-------------
What a sack of $%#@!

What I'm saying is "He is not my cup of tea".

-------------

This is a family site, don't be cruel to Bendbb's husband, and my son.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

And Note, that we will probably hear NOTHING about the collapse of large scale developments that are unraveling all over Bend. Mercato? DOA. Remember this one?

Huge project planned for Bend's Mill Quarter
Multiuse building would span most of a city block near Old Mill District
By David Fisher / The Bulletin
Published: June 18. 2007 5:00AM PST

Another block-long building project is on the drawing boards for Bend's Mill Quarter neighborhood.

A limited liability company led by Pronghorn resort partner Tom Hix filed applications with the city this month to build a massive townhome and retail building on a 2.84-acre vacant lot between Colorado and Arizona avenues.

The 660-foot-long building would span most of the block between Lava and Sisemore streets on vacant land that used to mark the northern edge of the old Brooks-Scanlon Lumber Mill site.

If it's built, the project will be the biggest yet proposed for the Old Mill area, where more than $250 million worth of office, retail, condominium and hotel projects are already either under construction or on the drawing boards.

So far, the competition doesn't seem to have anyone worried.

"We all have different products," Hix said last week. "I don't think it'll really be an issue."

Stephen Trono, who's forging ahead with plans for his $80 million, 200,000-square-foot retail, office and condo project, Mercato, near the Deschutes River off Industrial Way, said every developer in the area will benefit as Bill Smith fills his Shops at the Old Mill District with national and regional retailers and other major projects, including his own, and a $127 million hotel/condo at 500 Bond St., get under way.

Every project that succeeds, Trono said - assuming that they do - makes it easier for the next to attract financing and tenants.

They all want to know, 'Why Bend?'" Trono said. "'What's the viability of a product like that in Bend?' So the more success everybody has in Bend, that's going to add to that story."

Hix said he hopes to get through the city's application process in time to start construction in 2008. He hasn't started fishing for retail tenants, but he said the building will eventually shoot for a mix of retail sizes, from large to tiny, with townhomes priced above the bottom of the market, but well below the million-dollar-and-up prices some other Old Mill area developers are asking.

Hix's company, Colorado Street Development Partners, paid $4.4 million to buy five tracts of land from various owners at the site last year, according to Deschutes County records.

Part of the land is zoned for general commercial, which allows everything from retail stores to high-density housing. The rest is zoned for light industry.

The developers are asking the city to rezone the entire parcel to general commercial to accommodate the building.

The building is expected to generate about 635 car trips per hour in peak traffic times, and around 6,297 trips per day, according to a traffic study written by Bend-based traffic consultant Ferguson & Associates. Most of the intersections in the area will be able to handle the load, Ferguson's report concluded, but a westbound through lane will probably have to be built at the Bend Parkway ramps to keep them from jamming.

Hix, a Mountain View, Calif.-based developer, is best known in Central Oregon for the high-end Pronghorn golf resort, whose million-dollar homes surround a pair of Jack Nicklaus- and Tom Fazio-designed golf courses in the juniper desert northeast of Bend. Golf Magazine Living named it the best new community in the West in its March 2006 issue.


Be nice if he named it something, so when it goes on the DOA tombstone, I can call it something, other than "660 Death Tube", or something.

This dinosaur is supposed to be started in 2008... not gonna happen. Those For Lease signs are going to grow cracked & old. Yet Another Hypoxia Driven Fantasy brought to you by Bends Mega RE Bubble.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

All these Mill Quarter developers are looking at the Absolute Catastrophe of Old Mill projects, and wondering what the hell to do. As BendBuster points out, if they just plain old STOP, IT'S OVER. It's like firing yourself from a job.

Ultimately these banks will all succumb to the credit contagion, and will pull funding. It pretty much boils down to screwing the bank for all it's worth before they pull the plug.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Absolute Catastrophe of Old Mill projects

I mean The Plaza. Once The Plaza fails, it'll be a domino effect. Read Trono's statement:

the more success everybody has in Bend, that's going to add to that story.

The converse is also true. Once failure takes hold, it'll cascade all over that area. The best thing Trono & Hix can do is buy a Plaza unit or 2. I think that whole high-end office area is going to have a crushing vacancy rate soon. The big RE brokers will be the first to go.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Another Mill Quarter "renovation", that will bascially NEVER lease out:


For the Mill Quarter, an uncertain future
New owners' rent increase forcing out local businesses
By David Fisher / The Bulletin
Published: May 28. 2007 5:00AM PST

Back in its early years, the hulking Mill Quarter Marketplace building that lines Arizona Avenue and Industrial Way was at the heart of an industrial city.

Wood bumped along huge conveyors while saws whirred, turning the forest into cut lumber.

Once the mills died, it found a new place at the city's center. In the nine years since former owner Aaron Lafky and his partners bought it, it has become a center of gravity for a lot of the things that give Bend its modern air of Western coolness.

In the corner of the building that flanks Industrial Way, artisans and artists have taken advantage of the cheap rent to set up shop. A nationally known women's clothing designer has a factory in the corner. A nationally known pair of fabric artists works in the front corner. There's a framer, an interior landscaper, an interior furnishing designer, a clay pottery co-op, a wholesale/retail dealer of art beads, among others - all working businesses, but also a collective draw that gives artistically inclined tourists hours of browsing fun.

The building still has an industrial side, too, but it's a different kind of industry with a green construction and service flair. There's a tile company, a marble supplier, a freight broker, an environmentally friendly building supply shop, and a solar designer and installer.

Then there's fitness and the outdoors - the Arizona Avenue side houses a personal training gym and an interior rock climbing gym that sprawls through the old factory's interior.

Most of the little businesses are locally owned. Most have thrived on the building's rambling space and relatively cheap rents - its current leases range around 80 cents a month per square foot.

And that may all be about to change.

Lafky and his partners sold the building, along with about 2.7 acres of bare land to the east, last month for $18.35 million, according to Deschutes County tax records.

The new owners, a Portland-based limited liability company called Mill Quarter Marketplace LLC, are "still working on the overall vision for the marketplace," according to Amy Cecil, an Oliver Commercial group property manager who is handling its day-to-day management.

The owners could not be reached for comment.

Although the new owners aren't outlining any specific new plans for the building, they are making moves that may signal that the building's character is destined to change again, some current tenants say. If it has a future at all.

Forced out

A handful of the building's 25-or-so tenants had clauses in their leases that allowed cancellation within 180 days if the building were sold. Those clauses have been exercised on some, including Azillion Beads owner Pam Blanton and Lubbesmeyer Fabric Studio artists Lisa and Lori Lubbesmeyer, giving them six months to find new places.

Others, like Pettibone Custom Picture Framing owner Cathy Pettibone, have been told their leases won't be renewed once they expire - in her case, at the end of September.

Others say they have been told that their lease rates will likely double when their current leases expire, in effect forcing them to move or strongly consider moving. That's the case with Inclimb Rock Gym owner Larry Brumwell, who's staring down the probability of having to saw apart $300,000 worth of built-in indoor rock walls and find another location before his rates double next summer.

Perhaps predictably, the moves aren't setting well with the current tenants.

Brumwell, who's lived in Bend for 17 years and has run the rock climbing gym for more than a decade, said he sees the Mill Quarter moves as part of a broader pressure by the city's latest development waves - high-priced retail and residential construction - on the "mom and pop" businesses that give the city its spice.

"It's disappointing," Brumwell said Friday. "Bend has changed in so many ways, in this area and all over, especially in the last five years, and it's all rooted around money and that kind of progress. I don't know that Bend has progressed very much in a lot of other ways, so much as just real estate development."

The business ecosystem that has grown in the Mill Quarter building will be hard to replace if it's torn apart and replaced by retail that generates higher rent, Blanton predicted. And its disappearance may cost the city more than it might expect.

"It's part of the personality. It's the charm that brings tourists," Blanton said Thursday, after a frustrating day of shopping for new space that could replace the 2,400 square feet of display floor that she leases for 82 cents a square foot in her Mill Quarter shop. "I mean, who wants to come and see a Gap? A Victoria's Secret? A World Market? I mean, they've got all that at home."

"I really think it's the extinction of the artisan in Bend," fumed Ellen Gienger, the owner and key designer of Ego Originals, a women's clothing design and production shop that sells nationwide from its 1,600 square feet in a corner of the building's Industrial Way side. "That's my feeling, because there is just no room. It's too expensive now for artists to produce and sell in this town. Period."

Real hardship

Brumwell said he's moving forward to reshape his business and find new space. Gienger also is thinking about buying her own space somewhere in one of the city's industrial zones.

Still, aside from a disruption of the synergy the little businesses have built in their current Mill Quarter sites, the changes are causing real economic pain.

For Blanton, it's the second shake-up in less than five years. She moved out of one of the Eriksen family's buildings on Brooks Street downtown shortly before they bulldozed it to make way for a condominium and retail project that is currently stalled. Now she's 2 1/2 years into a five-year lease at the Mill Quarter, where she took out two loans on her family's house to pay for $30,000 or so in improvements, and she has been told she has six months to leave.

About 90 percent of Azillion Beads' sales are wholesale to jewelers and other artisans throughout Bend and the region, Blanton said. Her beads, in all shapes and sizes, are the raw materials for upscale creations for artists ranging from Gienger, who uses them in her clothing ensembles, to necklace- and bracelet-makers. The walls and display cases are draped and packed with beads and medallions made with African opal and jade, tiger eye, black coral, rough-cut diamonds, Mexican opal, garnets, sapphires and turquoise.

She and her husband own another shop in Eugene that mainly services their Web-based sales, Blanton said, along with another small shop in Sunriver. They may move the Bend operation to Portland, where there's a bigger local market for it and possibly more reasonable rents, she said.

Pettibone, who first leased space in the Mill Quarter building 11 years ago when she was hemmed in by an overhead door company and a diaper service, said she doesn't know what she's going to do if she loses her space later this year. Oliver Commercial's representatives, at one point, offered to consider doing a month-to-month lease after her current lease runs out, she said, but they have told her since that they're not sure whether that offer will stand.

"They're kicking the little guy out, is what's going on," Pettibone said. "Don't people come here for the character of the Old Mill, or the character of the downtown? I mean, we're character."

The Lubbesmeyer sisters, who moved their successful studio here from Minneapolis four years ago, partly because they wanted to return to their Northwestern roots and partly because of the Mill Quarter and the town's strong community of artists, also are looking for new space - a task complicated by their need to find the kind of airy, sunlit space they have at the Mill Quarter, and their desire for visibility and a proximity to other artists.

"Considering that it's a smaller community, relatively speaking, the people here are very supportive of the arts," Lori Lubbesmeyer said. "We just have to keep artists here."

Old building

The Mill Quarter building is nearly 100 years old, according to county records, and it shows.

Gienger said she sunk more than $20,000 into the buildout of a bigger space in the building that she had hoped to use, along with her existing space, before the sale. But that project was stymied when the city insisted that her part of the building be "brought up to code," she said - a job with an unknown, but probably high, price tag.

The building's age shows through in unexpected places.

Iron pump housings, connected to a long-defunct series of pipes, sit in the middle of Gienger's design factory, and at the back of Zoe Hull's Evergreen Plantscapes space - part of an old fire-suppression system that used river water as a standby in case the old mill building's wood and sawdust-filled air erupted in flames.

A maze of wires snakes up the wall and into the roof of Hull's space. In one of the bathrooms in Inclimb's rock gym, a dry-rotted beam is separating from the wall.

The condition of the building leads some tenants, including Gienger, to suspect that it's destined for the same demolition fate that befell the old crane shed building across the street a few years ago.

Bend developer Stephen Trono bought the crane shed's old site after its former owners were fined for razing the building. He plans to start work this summer on an $80 million set of new, designed-to-look-old buildings with shops, offices, residential condos and underground parking. He says he hopes The Mercato project will be Bend's answer to the renovated Ferry Building in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, in the Mill Quarter building, the new owners are "honoring the terms and conditions of the current leases which are in place," Oliver Commercial's Cecil said in an e-mail. Some tenants, like Hull, still have several years on their leases with no 180-day termination clauses that could lead to an early exit.

Still, Hull said she's concerned by what's happening around her.

"This building has a good vibe about it, you know? It's got a feel about it," Hull said. "People pick up on all that, and they feel the energy of all that. They feel ... you know ... it's important."


This is another nail in the coffin of "Bend", and another boost to "Bend, Inc.", and endless sea of Big Box bullshit, well put by Blanton:

"I mean, who wants to come and see a Gap? A Victoria's Secret? A World Market? I mean, they've got all that at home."

Making Bend into a homogeneous retail zone full of the same old shit, IS NOT a good idea. Dummys like Becky Breeze seem to think it'll be a Big Draw:
You´ll also love the fact that you are steps away from The Shops at the Old Mill where you can browse through The Gap, Victoria's Secret, Banana Republic, American Eagle Outfitters, Saxons Fine Jewelers as well as a host of other Boutique Stores.

Yeah... people LOVE driving 500 miles to go to ANOTHER VICTORIAS SECRET. Wow. Good idea.

Anonymous said...

It's not a good idea... it's a GREAT idea!!!

People drive millions of miles, and where do they eat? Well, of course, they eat at the local burger joint that makes wonderfully local burgers, right?

WRONG!!!!!! They eat dogcrap at McDonalds, since it taste just like the dogcrap burgers at home.

People like to eat dogcrap. It is nice and familiar to them.

Bend is SMART!!! VISIONAIRY!!! GARZINIAIRY!!!!!

Bend Economy Man said...

What BendBust said makes perfect sense. There's no incentive for a developer to rush to complete any project right now. And the lenders have the rock-and-hard-place choice of either foreclosing on a construction site (and then they still have the problems of paying off contractors AND selling a white-elephant incomplete project that already has proved it's not viable AND securing the site in the meantime so that it doesn't get destroyed by vandals, thieves and the weather), or hoping along with the developer that things will turn around.

Man, it's ugly!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The Mercato project will be Bend's answer to the renovated Ferry Building in San Francisco.

If Mercato is "the answer", what the fuck was the question?

"How can we make Bend as much like the uppity parts of Cali ASAP?"

What is this HIDEOUS working assumption that There's Something Wrong With Olde Bend? Like The Mill Quarter, which is OLD, has to be demolished a soon as possible, to create FAUX OLD?

He plans to start work this summer on an $80 million set of new, designed-to-look-old buildings with shops, offices, residential condos and underground parking.

Good call BITCH.

"let's tear down this OLD, CHEAP PLACE, and erect a FAUX OLD, EXPENSIVE place."

I'm just glad I won't have to put up with OLD anymore in Bend, and will finally get to enjoy the FAUX OLD I so dearly love. It's like they're tearing down Bend, and putting up Disneyland Bend; an expensive reproduction that costs 10X the original.

Bend Economy Man said...

Bend is about the BIG picture "WWW.VISITBEND.COM". Nobody really cares whether a little guy pays his bills during the holiday, or whether another ma&pa biz goes south.

I think in terms of these projects, the big picture is even bigger than that. When you're talking about quarter-billion-dollar projects, you're talking about all the interested parties being out-of-area. The green-light on financing and construction of projects of that scope probably depends more on what a couple hedge-fund managers in Connecticut think than anything perceptible from Bend. When we see plywood and unfinished concrete on giant projects here in Bend we're like the blind man trying to comprehend an elephant - it is like a snake? Like a tree? Like a rope? It's just a small part of a much bigger animal.

Anonymous said...

The green-light on financing and construction of projects of that scope probably depends more on what a couple hedge-fund managers in Connecticut think than anything perceptible from Bend.

*

These are REIT deals, and now the NYC firm has a fucking BEND commercial on its books. This is NOT a good thing. Yes, nobody gives a fuck in NYC if Bend is full of plywood or cardboard.

On the other hand Commercial REITS are dead, and the remaining projects are going to go slow until they die. Most of the builders will be late on supplier payments watch the liens, watch the mass of liens, we need to someone to histo-gram locations versus density of liens. Then you'll have a very good idea when a project will implode.

Anybody want to buy a partially completed Plaza with NO HOPE of a buyer?

When a lot of these Commercial REIT deals were put together two years ago, that was Fall of 2005, the best of times, everyone wanted to have 'BEND' in its portfolio. Now, nobody wants 'bend' in its portfolio.

Anonymous said...

Ultimately these banks will all succumb to the credit contagion, and will pull funding. It pretty much boils down to screwing the bank for all it's worth before they pull the plug.

*

That's the beauty of our ever pervasive BEND-LLC. You can fuck everyone, and everyone FUCKS everyone else. When the party is over, you get no bill, nothing, just do it again, ...

Right now there's no new loans, so you just keep sucking tit on the current loan as long as you can. NYC "Hey billy bob, home come plaza ain't done?", "Sheet, they brought no chew up from lapine today so crew is sitting out the work day",... No hurry, we got nothing to do when this job is done.

Anonymous said...

It's official, if your breathing, and own a single-wide, then NWXC will sell you a LOT!!!!!!

....................

NorthWest Crossing homesites offered for sale to the public for the first time ever!

Bend, OR (OPENPRESS) November 12, 2007 -- The Oregon real estate development NorthWest Crossing, the largest mixed-use community in the state, today announced that it is offering homesites for sale to the public. This new offering is an expansion of the neighborhood’s “Custom Choice @ NorthWest Crossing” program, which allows potential buyers to select a homesite and work directly with a NorthWest Crossing approved builder to design and construct the home of their choice.

“When we started Custom Choice, we wanted to offer buyers one more unique alternative for living in NorthWest Crossing,” said David Quiros, principal broker for NorthWest Crossing Realty. “Adding new homesites to the program just made good sense and we have already garnered a high amount of interest from the public.”

This will be the first time that the community has offered homesite real estate sales to the general public. Previously, homesites were only available by lottery to the NorthWest Crossing Builders’ Guild, a group of approximately 25 approved neighborhood builders.

Buyers will be offered incentives if they choose to work with a builder who is part of the Builders’ Guild, although they can choose to work with a builder of their choice. All homes built through the program must undergo the community’s standard architectural review process.

Forty-eight homesites from 4,700 to over 15,000 square feet are currently available with prices ranging from $135,000 to $230,000 within the Bend Oregon real estate development NorthWest Crossing.

About NorthWest Crossing
NorthWest Crossing is a mixed-use community on Bend’s west side which was awarded the Urban Land Institute’s 2007 “Development of Excellence” award and was featured as the 2006 Most Successful Development in Oregon by BUILDERnews magazine. West Bend Property Company LLC, a partnership of Brooks Resources Corporation and Tennant Family Limited Partnership, is developing the community. Both companies, based in Bend, have solid histories of commitment to thoughtful, quality real estate developments in Central Oregon. Their goal of creating a livable and sustainable community at NorthWest Crossing is rooted in their understanding and respect for the true essence of Bend and the Central Oregon lifestyle. northwestcrossing.com

Anonymous said...

Talking about OLD bad-boyz, then there's this new boy, coming on, yeh lets all wait and see.

The 56-room hotel will cost $12 million or about $200,000 per room to construct, boutique style Hotel.

Did you hear that Jennifer Anniston took a shit last night at the Pine Tavern?

****
Hotelier takes it up a notch
Bend company doublesper-room construction cost for Oxford Hotel
By Jeff McDonald / The Bulletin
Published: November 11. 2007 5:00AM PST

When The Oxford Hotel opens in downtown Bend about a year from now, it will be the 17th in a chain of hotels owned and operated by locally based Curt Baney and family.

But this will be the first in Bend and unlike any of the other hotels in the Oxford Suites and Oxford Inn & Suites chain, said Baney, president of the Baney Hotel Group.

The family, which owned the Geiser Grand Hotel in Baker City from the mid 1950s until 1960 and several small motels in Oregon through the 1980s, launched the Oxford Suites and Oxford Inn & Suites brand from its Bend headquarters in 1989.

The company is in growth mode with four new hotels under construction or planned, including The Oxford Hotel in downtown Bend, Baney said.

The company has built one to two new hotels annually for the last 10 years, Baney said. The Oxford Hotel will be entirely self-financed with the company’s cash reserves, he said, declining to release the company’s annual revenues.

With a new headquarters building under construction off U.S. Highway 20 east of Bend, the Baney Hotel Group competes against larger hotel players, including Hilton Garden Inn and Courtyard by Marriott, Baney said.

“We design, build and manage all of our hotels,” Baney said. “We don’t do any franchising. That’s what makes us different from our competitors, who started as a family owned business, but morphed into something different.”

The Oxford Hotel, located at the corner of Lava Road and Minnesota Avenue against the south wall of the Centennial Parking Plaza in downtown Bend, is scheduled for completion by late 2008.

The 56-room hotel will cost $12 million or about $200,000 per room to construct, twice what the typical Oxford hotel would cost, said Baney, who called the hotel the first “boutique-style” hotel in the chain.

Its features will include valet, bell hop, concierge and personalized service that will separate it from other hotels in the chain, Baney said.

“The market and the site lended itself to making it a full-service hotel,” Baney said. “We don’t think we’re on the cusp of any grand growth strategy. As long as we’re having fun, we’re going to continue doing what we’re doing.”

The rooms of the downtown hotel will range in size from 450 square feet to 850 square feet and will be priced between $150 and $300 per night, he said. It will cater to customers who are seeking a personalized level of service and luxurious accommodations, he said.

High Desert Gallery of Central Oregon, which has locations in Sisters and Redmond, will be located at street level in the hotel and a full-service restaurant also is planned, Baney said.

“The timing is right because of the parking structure, which spring-boarded development of the hotel,” Baney said. “We love the activity in downtown Bend. It’s so vibrant and active.”

For Bend’s tourism industry, the addition of the hotel will help make downtown a bigger player in Central Oregon’s $498-million-a-year tourism economy, said Doug LaPlaca, president and CEO of the Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau.

The majority of rooms in and around Bend, with the exception of the Phoenix Inn Suites and a few other motels, are on the outskirts of downtown, he said.

“This will better position Bend as a destination to attract more affluent travelers who are looking for a more upscale, boutique-type of lodging experience,” LaPlaca said. “A hotel of this type will attract travelers who might otherwise not stay in Bend.”

Local businesses, including restaurants, art galleries and salons could benefit from the increased activity downtown generated by hotel guests, LaPlaca said.

“As the vibrancy of downtown continues to evolve, the shopping and dining activities in the downtown corridor are becoming an increasingly essential part of the Central Oregon tourism experience,” he said.

The Oxford Hotel is across the street from the 117-room Phoenix Inn Suites, which does not have a full-service restaurant or valet parking.

“We view the property as a nice complement to us,” said Eric Schofield, general manager of the Phoenix Inn. “There is a need for a full-service property. It will bring more people to the area and offer the elegance that Bend needs.”

Julie Kizer, who owns Zante at the corner of Bond Street and Minnesota, and Element 909, a men’s salon that will open Nov. 20 in the former site of Double Happiness restaurant across Bond Street, said the hotel would attract clients who would likely utilize her services.

“There are often times when tourists come here — they go skiing and want to get a manicure or pedicure,” Kizer said. “Tourists and business executive types want more suite-style amenities. This will give them the same feel that they would get if they were staying in downtown Portland at the Vintage Plaza.”

Elyse Douglas, co-owner of Douglas Fine Jewelry & Design, is reserving judgment about the hotel until it opens, she said. She wants to see whether the national economic slowdown changes travel trends.

“I can’t think of a downside for downtown businesses — we all hope it brings in new customers,” she said.

The Oxford Hotel will “complete Minnesota Avenue,” said Kent Chapple, owner of Thump Coffee, who cited constant construction activity, including the Centennial Parking Plaza and the remodeling of the old Firehall into Staccato at the Firehall restaurant.

“What I like is that the hotel is going to bring Minnesota Avenue to life,” Chapple said. “There’s already more retail. It’s becoming more present in people’s minds.”

The hotel business started in the Baney family in the mid-1950s, when Curt Baney’s father, Curtis O. Baney, bought the Geiser Grand Hotel in Baker City.

The elder Baney later sold the hotel in 1960 and moved his family to Eugene and opened a motel in Klamath Falls, one in Hermiston, and two in Bend — the Cimarron and Maverick motels. Neither Bend motel operates today.

Curt Baney joined the business in 1980 and the father and son put together a new chain concept with bigger rooms than motels, more amenities and a fully cooked breakfast, Curt Baney said. Curt’s brother, Kevin, is the ex-husband of Deschutes County Commissioner Tammy Baney.

The Bend-based Oxford Suites hotel chain, which opened its first hotel in Roseville, Calif., in 1989, has grown to 16 hotels in Oregon, Washington state, Idaho and California, Baney said. The new Bend hotel will make No. 17, and three more hotels are under development in Beaverton, Klamath Falls and Sedona, Ariz., Baney said

Anonymous said...

I just wanted to thank you dumb fucking cunts for giving us the land, and paying our infrastructure and building our building.

I love Bend. I love Ron Garzini.

Juniper Ridge "delayed", Les Schwab fast-tracked, Bend taxpayer hosed.

Juniper Ridge development delayed
Bend Weekly, OR - Oct 23, 2007
... the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) indicates that further building beyond Les Schwab`s headquarters will not be allowed at Juniper Ridge ...

Anonymous said...

Les Schwab to be exempt for ALL CCR's in Juniper Ridge forever!!!!!!

What a fucking deal. Some pigs are MORE equal than others.

***

Economic Development Director John Russell explained that the CC&R’s are not
complete for Juniper Ridge, so these conditions were drafted for Les Schwab. There
were provisions in the purchase agreement for interim CC&R’s. The conditions were in
the purchase agreement. The 12 acres being purchased now will not be impacted by
future CC&R’s, but the properties around this would be subject to CC&R’s.
Councilor Gramlich noted that they are CC&R’s. He inquired about the lack of
architectural design regulations. Mr. Russell explained that plans have been presented
to Council. When Les Schwab purchased the property the land did not have CC&R’s
and these were created to protect themselves.
Councilor Telfer asked if these CC&R’s are any more restrictive than anything Juniper
Ridge will draft. Mr. Russell believes the permanent CC&R’s will be more restrictive.
Councilor Capell moved to approve the Declaration of Covenants, Conditions,
Restrictions and Easements and authorize its execution by the City Manager. Councilor
Clinton seconded the motion which passed unanimously, 6/0

Anonymous said...

Green community?
“Framework of good design” – what happens with Les Schwab? They
do not have to follow CCR’s so what good is your “green” design?
How will the city ensure that all of this “green” planning is bought into
by businesses/tenants if agreements like Les Schwab continue?


I believe we can all agree that Juniper Ridge is the driving force for the
HWY 97 realignment, as such, accommodation need to be written into
the plan guaranteeing property for the dislocated businesses
I am seriously concerned how the Les Schwab debacle will affect the
master plan. Will you plan around this hideous sprawling building that
you know wont meet your 10 principles? It would be great if you could
mitigate its ugliness and sprawl somehow if at all possible
Emphasized priorities:
o Walkability
o mass transit
o preserving natural features
o community spaces/place making/distinctive character
o variety of housing types/income considerations
o respect for surrounding land uses
o Public input!
Buffer zones between residential, landscape berms, lighting,
Safe crossing for kids to school on Cooley (under or over crossing)
Noise level
Park at west end of development
Develop visual images that show xeriscaping and water conservation –
otherwise people will not understand/appreciate them and incorporating
water conservation will be a difficult sell
Develop/take advantage of architectural features to minimize need for
trees
Preserve native “islands” (communities) not just trees. Many native
flowering plants provide seasonal color and interest
Develop alternatives to clean and green (goose habitat)
Develop new CO streetscape vernacular that meshes with juniper and
sagebrush
Utilize natural areas for runoff
Develop drainage master plan during early concept planning
Public service facilities – health clinics, local police facilities, public
transportation, fire protection, retirement communities
I would like to maintain the western desert character of Juniper Ridge
with native planting as well as “native” buildings. With so much growth
in the area I am concerned about the loss of native habitat that sustains
wildlife here. Also, the examples you showed were very urban in
character and I would prefer a more rural western feel

Anonymous said...

12 acres now, 8 acres later, will somebody help me to the bathroom?

Economic Development Director John Russell explained the public hearing to consider a land
sale for the first 20 acres of Juniper Ridge. The agreement is for the immediate purchase of 12
acres with an option for an additional eight acres over the next 12 years. The company would be
building a 120 square foot building for 320 employees. The land would be for Les Schwab
corporate headquarters relocating from Prineville. The company approached the City in May
anonymously. This would be for the corporate headquarters and the remainder of the Prineville
operations would remain in Prineville. The Company was considering Bend or leaving the state.
a. Hold a public hearing to receive comment on the proposed sale of real
property
Mayor Friedman opened the public hearing at 10: 01 A.M. Hearing no comments, the public
hearing was closed.
b. Consider a motion to sell real property
Councilor Telfer moved to approve the purchase and sale agreement with SWW LLC. Councilor
Malkin seconded the motion

Anonymous said...

11. An Ordinance Amending the City of Bend Area Zoning Map, by Changing
the Zoning Designation of a Parcel of Land as Shown in Exhibit “A” from
UAR, Urban Area Reserve, to IL, Industrial Light. (20 acres located
northeast of the planned realignment of the intersection of NE Cooley Rd.
and 18th, just to the northeast of Lava Ridge Elementary School and
Skyview Middle School. Applicant: City of Bend) (Issue Summary)
(Ordinance) (Map) (Hearings Officer Decision)

Planning Manager Colin Stephens explained the zone change request for Les Schwab
corporate headquarters. This is the first step in the process. Cooley Road will be
improved and 18
th
Street will be extended. Wastewater and water will be extended to
serve the property. Zone changes are judged by criteria as contained in the Bend
Code. The zone change request is consistent with statewide planning goals, the Bend
Comprehensive Plan, and adequate public facilities are provided for. The hearings
officer recommends approval with conditions and found that the criteria had been
satisfied. Staff concurs and recommends approval by Council with the conditions of
approval

Councilor Telfer stated that the hearings officer is representing her on another land use
issue. She noted that findings indicate no opposition testified, but she understands
there is opposition. She asked why opposition did not show up at the public hearing.
Mr. Stephens explained that properties within 250 feet of the subject property were
noticed. Notification was also posted in The Bulletin and a large sign posted on the
property. The same notice was provided for tonight’s hearing. Councilor Telfer referred
to conflict with goal 12 regarding a reliable transportation system. She referred to page
8 and 9 in the hearings officer’s findings and recommendations. She is uncomfortable
with the proposed traffic mitigation being vague as to what and when the solution will
occur. She is concerned with the 20 year horizon, if an intersection is currently failing
and the fix does not have to occur for 20 years. She sees conflicting verbiage that
allows deferral of City standards if they don’t make it worse, while the intersection is
failing even now. She referred to recommendations on page 15. It seems like this
development will determine what the traffic fix will be. Mr. Stephens explained that goal
12 is not a requirement for concurrency. It does not require immediate fixes. It allows
reliance on future projects. Hwy 97/Cooley Road intersection is an ODOT facility. The
City and ODOT will conduct a study on how to fix the facility during the site review and
the timing will be determined at that time
Glen Kline (Cline?), attorney for applicant, City of Bend, explained that the record before
Council contains the applicant’s statement and evidence and the hearings officer’s
decision. He explained what the recommendations mean and what the revised
ordinance is intended to do. The revised ordinance is intended to clarify the confusing
pieces of the recommendation. There are a number of other transportation analyses
going on at the same time looking at bigger issues than just the 20 acres rezone. The
studies include Cooley Road improvement area and the Hwy 97/20 Refinement Plan
study. Recommendations were intended to state there needs to be a more detailed
analysis of Hwy 97 at Cooley Road and Hwy 97 at Robal Road. As part of the analysis,
certain things should be evaluated. The hearings officer recommendation stated that
one alternative may be jug handles. This is not a condition of approval and is not what
the application intended. The condition of approval should state that the applicant shall
conduct a detailed traffic analysis at Hwy 97 at Cooley Road and Hwy 97 at Robal Road. The second condition of approval would say, based on traffic analysis and
concurrence of ODOT to the nature and timing of improvements, the applicant shall
construct the improvements at Hwy 97 at Cooley and Hwy 97 at Robal. A broader
evaluation of the problem is intended than just by the applicant. The improvements
have not yet been determined. No one has said that the jug handles are the preferred
solution. Council received a revised ordinance setting out these two conditions more
clearly and include them in the ordinance.

Jeff Evans attorney for WalMart addressed the Council. WalMart owns property at Hwy
97 and Cooley Road and is concerned about adding more traffic to this intersection. It
is WalMart’s understanding that the approach is a cooperative, long-term solution for
this area. It appears with the zone change that the hearings officer recommends
something other than what WalMart expected. Alternative short term fixes are
disconcerting to WalMart because it would have a direct impact on its property. A jug
handle would impair the ability to develop. WalMart is not opposed to Juniper Ridge
development but is concerned that the City apply the code consistent to all applicants,
especially when the City is the applicant. In its haste to rezone the property, it has
created legal barriers. First, there is no evidence to support the hearings officer’s
findings in several areas. There is no evidence in support of adequate transportation
facilities. The City engineer does not have authority to wave the transportation facilities
requirement. Secondly, the hearings officer improperly defers findings of compliance
with the transportation planning rule. Finally, the City relies on the TPR analysis, a
reasonable worse case scenario. The City standard requires an absolute worse case
scenario. WalMart has no opposition to development of Juniper Ridge or Les Schwab.
They just want everyone to work together for a solution for all affected property owners.
WalMart requests that Council deny the hearings officer recommendation and take time
to evaluate the impact on the transportation network. It requests that the record be left
open to allow time to respond. They were only apprised of the zone change on Friday

Anonymous said...

Bend colludes with Borgman to FUCK walmart, Lowes, ...

***

Liz Dickson, attorney for Bend Associates, spoke about the Mall on the edge of Hwy 97.
She submitted into the record a letter from Michael Robinson, attorney for Lowes. She
also submitted a letter. She supports the technical remarks of Mr. Evans. The
procedure used by the City in this case is improper and is vulnerable to appeals and
further delays and expense. Her client benefits if Juniper Ridge is developed. Since
August of 2005, numerous organizations have been working together to come up with a
good transportation solution for everyone. In the midst of this collaborative effort, the
hearings officer issued a decision that states that a jug handle will be used. This does
not comply with law. The TPR rule states that ODOT must provide a statement that
funding and timing for mitigation is sufficient. ODOT did not provide this. ODOT stated
that the City could comply if it could build the short term solution. The OTC told ODOT
that the commission demands a refinement plan before any money is spent. OTC said
you can’t go forward with short term solution until a long term plan is in place. She
referred to and submitted two specific case law findings. She submitted the decision
regarding WalMart into the record. She asked that all applicants be treated the same
way. Ms. Dickson’s client supports Juniper Ridge but asks the City to consider slowing
down and doing it right.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

...said David Quiros

I've had the cereal they named this guy after:

"Queer-O's -- not just for Tom Cruise anymore"

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

You can fuck everyone, and everyone FUCKS everyone else.

I think we're also starting to see why the Smart Money never does condo... you can never really creatively unload it. Brooks is auctioning townhomes... Developers are going wholesale on uncompleted subdivs...

But a condo is a Giant Monolith, that must be damn near 100% completed before you can sell anything inside. Going condo leaves no OUT if things go to shit.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Wow, did anyone see the home buying piece on KTVZ? It was so mindless & useless it boggles the mind.

They said they would tell about a loan product that requires "NOTHING DOWN", and whose terms NEVER CHANGE. Answer?

30 YEAR FIXED RATE LOAN

Yes. If you're closing your eyes, shaking your head... join the club. My Lord.

And the people they interviewed were shown playing "frisbee" about 2 ft from each other. Not kidding, 2 feet. That was actually a major part of the piece, they showed it over & over.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

That KTVZ piece was just a bought & paid for RE PR stunt. The msg was basically BUY A HOUSE TODAY. THERE ARE NO OBSTACLES. YOUR LOAN WILL BE APPROVED. BAD CREDIT, OK.

Seriously, that was it. They seemed to ant to intimate that the couple they were "interviewing" were a terrible credit risk, saved NOTHING EVER, and got a 100% LTV loan.

So damned weird. It felt like a 100% SETUP piece, absolute FAKE.

Bend Economy Man said...

So damned weird. It felt like a 100% SETUP piece, absolute FAKE.

That is for sure. Bizarre! Think it'll work?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

That is for sure. Bizarre! Think it'll work?

Well, it's worked for years, so probably.

This was just an odd story. Interviewing 2 people ~ with that strange "frisbee playing" ~ about how buying a house in Bend with ZERO DOWN was just easy as hell. Everyone KNOWS that's NOT TRUE.

The crux of the story was you need NOTHING but a job (and even that sounded optional), to buy a home in Bend. That was it. And the couple, "Jesse & Alissa Locke" are not even in DIAL...

You can see the video of this piece on KTVZ.com. It's just weird as hell.

Anonymous said...

Going condo leaves no OUT if things go to shit.


*

This is what happened worst in Florida, a condo MUST be finished 100%, doing the punch-list is always hard, but when the money is gone, thats always the last. The little things like furniture, fine touches never get done.

A pool with no maintenance, absence of landscaping.

I think smart money has invested in condo's, but you need to be early on the curve, just look at Toll Brothers stock and you can see what has happened. They peaked back in summer of 2005, that was it, it was over back then, any start's after that were fucked.

Any starts of anything, especially apartments, and condos where everything must be perfect.

At least for Brooks with all his crappy lots, like now he's selling lots @ NWXC with no control, you can buy a lot for $100k and do anything!!!!

Yes, people don't really realize that a CONDO MUST be 100% done inside and out, otherwise its worth a BIG zero. In florida there's 1,000's of huge buildings sitting empty. This is exactly what will become of Bend.

The Condo/Apt Bend glut, and for what??? The DEEP?? Merenda?

Golfing? Why not stay at a golf course, there is So much fucking excess tourist space here its incredible.

Tourists are going to be bored out of their fucking mind, what is there to do? Oh, shop at victoria secret.

Anonymous said...

E*Trade is GONE. Collapsed. Nothing is now safe, 'money market' now means SIV which means CDO-MTG commercial paper, which means that your account balance is worth penny's.

DOWN 60% in one day.

"Investors" are fucked, anybody not sitting on Tbills, Tbonds is fucked.

There will be no money for RE, credit-card, cars, ... nothing.

It's now cash or barter.

Anonymous said...

The crux of the story was you need NOTHING but a job (and even that sounded optional), to buy a home in Bend. That was it. And the couple, "Jesse & Alissa Locke" are not even in DIAL...

*

There's a story like this in San Diego's paper yesterday also. The gist is they're still telling mexicans its OK, to buy $300K crap-shacks, even if you only make $30k. Even the paper itself commented about how little to date had been learned.

Credit councilors are advising morons, that just because they'll loan you 10:1 ( price/income ) doesn't mean you should do it.

Trouble of course like Bend, two things must happen ( one of two actually ), homes MUST fall to $160k, or wages must go up, don't count on wages going up.

In the meantime, keep trying to get people to buy these NEW BARGAINS at $300k.

Note that what had an ASK of $500k two years ago in Bend, can now be had for $300K, a bargain??

Consider the fact that for most, the income is collapsing, also the whole reason for buying a home was that prices ONLY GO UP.

There simply is no reason to buy a home, unless your in the +20yr long haul, and even boss hogg hollern has said such, e.g. +20 years before we see a return to high RE prices.

Since all of Bend is short term speculation, and given it will take forever for a return, then there is no chance in hell of a recovery in the next ten years. Bend will now simply enjoy quiet stagnation, and we can enjoy our new view of partially completed big boxes. Fortunately, they'll not last as long as the pyramids.

Anonymous said...

The incentive for insane building was SDC.

It's in this current edition of The Source, they printed the following.

"The City subsidized builders by charging less than 20% of actual SDC cost, and 100's of builders came to Bend. The City also spent Millions a year on promoting the mantra that Bend is the #1 resort in the west. You cannot have it both ways, an overbuilt gold-rush town lacking infrastructure, and a destination resort town."

The over-building was 100% created, and manufactured by the city. To this day they have exempted les schwab from any CCR's into perpetuity at Juniper Ridge, thus the entire premise of what Juniper Ridge was to become is now irrelevant. The entire cost of SDC for Les Schwab is to be paid for by the Bend taxpayer.

When Hummel quit a few months ago upon leaving he said "The city is going to be hitting the taxpayers with an astronomic bill".

Yes, Duncan too many homes were built, but why? The reason Sebastian left Wilsonville and came to Bend, is that in Wilsonville an SDC is $90k/home, and in Bend $12k/home, Sebastian and 100's of builders all over America came to Bend, because the equivalent of 'land-rush' was on, the City was basically giving away profit to builders, and they knew it.

It's one thing to build too many homes duncan, I think your looking at the result, and not the future, the future is that these bills have to be paid, now that most of our builders who got rich, will either move-on, or go bankrupt, there is still the problem that the party is over, and the bill is on the table.

A bill estimated to be $2 Billion dollars or more.

Forget about the fact that there are two billion or more assets that are unsold, that is a diversified problem, a bigger problem is this city is sitting on a $2 Billion liability. Money that was borrowed from the city to make Hollern, Sebastian,... Rich. They're still doing it, my estimate is $100 Million or more will be spent on the behalf of Borgman CEO of Les Schwab.

The secrecy in Bend has not ended. The bills keep piling up, and the city keeps letting the richest in Bend avoid paying for their own infrastructure.

The above will be the downfall legacy of Bend, not the simple fact of downtown covered with plywood and full of partially finished buildings. Like Orange County a few years ago, our city will simply go bankrupt. Given that ALL those who got rich off the generous welfare to the richest citizens of Bend, all have LLC's and Miller-Nash to protect their assets nobody need worry that any status-quo in Bend be harmed.

Anonymous said...

We're ALL going to cannibalize each other say home-builder centers. What's BIG here is that there is going to be a class action lawsuit against the city of Bend, because WALMART, HOME-DEPOT, AND LOWES got FUCKED by preferential treatment to Les Schwab. Walmart spent a fortune on COOLEY/97, and the city fucked them in the ass.

WALMART,HOME-DEPOT,LOWES are going to combine money to hire super-super lawyer, who will demand that they get what Les Schwab got, e.g. free land, free infrastructure, exemption for laws, perpetual exemption from CCR's,... exemption from SDC's.

Walmart lawyers are saying that they'll prevail. The CITY of bend is really fucking smart, I just hope that Borgman & Garzini can stand up to the combined power of Walmart, Home-Depot, and Lowes.

***
Big-box evolution
Home Depot, Lowe’s will fuel more retail change in Redmond
By Jeff McDonald / The Bulletin
Published: November 04. 2007 5:00AM PST

REDMOND — More than a month after a 217,896-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter opened at the north end of town, local retailers are bracing for a pair of home-improvement giants to enter the city’s competitive retail fray.

The Home Depot and Lowe’s are on similar timetables for opening their new stores in Redmond. Home Depot, slated for a mid-December opening, will be located just north of the new Wal-Mart, at the corner of U.S. Highway 97 and Quince Avenue.

Lowe’s, set to open the first quarter of 2008, is just south of downtown, next to Fred Meyer.

The national retailers entering Redmond say there’s plenty of business to go around.

Some retailers — including grocery, paint, hardware and plumbing-fixture stores — are worried that going head-to-head with Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe’s could result in fewer customers and lost revenues.

Cent-Wise Sporting Goods & Hardware, located downtown since 1948, saw a slight dip in its sporting goods and hardware sales in the month after the Wal-Mart Supercenter opened on Sept. 18, according to Tory Allman, the store’s general manager.

But Cent-Wise could lose a greater share of the marketplace when Home Depot and Lowe’s open, Allman said.

“They’re more of a concern because paint, lawn and garden, plumbing and electrical are all things that we have,” he said. “We’re really trying to focus our efforts on customer service. … We can help them (customers) right away and get them started on their projects.”

Cent-Wise also will focus on its niche selection of nuts and bolts, Allman said.

“We’ve got the largest display of fasteners in Central Oregon,” he said. “Customers can buy them by the ones and the twos, not by the box. We’ve also got a lot of specialty lawn and garden products. The big-box stores carry the products that move quickly.”

There are two schools of thought on whether the supercenter, Home Depot and Lowe’s will help or hurt other businesses in Redmond, said Bud Prince, manager of Redmond Economic Development.

Ultimately, it comes down to whether the new stores can create more traffic that keeps shoppers from going to Bend or whether they take away from existing stores in terms of revenues, Prince said.

“Some communities have been very successful,” Prince said. “If the overall pie gets bigger, most stores survive because it provides a competitive environment. If you’re a good business person, you will have to look at the marketplace, anticipate the changes and adapt to be successful.”

Don Clark, owner of Dave’s Tools in Redmond, expects a drop in prices similar to what happened when Home Depot and Lowe’s opened in north Bend, he said.

“Every time somebody new comes to town, we lose a little slice of the pie,” Clark said. “I don’t know how many tool places we need in this town, but I think we’ve got it covered.”

The Home Depot, which is slated to open in Redmond just a half-mile north of the supercenter, will become a shopping hub for customers traveling from Prineville, Madras and Sisters, said Seattle-based Brian Cannard, real estate manager for the company’s Northwest Division.

The expansion into Redmond reflects the Atlanta-based company’s broader corporate strategy to “cannibalize,” or “strategically open stores near market areas served by an existing (Home Depot) store to enhance service levels, gain incremental sales and increase market penetration,” according to its 2006 annual report.

The Home Depot grossed $90.8 billion in sales in 2006, according to the report.

“Absolutely, as (population) densities go up, the distances between stores go down,” Cannard said. “We’ve got markets where stores are two miles away from each other. At some point stores become overwhelmed with customer service (challenges) and that’s what’s been going on (in Bend). The best way to tackle that is to be in Redmond.”

Redmond, which had a population of 23,500 in 2006 according to Portland State University’s Population Research Center, crossed the threshold for a new Home Depot when it surpassed a population of 20,000, Cannard said.

Other businesses have learned how to compete with Home Depot and Lowe’s when the stores opened at the north end of Bend, Cannard said.

“They’ve already been competing with Home Depot and Lowe’s and developed competitive strategies,” he said. “The price of a can of paint might drop a bit at the local hardware store. They focus on things they can do better like a little higher service or specialize on things that we don’t do like sharpen saws or glazing. Generally speaking, anytime there’s competition, you try to differentiate yourself.”

Maureen Rich, a spokeswoman for Mooresville, N.C.-based Lowe’s Cos. Inc., cited Redmond’s rapid population growth, increasing level of home ownership and the area’s potential for growth as reasons for opening a new store just 12 miles north of its Bend store.

The company, which had $46.9 billion in sales in fiscal 2006, plans to hire 175 workers at the Redmond store, Rich said.

“We consider hundreds of factors when choosing where to put a potential site,” she said. “Lowe’s believes there’s room in the market for everyone. Competition keeps us all on our toes.”

Wal-Mart, which has increased its staff by 76 employees up to 589 since the supercenter opened, could help businesses in the area that locate by the new store, said Jennifer Holder, a company spokeswoman based in Bellevue, Wash.

Holder cited 15 different communities in Washington state that were helped when new supercenters opened.

“The benefit for existing businesses is twofold,” Holder said. “Business increases for specialty stores that carry items we don’t carry and businesses near us benefit from the increased foot traffic. It’s turned retail sectors in towns around.”

Wal-Mart, which had $345 billion in sales for the 2006 fiscal year, plans to expand many of its regular stores into supercenters including the store in south Bend, Holder said.

Supercenters have a higher rate of return than any other format in the United States and concentrate on markets with the greatest growth potential, according to a company press release dated Oct. 23.

The company saw its application to build a more than 200,000-square-foot supercenter at the intersection of Cooley Road and Highway 97 in north Bend denied by a city of Bend hearings officer in late 2005 for transportation reasons, but it plans to reapply when those issues are resolved, Holder said.

Representatives from Wal-Mart are involved in planning sessions with the Oregon Department of Transportation and the city of Bend to find a solution for the busy intersection, she said.

“We’re still watching Juniper Ridge,” Holder said. “That’s the monkey wrench. We’re still participating in that study to see how the project affects the overall area.”

Anonymous said...

“We’re still watching Juniper Ridge,” Holder said. “That’s the monkey wrench. We’re still participating in that study to see how the project affects the overall area.”

*

All this stuff is posted above. Basically Holder is pissed because of the secret preferential treatment of Les Schwab, and the hypocrisy.

Can't have a Super Walmart @ cooley/97, but ok, to have tire-flipper university exempt from CCR's. Ok, for tire flippers to be exempt into perpetuity for ALL city planning, but not ok for national super-centers,...

The CITY of Bend is going to NOW waste million of taxpayers dollars on lawyers defending their secret cock-sucking of les schwab, aka borgman/garzini

Duncan McGeary said...

I was going to suggest you do a Death Watch list as well, starting with the Mercato...

But then I realized, almost everything would qualify.

Anonymous said...

I find it crazy when you think about all this.

The city doesn't give a fuck about the citizens, just does what it wants for its owners, e.g. Borgman, Garzini, Hollern, ...

Then they FUCK walmart, lowes, and home-depot; Now the shit hits the FAN.

WALMART is pissed, and Walmart is going to get even.

It's amazing that the city did everything in secret and said a BIG FUCK YOU to the electorate.

Then they give BORGMAN of Les Schwab the ultimate deal in fact Chamber of Commerce called it "Bait & Switch" the original Juniper Ridge, as SOLD by the city is a campus, and all kinds of amenitys.

But what did they actually DO, they gave the whole place to Les Schwab for nuttin, and are paying for all the infrastructure, and told LS that they're forever exempt from CCR's, which don't exist, nor ever will exist.

This deeply effects WALMART who sits next door, like the walmart rep asked "Why is their NO oppositon in this town", and the hearing officer replied "We're only obligated to send out notices to a 250 foot radius of the rabbit hole known as Juniper Ridge, where the Les Schwab campus is to be Built".

Walmart complained to ODOT, and ODOT shut the Juniper Ridge down, of course the city is going ahead with its 'bait & switch' promises to Les Schwab. In the meantime walmarts plans are on hold, and there may be 20+ years before the cooley/97 traffic problems get fixed, when means no development for walmart, and traffic for lowes and home-depot.

Everyone is PISSED because Les Schwab is excempt for ALL CCR's For ALL time.

What is even the fucking point of having a planning-commission???

Now there's a class action lawsuit on behalf of ALL big-box builders, demanding the same deal that Les Schwab got,

The interesting thing here is the big-box folks have balls, while you CUNTS ( bend citizens ) have NO balls.

Our enemy's enemy is now our friend, this like a fucking third world country, here I'm now rooting for Walmart, hoping that once and for all someone with balls comes into this town and puts city-hall into its place.

what a fucking mess, you lazy cunts have created.

Anonymous said...

Someone was run over on Newport according to BULL, will someone post the story?

The "Super Burrito" is news today on BULL, this is a bad spot, no parking, I'll have to park over at Bend Brewing and cross street to get food.

I don't see how going from a 'D' space to 'A' that Super-Burrito can survive, this is a family low budget biz, the whole reason of going there was $3 burrito's, you know he's going to now have to charge $6 just to pay the rent.

It's also interesting that he was run out of duncans hood, where it was a low profile little place that kids and homeless ate, and now is going to be on a beautiful high visibility corner location, with a river view. It all goes to show you how desperate that commericial leasing has become,

Remember that the folks that kicked SB out was a walmart REIT, and who knows why they invested in the stuff in the first place.

There's going to be a lot more pedestrians hit on Newport, nobody goes 20/mph, they all go 50/mph, the dump trucks flying down from Shevlin are the worse.

Where are the fucking cops? Looking for dog shit.

Anonymous said...

The expansion into Redmond reflects the Atlanta-based company’s broader corporate strategy to “cannibalize,” or “strategically open stores near market areas served by an existing (Home Depot) store to enhance service levels, gain incremental sales and increase market penetration,” according to its 2006 annual report.

*

Luke, everything is going according to plan, the rich of Bend will cannibalize one another, and the bend taxpayer will get the legal bill.

Anonymous said...

KTVZ: "And the people they interviewed were shown playing "frisbee" about 2 ft from each other. Not kidding, 2 feet."

I guess the TV cameraman didn't bring the wide angle lens, so he told the kids to stand 8 feet apart and throw the frisbee back and forth.

Anonymous said...

Re the Westside rout, an item from today's Bull:

Glass Symphony, a glass art gallery and studio in west Bend, announced Monday it plans to move into the downtown space formerly occupied by the High Desert Museum Praegitzer Gallery.

Owner Kate MacLeod said she wants a more visible location and hopes to benefit from increased foot traffic. Glass Symphony opened in September 2006 and is currently located near Summit High School.

“This is a fabulous gallery, but it needs more traffic,” said MacLeod. “It needs more people.” (emphasis added)

The NWX "downtown" will die on the vine; there just aren't enough people around to make it viable. I just hope the Portello Wine Cafe survives -- it's one of my favorite places for a Saturday lunch.

Anonymous said...

"Walmart spent a fortune on COOLEY/97, and the city fucked them in the ass."

It was a hearing officer, not the city council or city staff, that "fucked" WalMart, if anybody did. WalMart's appeal to LUBA is still pending, I believe.

And it's beyond ridiculous to compare the traffic impacts of a WalMart Supercenter with those of the Les Schwab HQ, which is going to have, like, 200 employees.

Anonymous said...

I don't see how going from a 'D' space to 'A' that Super-Burrito can survive, this is a family low budget biz, the whole reason of going there was $3 burrito's, you know he's going to now have to charge $6 just to pay the rent.

Unless they're counting on a helluva increase in volume. How big is the typical Mickey D's?

tim said...

>>“This is a fabulous gallery, but it needs more traffic,” said MacLeod. “It needs more people.” (emphasis added)

That little grocery store is open. I was in there once. Man, that's going to be a tough thing to keep going.

Anonymous said...

Those that want to see the city of Bend get reamed by Walmart should go to this meeting.

NOTE, what walmart is pissed about is the fact that Les Schwab was EXEMPTED for all city planning law.

WALMART,home-depot, and lowes, want a fair playing ground.

Note stake holders don't include fucking Dartagnan.

***
Nov 13,2007
Public invited to Highway 97-Cooley Road meeting
by Bend Weekly News Sources
small font medium font large font
The City of Bend invites community members to attend a Stakeholder Sounding Board meeting on November 15. The meeting is being held to review preliminary evaluation results for design concepts to improve the intersection of Highway 97 and Cooley Road. The Stakeholder Sounding Board is an advisory committee that provides on-going feedback on the project. Participation is open to all interested people.

The meeting will be held from 12:30 to 2:30 on Thursday, November 15 in the Board Room at Bend City Hall, 710 NW Wall Street in Bend, Oregon. To get to the board room, enter the building on the west side.

The City of Bend, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and Deschutes County are working together to identify an improvement to the intersection of Highway 97 and Cooley Road that will accommodate traffic for the next ten to twenty years. The project identified through this process will keep traffic moving until improvements to the Highway 97 corridor are implemented. The City of Bend plans to select a preferred design concept for the intersection of Highway 97 and Cooley Road by the end of the calendar year.

For more information about this meeting or the project please contact Nick Arnis, City of Bend, (541) 388-5542 or by email. Alternatively, you may find information at the City of Bend’s website under the Bend MPO and find the link to the US 97/Cooley Road project.
26 times read

Anonymous said...

And it's beyond ridiculous to compare the traffic impacts of a WalMart Supercenter with those of the Les Schwab HQ, which is going to have, like, 200 employees. - dumb fucking cunt

*

Nobody compared traffic you dumb fuck.

All that was said is that WALMART is pissed that Les Schwab got to be exempted from CITY CCR's for ALL TIME.

Jumping through hoops costs millions, and by Les Schwab getting a 'get out of hoop' card, for all time is something every fucking stake-holder now wants.

The cooley-97 traffic deal is just the HAMMER that walmart is using, courtesy of State Government to reign in the unbridled city hall.

Anonymous said...

dumbshit: "All that was said is that WALMART is pissed that Les Schwab got to be exempted from CITY CCR's for ALL TIME."

There ain't no such thing as "city CCRs," shit-for-brains. CCRs (codes, covenants and restrictions) are PRIVATE agreements that govern what you can build or do -- e.g., hang clotheslines -- in a neighborhood.

Furthermore, please don't take this personally, but you are a fucking mental case.

Anonymous said...

That horrible Eco-Lux-Modern travesty in Grandview (near Newport Mkt) has been whacked for over 17%.

I don't think those hideous pieces of shit would've sold even in a booming market. An even dumber idea than The Shire.

Anonymous said...

I don't think my chicken would have died had eye not raped her, but now she dead.

Anonymous said...

Councilor Gramlich noted that they are CC&R’s. He inquired about the lack of
architectural design regulations. Mr. Russell explained that plans have been presented
to Council. When Les Schwab purchased the property the land did not have CC&R’s
and these were created to protect themselves.

***

Excuse me, but my chicken said "CCR", in her last gasp of breath.

Anonymous said...

Councilor Gramlich noted that they are CC&R’s. He inquired about the lack of
architectural design regulations. Mr. Russell explained that plans have been presented
to Council. When Les Schwab purchased the property the land did not have CC&R’s
and these were created to protect themselves.

Anonymous said...

Economic Development Director John Russell explained that the CC&R’s are not
complete for Juniper Ridge, so these conditions were drafted for Les Schwab. There
were provisions in the purchase agreement. The 12 acres being purchased now will not be impacted by
future CC&R’s, but the properties around this would be subject to CC&R’s.
Councilor Gramlich noted that they are CC&R’s. He inquired about the lack of
architectural design regulations. Mr. Russell explained that plans have been presented
to Council. When Les Schwab purchased the property the land did not have CC&R’s
and these were created to protect themselves.

Anonymous said...

Central Oregon Pigs to SEARCH for BUSH in every car on I97. Prelude to Bush Nazi Days 2008.

***

Nov 13,2007
Traffic enforcement blitz planned in Redmond
by Cheryl McDermott
small font medium font large font

Police have announced that Redmond will be the focus of the next planned Multi-Agency Traffic (MAT) team enforcement detail to be held Wednesday, November 14.

Law enforcement officers from Bend and Redmond Police Departments, Oregon State Police troopers, and Deschutes County Sheriff’s deputies will be out in force from noon until about 5 p.m., enforcing speed and all other safety-related violations.

According to Sgt. Kurt Koester with the Bend Police Department, the goal of the team is to increase traffic safety awareness and compliance through high-visibility enforcement details.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

What is going to be wrong with Bend is easily summarized by a recent review of Sumi's, the place that used to be right next door to Super Burrito:

I could not disagree more with the comments on how great the sushi is. If I have never been to Sumi's and I read that comment in The Source, I would run to Sumi's immediately only to be disappointed. I've posted my review of the experience that I had at Sumi's Japanese Restaurant which sort of touches on this subject.

The quality of fish is top notch for sure. But man, that price is insane. $9.50 is not that bad for a good sushi roll but when you see the portion you get at Sumi's, you'll be sad. The roll is about 2.5 inches long when you put it back together. That's roughly half the size of a roll anywhere else. So you're talking about $20 per full size roll....the quality is good....but it's not THAT good.

I've been to Sumi's a few times now and it's ok. I like Sumi, she's great. I like their food but the price and portions are killing me. You'll drop $50 on dinner for two and leave hungry. That's not including drinks which ain't cheap either.


It's Good... but it ain't THAT good. This place is becoming too expensive FOR WHAT IT IS. It is cool & great and all that... but NOT THAT GREAT.

The national median is $215K, so Bend is doing OK at $230-235K... but that's it. And I'll bet even that will prove too high ultimately. The economic quagmires that periodically consume this place for a decade at a time, will come back and haunt us.

And the reason Sumi's is "not that great" anymore? The RE costs. She got blown out of a divey place downtown & like 100% of ALL retail, restaurant, and other facility based businesses, her rent has QUADRUPLED (or so), and it's been passed along in the form of NO FOOD FOR $10/oz.

OK, it's good... BUT NOT THAT GOOD, which will soon describe every sqaure inch of this town.

Anonymous said...

dartagnan is a hideous pieces of shit.

Anonymous said...

dartagnan is a dumbshit.

Anonymous said...

dartagnan is a fucking mental case.

Anonymous said...

dartagnan is a dumb fuck.

Anonymous said...

dartagnan is a piece of moldy sushi cunt.

Anonymous said...

Redmond: Better than Bend, and in desperate need of a comic book store.

***

Momentum building in core of Redmond
A number of new businesses will open in coming weeks
By Jeff McDonald / The Bulletin
Published: November 14. 2007 5:00AM PST

REDMOND — Several new shops and restaurants are poised to open downtown in the next few weeks, building excitement among business owners and residents that downtown could emerge as the city’s top draw for shoppers and more businesses alike. Some already have opened.

“Downtown’s had its ups and downs, and now we’re on an upslope,” said Steve Hudspeth, the owner of PS Shoes on Sixth Street north of Evergreen Avenue in Redmond. “All these new businesses are going to make downtown look a whole lot better.”

At least three restaurants, two bookstores and a few other shops have either opened recently or are preparing to open by late November to mid-December, including Bend-based Goody’s Candy Store Inc., which is expected to open by Thanksgiving weekend.

A fourth restaurant, an unnamed breakfast and lunch spot, will open in the current location of longtime Redmond eatery Local Grounds Cafe & Bakery by mid-February, said Scott Jennrich, co-owner of The Astro Lounge in Bend.

Jennrich and an unnamed partner signed a lease on Tuesday to take over the building Dec. 15, according to Jennrich.

Marty McNamee, the owner of Local Grounds in Redmond for 12 years, said she will move her cake operation across the street into a shared space with the Flower Boutique and stop selling meals.

“I’m keeping the cake business and treats,” she said. “I’m going from cooking back into baking.”

Jennrich, who saw his plans to open a nightclub and restaurant in the New Redmond Hotel fall through last year because a final agreement couldn’t be reached on a parking garage that would service the hotel, said the momentum could build again for more night life in Redmond.

“It’s still pretty quiet down there, especially compared with downtown Bend,” Jennrich said. “But once we get the truck traffic out of downtown (with the U.S. Highway 97 reroute), it has the potential to become a prime entertainment area.”

The expected completion date of the reroute remains Nov. 30, 2008, according to Peter Murphy, a spokesman for Oregon Department of Transportation.

But downtown retailers will start noticing fewer northbound trucks and cars on Fifth Street by late January, when ODOT shifts traffic onto the northbound lane of the reroute, Murphy said.

Cars and trucks will still have access to downtown streets via Glacier Avenue, he said.

In spring 2008, ODOT will shift the traffic again — this time, it will move Sixth Street, or southbound traffic, onto the reroute, he said.

“Downtown retailers will start feeling the impact beginning with this transition,” starting on Fifth Street beginning in late January, Murphy said. “It will reduce traffic through the downtown core. For the retailer who depends upon drop-in traffic, they may see less business. But it will open up a more peaceful downtown and create an atmosphere for rebirth.”

Other new businesses include:

• The Brickhouse Steak & Raw Bar, a fine-dining restaurant which will offer a range of chicken, steak, seafood and wine options at 412 S.W. Sixth St. The Brickhouse restaurant will open by mid-December, said Michael Lynott, executive chef.

The restaurant, which will have entrees starting at $14, will be located in the 2,450-square-foot Davidson Meat Market, which is undergoing a $300,000 remodel, Lynott said. The remodel includes a new floor, mahogany bar, new booths and tabletops, he said.

• Sisters-based Paulina Springs Books will open Dec. 1 two doors down from the Brickhouse Steak & Raw Bar, said owner Brad Smith.

• Shelf Life Books, a mother-and-daughter-owned bookstore and coffee bar located at 249 S.W. Sixth St., in Dawson Station, will open by the end of November in the 3,000-square-foot, two-level building previously occupied by Piper Lilly, said Jill Freund, co-owner. Home and garden retailer Piper Lilly moved south along Sixth Street into the space vacated by Clothes Encounters and opened its new store in mid-October.

“Redmond is changing and that’s why we wanted to have it here,” Freund said. “It’s predominantly been a ranch and farming town, but more young people and business people are coming here, and we want to provide them with cultural opportunities. It’s definitely time Redmond had this.”

• Goody’s — an old-fashioned soda fountain that serves a variety of homemade chocolates, ice cream and caramel corn, among other treats, and has two locations in Bend and one in Sunriver — is slated to open in the lobby area of the Historic Redmond Hotel by Thanksgiving weekend, said Jvon Danforth, co-owner. Plumbing contractors were busy installing new sinks, ice makers and commercial dishwashers on Tuesday, and will add an old-fashioned soda fountain in time for the store’s opening.

• Across from Goody’s, Redmond Music Supply, which offers an array of musical instruments including guitars, mandolins, violins and banjos, opened Oct. 23 in the space formerly occupied by Western Ranch Supply. Co-owner Lyne Lange said the music store has doubled its business since moving from its previous Redmond location on Highland Avenue and will begin adding new products.

“We liked the direction that downtown was going and the visibility from Sixth Street,” Lange said. “We wanted to see if it would work, and so far it’s been wonderful.”

Other recent additions include:

• BaBa Chinese Cuisine, which opened Oct. 1 on Sixth Street north of Deschutes Avenue, is part of a chain of family owned restaurants that includes a Soba Noodles & Rice restaurant in Redmond, two Sobas in Bend and one in Sisters, and two Szechuan restaurants in Bend.

“We think downtown Redmond will improve a lot because of the bypass mostly,” said Howie Long, co-owner of BaBa. “We spent a lot of money fixing up the place and making it nice. Redmond needs the change.”

• Avery’s Wine Bar, which opened on Eighth Street one block northwest of City Hall in the former site of Mocha Moose cafe on Oct. 19, will cater to a growing class of young professionals who want an elegant place to dine or drink wine, or bring a date, said co-owner Mary Thompson, co-owner.

The wine bar offers dining options ranging from homemade ice cream at $3 to Mac & Cheese for $8 and Braised Beef Short Ribs for $15, Thompson said.

“We liked the idea of having a small, quaint restaurant in an older house in downtown,” she said.

Anonymous said...

REIT DATA CAME OUT TODAY. BEND IS FUCKED!

The commercial REIT funds, the grand-daddy that kept Bend 'commercial' moving. Peaked in Feb 2007, and is now down 20%.

Normally commercial is out of sync with residential on a collapse. But it is assumed that areas like cali & florida will be hit hard, ergo Bend will be hit hard.

New REIT money has dried up, thus new BIG-BOX construction in Bend will soon plummet. Unfinished jobs, and builders walking away from projects is the rule these days.

The REIT reports came out in todays WSJ. Highlights.
1.) Funds peaked Feb 07
2.) Down -20% since then on asset value, that means anyone holding funds just lost 20% of their capital. ouch!
3.) Commercial is expected to collapse in areas hit by residential, overbuilding. Ergo-Investors if your money in Bend commercials REIT's your going to get even MORE FUCKED.

Have a nice day.

Anonymous said...

rent has QUADRUPLED (or so), and it's been passed along in the form of NO FOOD FOR $10/oz. - homer

*

This is what bothers me about 'super-burrito' taking that 'A' space on the corner, I think our JUMBO $3 burrito is fucked, and this is what made him so HOT. Not, the fact that it was that GOOD, nor tasty. Just that it was the best deal in town.

For years 'super-burrito' was just a little shit-hole taco stand in a warn out store front, with a stinky bathroom.

Now in a new building, next door to one of the trendy break-fast spots, ...

The tourists didn't go to super-burrito, it was mostly homeless, and dudes, and kids. The new place will most likely attract tourists, because the space is NEW, I wonder how he's going to get the money for all the new furniture? Or is he going to furnish it Tijuana style like the original place? I somehow doubt that it goes with the new building?

Then again, the new place obviously couldn't find any other tenant.

It's good to have Super-Burrito back, but if his burrito is now $6.95, and 1/2 the food, you'll NOT see my ass there. I have been living at Taco-Shack since Super-Burrito closed.

Like your sushi place, the only way a vendor in Bend can make it is to skimp on food, and charge outrageous prices to tourists that only come once.


The ONLY gig that works seems to be like 'taco-shack' get into an out of the way spot, that tourists don't know about, like next to a shitty laundry, and have cheap rent, and sell good food for cheap to construction workers. I know all the kids up at COCC consistently vote 'taco shack' the best lunch in the City.

The ONLY way to make it this town now is how the DEEP and BlueFish does it. That is to frequently do catering and closed events. BlueFish is doing lots of 'investor' closed-door events for Stock-Broker customers in Bend, if you make enough money, or have enough in the bank you can get invited all over town for drinks and eats at these places. This is where they make their REAL money to pay the rent. The walk-in traffic is just to keep the employees from quitting the other 90% of the time.

Once the PRIVATE catering collapses, and it will once Bends RICH lose their capital, then ALL these HIGH-END places become dependent on walk-in, that's when they'll just close the doors and move on.

Anonymous said...

That little grocery store is open. I was in there once. Man, that's going to be a tough thing to keep going.

*

I'll say one magic word "High-School".

Kids will hang out, score booze, buy gum, ... Much lunch money will be collected.

Other than silly junk to the kids this place is fucked. In time when the homeless find out they can sleep in the woods around NWXC, and they discover the bottle-shop, then perhaps that will create night biz, and many new homeless camps around NWXC.

Kids by day, homeless by night. NWXC's very own urban 7eleven.

Anonymous said...

Hey Cunt's don't remember the WALMART WAR starts at city-hall tomorrow. See above for meeting notice. [ See Back-Ass-Wards see hall leaders in action ] Dick Borgman of Les Schwab will be will have Abernethy on his knees doing what he does best. What a show!


"The way this thing should have come down is with a master plan first and the city have the master plan approved just like any other developer," he said. "Get the CC&Rs in place, the design reviews in place - then if you need a master planner, go get one. The city did this sort of bass-ackwards."

Traffic woes delay Bend's Juniper Ridge deal

Last Updated: Oct 23, 2007 08:41 PM
Bend says ODOT won't allow development at Juniper Ridge until traffic fix, funding is identified
Bend says ODOT won't allow development at Juniper Ridge until traffic fix, funding is identified

City blames ODOT; ODOT says city hadn't shared details of deal

By Barney Lerten, KTVZ.COM

To the pleasure but not surprise of its critics, the city of Bend announced Tuesday a delay of at least a few months in the controversial development agreement for the city's 1,500-acre Juniper Ridge mixed-use development.

Ron Garzini, special project manager, said the delay until "early 2008" is due to an Oregon Department of Transportation letter. The letter indicated that any building beyond the new Les Schwab headquarters won't be allowed until a fix is identified for the traffic-clogged intersection at Highway 97 and Cooley Road - and a funding strategy is in place.

The city (www.ci.bend.or.us) has hired an engineering team that includes CH2MHill to come up with solutions for the intersection and its surroundings, which also have delayed Wal-Mart's efforts to build a Bend Supercenter near the intersection (much to the joy of its opponents).

An early estimate of the cost of that intersection's long-term fix: $15 million to $30 million.

"Until estimates and engineering are firm and funds are identified, and an agreement is approved by ODOT, it would be premature to go further with a Juniper Ridge development agreement," Garzini said.

"Once the planning for the intersection is complete, work plans are complete, risk assessments are complete and funds are identified, a development plan will be brought forward which matches those documents," said Garzini, a former assistant and interim city manager called in by now-fired City Manager Andy Anderson to help the project through some rough waters.

But ODOT spokesman Peter Murphy said it's not accurate to say the project is stalled due to the state's concerns.

"We didn't say ‘No,'" Murphy said. "What we said are, ‘Those are the steps that we need to take.'"

In the letter, dated last Thursday, ODOT Region 4 Manager Bob Bryant pointed to language in the current draft "memorandum of understanding" (MOU) between the city and state agency.

The draft language says ODOT won't support rezoning any more land at Juniper Ridge within the current urban growth boundary, or to rezone any additional Juniper Ridge acreage brought into the UGB without a "mid-term improvement project with funding obligation by the city" and "a long-term transportation improvement plan and funding agreement."

"It's not like we haven't been working on this for some time now," Bryant told KTVZ.COM. "We've had a lot of sessions." At the request of councilors, Bryant said, "I wrote a very brief summary that sets out the basic premises that underlies all of the work we've done."

"Our concern (was) they were moving forward with a development agreement that we had not had an opportunity to review," Bryant said. "I had no idea what language was in there regarding transportation."

"I clearly understand the city's goals and interest in wanting to bring more area into zoning that would be available for development," the ODOT official said.

"At the same time, with the traffic impacts we're talking about, at an intersection that's already a challenge, we just felt it was important that we are able to provide the council with good information to make informed decisions," Bryant said. "We're still putting information together, on what some of those answers will look like."

The delay in the deal with Juniper Ridge Partners came just hours before the kickoff meeting of the city's new "97/Cooley Steering Committee," which will try to come up with an acceptable path forward with at least some short-term solutions for the intersection.

The city's decision pleased, but came as no surprise to Oran Teater, one of several former mayors involved in an effort to slow down and shift the Juniper Ridge plans back toward an emphasis on industrial land (www.dojuniperridgeright.com).

"They needed to do that, to bring things back to reality," Teater told KTVZ.COM.

That (ODOT letter) shouldn't be a surprise to anybody," Teater said. "It's surprising to me they would have thought they could get a development agreement put together without ODOT's sign-off - that's crazy."

"The reality is, the council has put the city at risk, and if you'd gone forward with this, you'd have put yourself in a huge financial bind," said Teater, whose group turned in petitions with hundreds of signatures from citizens seeking a slower, phased approach.

"The way this thing should have come down is with a master plan first and the city have the master plan approved just like any other developer," he said. "Get the CC&Rs in place, the design reviews in place - then if you need a master planner, go get one. The city did this sort of bass-ackwards."

Those views were echoed by Tim Knopp, a former state legislator and executive vice president of the Central Oregon Builders Association.

"We've heard that (ODOT message) was coming for six months," Knopp said.

"We just want (the city) to get on the right track, supported by the community," he said.

"I think the city council needs to think long and hard about funding these transportation improvements," Knopp added.

"We want to see Juniper Ridge developed and industrial land become available, as well as mixed use," he said. "We just want it to be done right."

Teater also said he did not believe the Juniper Ridge controversy played much of a role in last week's council decision to fire Anderson.

"These guys have so micromanaged this thing, between (Bill) Friedman, (Jim) Clinton and Mark Capell this year, I don't think Andy's had a chance to say boo on this," Teater said, adding that Anderson was rendered "ineffective because he was muzzled by the council."

Anonymous said...

The proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter on the north end of Bend has a ton of opposition (and folks who don't like Wal-Mart, but don't like the opposition), to the point where Wal-Mart had to appeal to the State Land Use Board of Appeals. The biggest roadblock was how Wal-Mart was going to handle traffic at the already clogged Cooley Rd. and Hwy. 97 intersection (their land is on that corner). What always confused me, however, is how it seemed that Wal-Mart was wholly responsible for traffic restructuring in that area, despite the other large tenants in the area and the City of Bend's Juniper Ridge project right across the highway, which, upon completion, promises just as many traffic problems. Now that the City has its first planned tenant (the corporate headquarters for Les Schwab Tires), Wal-Mart has a legitimate beef. Is the tire giant going to have to pay to help traffic issues in the area? The City of Bend worked their tails off to get Les Schwab to move to Juniper Ridge, and (from what I can tell) is giving Les Schwab a free pass (I know Les and co' won't have nearly the traffic flow). From what I can tell, the City is requiring a lot more work out of Wal-Mart. Both companies are going to provide a bunch of jobs and tax dollars to the area (obviously Wal-Mart's will be lesser paying -- I won't argue with that). But how much is the city planning on paying for improvement there versus what they're asking of Wal-Mart and some of their preferred tenants? Yes, Wal-Mart a massive company with a buttload of money, but is it fair to pin everything on them?

Anonymous said...

Here's what I think...it's all politics. Nobody (not the City of Bend, ODOT, or any other agency or company) can afford to fix the traffic problems on their own. I've always thought it fair that if you build a business or subdivision that increases traffic in a specific area, then you should be responsible to mitigate whatever impacts you may have.

Wal-Mart, suffice it to say, will have the most impact on that area (although Lowe's brings in a lot of traffic, too). I think you're right, Jake. Everyone is trying to get Wal-mart, the corporate giant with lots of money, to carry the burden. Should they pay more than everyone else? Probably. But I think what's being asked of them now is excessive. And my guess is they've got enough evidence to prove in court that they're not getting a fair shake. Hence the reason some councilors are backing off a little, and even questioning the process.

Big or small, every company should get a fair shake, no matter how much you may hate them. As long as they go through the required process, then that's all that matters.

Anonymous said...

Juniper Ridge will be:
• A regionally significant employment center
• A high quality development that is environmentally sustainable
• A university center
• A source of annual construction jobs for decades
• An investment that builds quality of life

[ www.visitbend.com ]

FUCK ALL OF YOU, Juniper Ridge is going to become a slave labor camp to manufacture automobile tires.

Anonymous said...

City delays Juniper Ridge rezoning effort

The Bend City Council on Wednesday delayed a first reading on a proposed ordinance to rezone 20 acres of Juniper Ridge to light industrial, the first step in a process to allow Les Schwab Tires to build a new headquarters building at Juniper Ridge. Construction of the headquarters is scheduled to begin by the end of this year. It will be the first building to go up at Juniper Ridge, the city owned parcel in northeast Bend. The sticking point was opposition from attorneys representing Wal Mart and the mall that houses Target, Sportsman’s Warehouse and other stores, who told the council the city hasn’t adequately identified how to mitigate the impact of increased traffic at the intersection of Cooley and Robal roads and Highway 97. The city believes it does have evidence to support its position, but councilors voted to keep the written record open for 14 days to allow opponents and the applicant – in this case, the city – time to submit additional pro and con documentation. The city has proposed some short-term proposals to address traffic concerns in the Cooley-Robal roads and Highway 97 area, but all public and private parties involved in development there agree it is crucial that a long-term solution to traffic congestion be developed

Anonymous said...

The below is still relevant, recent, and fascinating. In this opinion during council meeting Now Fired Anderson suggests having an Urban Renewal District around Juniper-Ridge that includes Walmart and Lowes, and to make them PAY FOR THE ENTIRE Juniper Ridge project!!!!!!!

Think about this for a minute, little fucking nobody good old boyz, trying to suck the cock of Dick Brogman, and getting Walmart & Lowes to pay for the Bait&Switch!!


****

City Manager Andy Anderson explained that the City has researched and determined an urban
renewal district will be needed to develop Juniper Ridge. In the long run, Juniper Ridge should
pay for itself, but, in the interim, the City proposes an urban renewal district. Staff concluded
that the City would be put at tremendous risk without the urban renewal district, and Council
authorized staff to begin the process.

Councilor Telfer arrived.

The district will include some area outside the Juniper Ridge boundary. One is the Lowe’s area.

Anonymous said...

For example, until five years ago Les Schwab drivers based in Prineville could pick up deliveries from the Port of Portland and return to Prineville the same day.
A reasonable question to ask is how in the hell is moving Les Schwab going to change the fact that the drive to PDX is ONLY going to get worse? Les Schwab needs to be near an Interstate System, any thing else is corporate waste.

***

Statewide traffic study a sobering document for Oregon business

On Tuesday, the Oregon Business Council and the Portland Business Alliance released a new study titled “The Cost of Highway Limitations and Traffic Delays to Oregon’s Economy.” The study, which interviewed businesses throughout the state, paints a sobering picture of what will happen to businesses in the coming years if Oregon does not fix its rapidly deteriorating road system. The study was the first ever to examine the real costs of highway limitations to the state’s economy. It said if significant improvements aren’t made, by the year 2025, the state’s economy will lose $1.7 billion in annual revenue, Oregon will lose 16,000 jobs from companies that will move to other states with better transportation systems and one million hours of vehicle delays will occur every weekday in the state. The action item from this study is to try to get legislation passed this session to raise $300 million to $350 million each year to improve Oregon’s highways. All companies interviewed have had to make adjustments for transportation congestion and heavy road use. For example, until five years ago Les Schwab drivers based in Prineville could pick up deliveries from the Port of Portland and return to Prineville the same day. Now, congestion in Portland has forced the company to have drivers stay overnight in Portland before returning to Prineville.

Anonymous said...

Bend Achilles heal has been severed. This is it, the BIG one is NOW coming down on Bend.
***
The Next Shoe to Drop in the Credit Meltdown: Commercial Real Estate and Its Massive Forthcoming Losses
Nouriel Roubini | Nov 14, 2007

While everyone’s attention is concentrated on subprime and other residential mortgages, as first reported by this blogger this past July the next shoe to drop - in the mortgage and credit crunch saga - will be commercial real estate (CRE); indeed investors’ worries and panic are now shifting towards CRE and its related securitized products (CMBS and CMBX).



Many of the same excesses that were observed in subprime – poor underwriting standards, loose and excessive lending to marginal projects – are also observed in CRE. For example, as reported by Fitch, since 2005 there has been a very sharp increase in interest rate only mortgages and mortgages with high loan to value ratios. Loans increased to 118 per cent of the value of commercial properties in the last quarter, as reported by Moody’s, suggesting widespread use of reckless negative ammortization mortgages. And while real investment in commercial real estate has been strong in recent months (growing at a SAAR rate above 10% while residential was collapsing at a negative 20% rate) there is now evidence that commercial real estate is also at a tipping point. Actually the bubble in CRE construction – like the bubble in residential construction – will soon turn into a painful bust.

The reasons for this coming bust are clear. Commercial real estate – or more generally non-residential investment in structures - includes two main elements: office buildings, shopping centers/malls; and construction of structures for the manufacturing sectors (i.e. new factories). Both components are now under stress. The reason why we will observe a sharp slowdown in construction of new offices and shopping centers is that, with a lag, commercial real estate follows residential real estate. Indeed, as the SF president Janet Yellen put it last year there are plenty of new residential ghost towns in the West in places like Nevada, California, Arizona, etc. So why would anyone want to build new shopping strips/malls, hotels and offices in such ghost towns. If the towns are empty the stores and malls and offices will be empty too? Thus, as suggested by formal research – such as that by McGraw Hill Construction – with a leg of a few quarters non-residential construction follows residential construction. Thus, you can expect in the next two quarters commercial real estate to follow the slump of housing and its rate of growth to fall from double digits close to zero.


The other main component of non-residential investment in structures is manufacturing structures (i.e. new factories). But with manufacturing slumping and real investment in equipment and software slumping too (capex spending by the corporate sector) the demand for new manufacturing structures is slumping too. If you don’t invest in new machinery you do not need new structures where such machinery produces goods. And capex spending is under severe pressure given the credit crunch, the uncertainty about the economy, the widening of credit spreads for corporate firms (junk bond yield are now up 300bps higher than before the summer crunch and heading above 500bps over US Treasuries) and the slowdown in the economy.


Once this slowdown in CRE investment does occur of three components of fixed investment (residential, non-residential structures, and software and equipment) could experience negative growth.

And indeed the boom in CRE investment – with excessive construction of commercial real estate is leading – like in the case of housing – to a glut of unsold or empty properties that is leading to a fall in prices. As reported by the FT: “Moody’s index of commercial real estate prices is expected to show that prices flattened or fell in September, after rising nearly 14 per cent in the 12 months to August. RBS Greenwich Capital predicts that US commercial property prices will fall 10-15 per cent next year.”

The coming meltdown of commercial real estate is also evident by the sharp widening in credit spreads for CRE mortgages and commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS). One of the most clear signals of this extreme stressed in the non residential MBS (CMBS) market is given by the CMBX index that is reported by Markit. The data are scary: for BB tranches the spread is now over 1500bps; for BBB- the spread is 1,100; for BBB is 965; even for A is 540; and 326 for AA tranches. All these spreads have sharply widened compared to their spring 2007 levels. At these spreads the ability to finance any new CRE investment – apart from those already committed and financed – is practically null. After the pipeline of already financed projects is finished the market for financing and securitizing CRE – apart from the highest rates projects – is practically frozen. Indeed, the issuance of CMBS fell to $6.3 billion in October, down 84% from a record $38.5 billion in March that finance about half of commercial property purchases. So the CRE market now behaves similarly to the sub-prime market; it is totally frozen.


Indeed delinquency rates on CRE projects – while still modest – are sharply rising. According to the WSJ the current default rate is 7.88% for CMBS issued in the last 10 years and is set to significantly rise. And now lending standards are being tightened as the risks of CRE are emerging and the credit crunch in this market is escalating: the typical loan to value ratio is now down to 70% from 80% and higher loan margins are imposed on investors.



And since the total value of the stock of securitised commercial property loans was $804bn (at the end of the first quarter of 2007) the coming bust of CRE will lead to another round of massive losses for the banks who made these loans and the investors who bought these toxic mortgages. So expect another saga of collapsing construction, falling prices, rising default and deliquencies and massive losses for the mortgages and mortgage backed securities related to CRE. If CRE prices will fall – as expected by some – by at least 15%, the losses from CRE investments could easily be above $100 billion, possibly as high as $150 billion. Add those CRE related losses to the losses in the $300 to $500 billion range now estimated by RBS and Deutsche Bank for subprime and other residential mortgages. The financial markets massacre is just starting and a generalized liquidity and credit crunch will become full blown in the next few months.

Anonymous said...

HOW DO YOU SPELL GHOST-TOWN? "BEND OREGON"

. Indeed, as the SF president Janet Yellen put it last year there are plenty of new residential ghost towns in the West in places like Nevada, California, Arizona, etc. So why would anyone want to build new shopping strips/malls, hotels and offices in such ghost towns. If the towns are empty the stores and malls and offices will be empty too?

Anonymous said...

How Committed is 'COMMITTED', why throw good money after bad in a ghost town?

The coming meltdown of commercial real estate is also evident by the sharp widening in credit spreads for CRE mortgages and commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS). One of the most clear signals of this extreme stressed in the non residential MBS (CMBS) market is given by the CMBX index that is reported by Markit. The data are scary: for BB tranches the spread is now over 1500bps; for BBB- the spread is 1,100; for BBB is 965; even for A is 540; and 326 for AA tranches. All these spreads have sharply widened compared to their spring 2007 levels.

At these spreads the ability to finance any new CRE investment – apart from those already committed and financed – is practically null.

Anonymous said...

“Moody’s index of commercial real estate prices is expected to show that prices flattened or fell in September, after rising nearly 14 per cent in the 12 months to August. RBS Greenwich Capital predicts that US commercial property prices will fall 10-15 per cent next year.”

**

Up until September any idiot could get commercial money and build. Ever since September 2007, its GAME-OVER.

NOW its shutdown ALL committed projects ASAP, and cut your loss.

Bend is FUCKED, our political elite have no one left to fuck.

Welcome to Bend.

Bewert said...

City Council/BURA authorizes further $1,662,000 for Les Schwab's driveway

You can't make this stuff up.

Background and Discussion:
Oregon Budget Law allows budget changes after a budget is adopted either through a simple resolution when transferring appropriations between categories or through a supplemental budget process.

Because the following proposed budget adjustment is not a simple transfer of appropriations between categories, but rather recognition and appropriation of additional revenues and expenditures not anticipated in the budget, a supplemental budget process is required. ORS 294.480 allows a governing body to adopt a supplemental budget for the following budget adjustments following a public hearing.

On October 15th the BURA board was presented with a Knife River contract change order of $137,000 and additional development costs of $1,525,000 for approval. These development costs were not anticipated when the 2007-09 biennial budget was developed. As such a supplemental budget will have to be adopted to amend the 2007-09 biennial budget to allow for additional appropriations.

Budgetary Considerations: ORS 294.480 allows a governing body to adopt and appropriate a Supplemental Budget by resolution following a properly noticed public hearing. Staff was not able to get the Supplemental Budget noticed until October 12, 2007 and because of the 5 day noticing requirement, the BURA board is asked to convene briefly on October 17, 2007 to hold a public hearing and approve the Supplemental Budget.

Staff Review and Recommendation to Council: After holding a public hearing, adopt the resolution increasing expenditure appropriations for the Juniper Ridge Construction Fund.


By the way, I prepared an Oregon Open Records request for the Les Schwab agreement this morning which I will deliver to the Custodian of the Public Record this afternoon. I expect to be denied or hit with some high fees, and can't wait to see the reaction.

Bewert said...

Also, anybody pickup on those dates? Oct. 12, Oct. 15, Oct. 17?

Here's the link: http://www.ci.bend.or.us/depts/urban_renewal_economic_development/october_17_2007_special_meeting.html

Anonymous said...

City Council/BURA authorizes further $1,662,000 for Les Schwab's driveway

You can't make this stuff up.

*

In Bend, truth is always stranger than fiction.

Anderson tried to get Walmart & Lowes to pay for the Les Schwab driveway. It didn't fly with Walmart.

I wonder if anyone ever considered making Les Schwab pay for anything?? It's odd, because in no case have I ever seen ever where anyone had the audacity to suggest that Les Schwab pay a nickel for their own project.

It appears that once again city-hall is using the team dubya war budget technique. Just do it in secret, and then as the bills arrive sign them off in executive session ( secret ).

Why does city hall want this Les Schwab deal so bad that they're willing to screw their careers, screw Walmart and Lowes, screw the citizens of Bend.

Why do they want to please Borgman so bad? What he promised them?? Free Beef?

Anonymous said...

Don't worry about the $5.4M for Les Schwab on their drive-way, we're going to get it back, by assessing a 'Urban Renewal Zone' on Lowes & Walmart land.

No city money was lost promoting Les Schwab.

***

Approval of Knife River Contract and Change Order

On June 6, 2007, City Council approved the $5.4 million Knife River Contract for Cooley Road improvements to serve Juniper Ridge. Since this contract is charged to the Juniper Ridge Construction Fund, a BURA fund, staff is requesting that the contract be approved by the BURA board as well.

Staff is also requesting the BURA board approve a change order to the Knife River Contract of $137,000 for additional street light & telecom conduits ($51,300), irrigation valve & controller upgrades ($66,700) and temporary construction access road ($19,000). These are project costs that had not been identified earlier but are necessary to provide service to the first 50 acres of Juniper Ridge.

Note: the original engineer’s estimate for the construction contract was $5.7 million.

Anonymous said...

Since this contract is charged to the Juniper Ridge Construction Fund, a BURA fund, staff is requesting that the contract be approved by the BURA board as well.


*

Such BULLSHIT. Remember this is the Les Schwab welfare fund.

Not the Juniper Ridge Construction Fund.

Les Schwab is the only tenant of JR, and will be exempt from CC&R's into perpetuity.

Anonymous said...

$2.5 million in consulting and operating costs since

READ THE BELOW, I WONDER WHO GETS THE $2.5M FOR CONSULTING? NOTE THE MANTRA has been "NO CITY MONEY WOULD BE LOST" NOTE THAT a $5M MUNI-BOND WILL BE ISSUED IN DEC TO PAYOFF KURATEK

***

Summary of Costs and Funding/Financing for Juniper Ridge
Costs incurred in the Juniper Ridge Construction and Operating Fund, not including
the change order and additional development costs discussed above, total
approximately $8.3 million to date since FY2005-06 ($5.8 million in construction and
City engineering costs, and $2.5 million in consulting and operating costs since
FY2005-06). The $8.3 million will be funded/financed by a bond issuance of $5
million (expected to be issued in December) and the $3 million of Les Schwab
property sale proceeds (expected in November or December) and $300,000 of tax
increment revenues. The $5 million bond issuance will be secured by the City’s full
faith and credit and is expected to be repaid with Juniper Ridge tax increment
revenues and property sales.
This additional short-term debt of $1,662,000 will also be secured by the City’s full
faith and credit and is expected to be repaid with property sales

Bewert said...

Some Shwab purchase info, at last: 12 acres for $3,000,000, or a price of $250,000 and acre. We have a comparable!

So that values the rest of JR at $250,000 times 1488=$372,000,000.

I would love to see the rest of the details of the LS agreement.

Where did you find this data?

Anonymous said...

If you read the below, you'll see that the city bond is paying for everything. This itemization shows exactly whats being purchase for Borgman.

Now if we can only get Lowes & Walmart to setup a Les Schwab Welfare Fund.

***

On June 6, 2007 the City Council approved a
contract with Knife River in the amount of $5.4 million for Cooley Road
improvements to serve Juniper Ridge. This contract was presented to the BURA
board for approval on October 15, 2007 along with a change order of $137,000 for
additional street light & telecom conduits ($51,300), irrigation valve & controller
upgrades ($66,700) and temporary construction access road ($19,000).
Also the following additional development costs needed to serve the first 50 acres or
more of Juniper Ridge were presented to the BURA board for approval:
Staff Review and Recommendation to Council: Authorize the City Manager
or his designee to proceed with obtaining short-term borrowing for the
additional development costs for Juniper Ridge.
Knife River Change Order
137,000 Conduits, valve & controller upgrades and construction
access road
Additional Costs:
Pump Station
600,000 Pump station to serve 70 acres or provide a peak flow
of 450 GPM, including connection to forcemain on 18th
street.
Cascade Natural Gas
120,000 City's cost to bring natural gaslines in for onsite
improvements. Costs include a 6 inch line and a
system reinforcement project on Boyd Acres.
Pacific Power
155,000 Required power backbone for the Les Schwab
development.
Hwy 97/Cooley mid-term
improvements
350,000 Mid-term improvements to the Hwy97 & Cooley road
intersection.
Consulting and legal
costs
300,000 Additional legal fees for completion of DDA and
additional construction service and scope design fees
that were not included in original consulting contracts.
Total Costs
1,662,000
$
Page 2
Q:\WEBPAGE 2006-07\City Hall\Packets Agendas and Minutes\Packets\2007\101507worksession\DONE\IS
Short-Term Financing for Juniper Ridge 10-15- 07 .doc
As presented to the BURA board, the change order and additional development
costs will be funded by property sales expected within the next 2 years. Until
property sale proceeds are received, the change order and additional development
costs totaling $1,662,000 will need to be financed by short-term debt.
Authorize Short-Term Loan for Change Order and Additional Development
Costs
The short-term financing will be secured by the full faith and credit of the City and
will be repaid from proceeds from the sale of public lands.
City Council is asked to authorize the City Manager or designee to negotiate short-
term bank financing for the $1,662,000 of additional costs. A resolution to authorize
the borrowing and approve loan documents will be brought to City Council for
approval when staff completes negotiation of loan terms and loan documents with a
bank.
Summary of Costs and Funding/Financing for Juniper Ridge
Costs incurred in the Juniper Ridge Construction and Operating Fund, not including
the change order and additional development costs discussed above, total
approximately $8.3 million to date since FY2005-06 ($5.8 million in construction and
City engineering costs, and $2.5 million in consulting and operating costs since
FY2005-06). The $8.3 million will be funded/financed by a bond issuance of $5
million (expected to be issued in December) and the $3 million of Les Schwab
property sale proceeds (expected in November or December) and $300,000 of tax
increment revenues. The $5 million bond issuance will be secured by the City’s full
faith and credit and is expected to be repaid with Juniper Ridge tax increment
revenues and property sales.
This additional short-term debt of $1,662,000 will also be secured by the City’s full
faith and credit and is expected to be repaid with property sales.

Anonymous said...

Another interesting slant here, is that basically the Dec 07 Bond is to raise the $2.5M to pay off Kuratek, but the intention is that the "Urban Renewal Fund", funded by Walmart & Lowes, be the actual source of money.

How's that for bait&switch.

Kurateks 'plan' becomes bait&switch, e.g. bend really get a tire convict labor prison center. Kuratek walks with $2.5M. The bill is handed at the end of the day to Walmart & Lowes.

I love Bend.

Anonymous said...

Pacific Power
155,000 Required power backbone for the Les Schwab
development.

*

Why would Les Schwab NOT have to pay for their own power drop?

What's the point of the city paying for every little cost of business?

Will the city also have Deschutes Beer delivered gratis on friday? Into perpetuity??

Anonymous said...

Some Shwab purchase info, at last: 12 acres for $3,000,000, or a price of $250,000 and acre. We have a comparable!

*

It does't quite work this way, lets do the math.

Kuratek $2.5M
KNIFE $5.5M

total $8M ( liability to date )

Schwab $3M ( credit )

Cost to city $5M loss,

Thus for ever acre that the city sells they lose $250,000. The entire 1500 acres is therefore worth NEGATIVE -$377M.

Look at this way, Schwab agrees to pay the KURATEK bill to go away, they get everything, and they get ALL of Juniper Ridge for the prison, they don't ever have to any CC&R's to restrict them.

The city pays for the $5M infrastucture cost, and attempts to HUSTLE walmart&lowes to pick it up, via "Urban Renewal Fund".

We still have to get the original deal back in Dec 12, 2006, in fact we need to get all doc's, nothing should be secret.

Anonymous said...

How do I find the $3M info - bruce


*

If you google "knife river schwab" you'll get the documents,

The tricky bastards has hidden it under 'knife river'. It's just that knife river knows what this is all about, its about SCHWAB, and never was about "JUNIPER RIDGE".

The real question, is why was KURATEK and the whole conjob setup, just to waste $2.5M?? Was all this really necessary for SCHWAB to steal 1500 acres for the tire-flipping prison wet dream of Garzini??

Like I have written the GARZINI/KURATEK connection goes back years they're both federal grant experts at large projects, aka 'prisons'.

Anonymous said...

Was all this really necessary for SCHWAB to steal 1500 acres for the tire-flipping prison wet dream of Garzini??

*

I'll say one last thing, we know that the drive for Les Schwab now requires drivers to stay over-night in PDX, while five years ago, they could come out to PDX get chinese tires off the boat, and be back in a day. Five years ago they had to stay in Motels.

In five more years, its going take a day just to get to Gresham from Priny ( or Juniper Ridge ).

Why in the HELL are they even doing this?

Federal Highway's have a plan to build a freeway from RENO along I97 to Madras, but NO farther, there is NO federal plan out to 2050 to build a FWY from Central Oregon to PDX, thus WHY IN THE HELL DO THESE BASTARDS think they can create a sustainable business by transporting chinese tires to central-oregon?

It makes NO economic sense.

Even with convict labor and raw materials coming from south america to Juniper-Ridge, it makes NO SENSE.

Then again, nobody ever accused anyone in Bend of making sense. Want proof of this statement?? "THE SHIRE".

Anonymous said...

The math is very clear.

By Dec 2006 it was clear that Juniper-Ridge was dead, and the city owed $2.5M to kuratek.

Garzini brings Les Schwab in to rescue the project, which Anderson would later fuckup.

Les Schwab promises to FUND kuratek with real cash $2.5M to go away, if city picks up $5M muni-cdo-bond to pay for their INFRASTRUCTURE.

Anderson trys to get WALMART&LOWES to pay the cost of the $5M, rather than seeking a city bond on this fiasco, which he knows may bankrupt the city or kill its credit, note the money will never be paid back to the city.

The Anderson move so pisses off WALMART they have their lobbyists contact ODOT which shuts down the whole project.

Anderson is fired, and walmart & lowes are promised a new deal by garzini. Les Schwab is told to move forward, the BULL announces Juniper-Ridge is dead.

Kuratek walks with $2.5M of Schwab money.

Only in Bend.

Bewert said...

Can anybody find a record for the BURA Oct. 12 Notice? I sure can't.

The minutes state the request was received )ct. 15, and staff issued the notice Oct. 12. Unless they knew the request was coming.

Bewert said...

OK, got it--it's in the Oct. 15 Work Meeting minutes.

http://www.ci.bend.or.us/city_hall/meeting_minutes/docs/IS_Short_Term_Financing_for_Juniper_Ridge_10_15__07.pdf

Anonymous said...

One thing that is clear from the October meeting's, and that is the Juniper Ridge Consultant is to be Paid $2.5M, and that the cash will come from the $3M they got from Schwab. Then the $5.5M for Knife-River will come from a bond to be floated in Dec 07, for $5M.

I guess its easy to ask for a muni-cdo bond at xmas, the citizens will never know, by then the money will have been spent, and the mea-culpa will only be me-so-sorry, I wonder if knife-river is at all sweating if they'll get paid. There's a million ways this bond deal could fall through.

One thing is for certain, thanks for the Schwab Cash Kuratek gets his.

I cannot believe this was all not a bait&switch setup all along. It's just too fucking fishy.

The whole deal with the architectural firm is the same he used for bay-meadows, its the same game he played in San Mateo played out here.

The CUNTS running city hall are so embarrassed they bullied poor fucking Brogman of $3M of SCHWAB stock-holder money, e.g. real cash.

Classic confidence scam, rather than granny calling the cops and saying she was robbed, she quietly pays the bill.

BEND IS SO FUCKING FUCKED.

Anonymous said...

ATTN IMPORTANT MEETING TOMORROW HIGH-NOON CITY-HALL

If you haven't followed this SHIT closely, tomorrows meeting pulls a lot of SHIT together. Walmart&Lowes are pissed, because Anderson tried to shake them down to pay the $5M for the drive-way to Les Schwab, they complained to ODOT, which is now involved. It's still not clear who or how they're going to pay for the $30M for the new over-pass at I97&Cooley, but this meeting should be fireworks.
****
Nov 13,2007
Public invited to Highway 97-Cooley Road meeting
by Bend Weekly News Sources
small font medium font large font
The City of Bend invites community members to attend a Stakeholder Sounding Board meeting on November 15. The meeting is being held to review preliminary evaluation results for design concepts to improve the intersection of Highway 97 and Cooley Road. The Stakeholder Sounding Board is an advisory committee that provides on-going feedback on the project. Participation is open to all interested people.

The meeting will be held from 12:30 to 2:30 on Thursday, November 15 in the Board Room at Bend City Hall, 710 NW Wall Street in Bend, Oregon. To get to the board room, enter the building on the west side.

The City of Bend, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and Deschutes County are working together to identify an improvement to the intersection of Highway 97 and Cooley Road that will accommodate traffic for the next ten to twenty years. The project identified through this process will keep traffic moving until improvements to the Highway 97 corridor are implemented. The City of Bend plans to select a preferred design concept for the intersection of Highway 97 and Cooley Road by the end of the calendar year.

For more information about this meeting or the project please contact Nick Arnis, City of Bend, (541) 388-5542 or by email. Alternatively, you may find information at the City of Bend’s website under the Bend MPO and find the link to the US 97/Cooley Road project.

Anonymous said...

Below is interesting the same day that bend city council re-zoned the Juniper-Ridge 20 acres bought by les schwab to "industrial', they bought 5 acres from "hap taylor" for $4 MILLION DOLLARS! Note, here that in ALL other correspondence "Hap-Taylor" is "KNIFE-RIVER". There seems to be a hell of shell game going on here.

If Les Schwab was just going to be an office for 350, then why rezone to industrial? and why make them exempt from CC&R's for all time? So fucking fishy!

The same day Les Schwab land is rezoned, "Knife River" gets $4M in city money for 5 little acres off Boyd Acre Road.

Was there ever even a competitive bid to the Les Schwab infrastructure at Juniper Ridge by "Knife River" for $5.5M or was that a done deal like making KURATEK the master-developer??

****

Busy night at Wednesday’s Bend City Council - April 5, 2007

The Bend City Council at a busy (and long) meeting on Wednesday took action on several items of interest to the business community. Arguably the most important, the council agreed to rezone 20 acres in the first phase of Juniper Ridge from Urban Area Reserve to Industrial Light near Cooley Road and 18th Street to allow Les Schwab Tire Co. to build a headquarters in Bend. The company hopes to begin construction later this year. In other action, the council agreed unanimously to spend $4.1 million to buy 5.14 acres at 62975 Boyd Acres Road that now is owned by Hap Taylor and Sons, which is moving its headquarters to Tumalo. The city plans to use the land to house and maintain equipment for its streets, water and sewer divisions. The council still has yet to decide whether to sell a piece of property the city bought last year at the corner of Wall Street and Olney Avenue as a possible new City Hall site.

Anonymous said...

TimToe
Site Admin


Joined: 15 Feb 2007
Posts: 1605


PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 4:46 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
>>She has "prices starting at $499,000" in Homes and Land magazine.

Where do prices "end" at?
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Becky Breeze
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:29 pm Post subject: Becky Breeze Reply with quote
The article for my demise is kind of weird. A wonderful guy Tarris Rogers who has been with my company for 12 years told me to look at this BLOG you have on your site. There were some nice things said in yesterdays BLOG and some bad things. You BLOGGERS do NOT know I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer a few months into the Plaza project. Miss Healthy here, who never gets sick ,what was that? Then I learned that prostate and ovarian and breast cancer has nothing to do with diet. AND the PAP smear has nothing to do with diagnosis because the PAP smear is a viral situation and Ovarian cancer is not detectable unless a good doctor like Dr Mary Ellen Coulter is able to find it in an examination or by a pelvic ultrasound. WOW what a bummer that was, and chemo and two major sugeries NOW THAT IS DEMISE! My wonderful husband not only stayed at my side through 2 major surgeries & chemotherapy he had to deal with keeping the Plaza going to be the best built 130,000 sq ft building in Bend. Super guy and I love him more every day. It is strange to me that a Blog Person would hope for my demise in a business deal (no big deal there will be another one if this deal it REALLY does not work out because of our present market. If BLOGS were around when Bill Smith was begging for money from Les Schwab & Matt Day in the original days of his dreaming of an extension of town in the middle of an old abandoned mill site, DEQ disaster, fixed, now known as the Old Mill. Thank goodness Blogs were not around then. He would have been on your hot plate. Blogs were not around to call for Haydens demise for his BLUFFS above the REED MKT round about that has been selling product for 5 years, OTTER RUN on the market for 6 years, OLD MILL QUARTER or any other product. ALL of these projects have their struggles but never had BLOGS to call for their demise. For all of the BLOGGERS, please come by any day of the week to see THE PLAZA. To the Blog that said we had, cheap anything, finishes they are confused with other products on the market. We are all custom, and gorgeous. No plastic inserts or plastic anything. Bathrooms & kitchens are all custom finishes. But only you can see for yourself. Remember if you come by it is the BRICK BLDG on Bluff Drive next to AMERITEL INN not THE BLUFFS above the REED MKT round about. You do NOT have to buy one if you come and see it, I promise, but you should have the real knowledge. By the way, this is my first BLOG so I hope I did it right. I am 58 years old last October 24 and have been working since I was a kid every day for my up keep with no gimmees from anyone. I love my life here in Bend (19 years now) and I love my grandbabies. I love my job and my health which is hopeful. I even like all the bloggers because we are just people trying to get by and live through the day whatever the day gives us. You all take care and stay healthy. BB

Anonymous said...

Ponderosa Cascade $207.50/sf (-20.8%)
Upper Terrace (The Plaza) $400.15/sf (-19.2%)
Deschutes River Ranch $372.00/sf (-17.1%)
Darnel Estates $144.00/sf (-15.5%)
Woodside Ranch $266.58/sf (-15.7%)
Wyndemere $337.75/sf (-14.9%)
Shevlin Meadows $200.50/sf (-15.4%)


Uh, I live in Ponderosa Cascade. It has a Bend zip code but is 18 miles out. We are in Sisters School disrict and are 6 miles out of Sisters. Hardly qualifies for a Bend stat.

Not sure where you got your info on PPSF, but nothing has sold out here since March. Last house to sell was a 2015 SqFt for 510K. I'd be interested to know where you are getting your info if indeed we are talking about the same "Ponderosa Cascade"?

Anonymous said...

PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:29 pm Post subject: Becky Breeze Reply with quote

*

It looks real, it could be sally, but I honestly think she really was from Atlanta, and came with the WSJ clothesline article.

The real issue here, is why in the hell does that stupid double fucking cunt BENDBB keep deleting all postings?? I really think everyone should only post on his site as names of city council, and then everything can be deleted.

The article was definitely written by a realtor, and you all have to admit for some bizarre reason, The Plaza had been over written by HOMER, considering there are 100's of over-built dumps like this in Bend.

She's probably right, the Plaza is probably a 'marvelous' place, hell perhaps Mrs. Breeze is our Sally, the writing was very,very similar.

The fucking "SHIRE" is a 100 times more stupid than the Plaza, and you haven't seen homer waste many BYTES on that subject. It's clear he's got a big hard-on for becky.

We all owe her a big apology.

Perhaps she can suggest who the eye of Sauron the Blogger should be focussed on?? This is why I personally prefer to focus on the city, and no particular realtor. On the other hand I do think that if the microscope must be on someone, it should be boss-hogg-hollern.

Anonymous said...

Not sure where you got your info on PPSF, but nothing has sold out here since March. Last house to sell was a 2015 SqFt for 510K. I'd be interested to know where you are getting your info if indeed we are talking about the same "Ponderosa Cascade"?

*

All data comes from BENDBB, and its always been of questionable accuracy.

Anonymous said...

There is an amazing amount of 'blogger fodder' in todays becky letter.

That said, better to focus on the issue of the day.

In response to the major complaint of becky, the critical-mass of the bend blog community didn't exist more than one year ago.

Yes, the Plaza is a great place, nobody said it wasn't. I think what was said is that there is no market for such excess in this little desert town. At least you admit the market is bad at this time, but its going to be a long-long time, before the Rodeo Drive crowd comes to Bend and buys your $2M condo's.

I'm sure this is really is Becky, because she clearly believes the dream, that if you build it they'll come, and if you add gold plated bidets the rich will come.

Good morning Becky, they're not coming, and they're not coming next week either.

Anonymous said...

If BLOGS were around when Bill Smith was begging for money from Les Schwab & Matt Day in the original days of his dreaming of an extension of town in the middle of an old abandoned mill site, DEQ disaster, fixed, now known as the Old Mill.

*

What of it? Now we'll have dozens of empty RE&MTG shops. We'll have dozens of crappy little outlet stores. What's so great about the fucking old-mill? Other than the fact that Breeze, and a dozen other realors made millions of dollars off the project?

Yes, Becky has nothing worry about the failure of The Plaza, she's protected by LLC.

What is so great about the Old Mill and what it has become?

I always felt it should have become the the University of Oregon @ Bend, a beautiful campus, instead its just a bunch of cali restaurants and outlet stores. Oh yea, and you got the Les Schwab Amphitheater a place of major hypocrisy.

Would haver the bloggers even bothered? Probably, but its irrelevant, because the critical mass of bend-blogging didn't exist more than a year ago.

It will continue, until the BULL & SORE learn to do their job.

Bewert said...

Paul-doh, do you have an email addy? I want to forward an email I just sent to dojuniperridgeright.com.

Thanks--Bruce

Anonymous said...

Nice classy response from the Breeze lady.

Even when slammed by everybody, she responds in a nice fashion.

She showed that dartagnion a thing or two, eh?

Hahaha....

tim said...

Becky,

I'm glad you're healthy. And I'm glad you posted on the blogs.

You're going to keep hearing from us. On the blogs, we say what we think.

In the Bulletin and newspapers all around the country, for two years as housing slowed, cheerful Realtors glossed over all problems and insisted that it's always a great time to buy.

So you've still got the masses. The Bulletin gives us breathless news about "what's going up," and nothing is ever "coming down."

After all, bloggers don't pay for 20-some pages of ads every Saturday.

Anonymous said...

Remember that dartagnan is Homer, that BEM, Bendbb & IHTBYB are all adolescent pre-puberty bitches.

That all are on the payroll of Brook Resources.

Why does Brooks want the Plaza so bad?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I'm glad you're healthy. And I'm glad you posted on the blogs.

Ditto. Becky, as I've said repeatedly, is a very personable gal. She would not have enjoyed such immense success otherwise.

And, if "results count", Becky is a real producer, having produced payroll(s) in the millions.

Those things I think have to be separated from the idea that Bloggers are not a "WHAT'S GOING UP" crowd. We are not here to do a slick Willy job on the masses. It is mainly observation, good or bad.

And The Plaza, completely apart from it's construction & otherwise, is/was a poor business decision, made possible by the mass fantasy of the mega RE bubble. I think ultimately Becky will (is?) regret it.

I try to be careful about gravedancing too much, but some of these people have enjoyed a measure of success & CAUSED problems in this town AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS. Many people are being & have been evicted from lower rent places, SOLELY because of RE "interests". Understand there will be some measure of schadenfreude, much of which I think is deserved.

Anonymous said...

if "results count", Becky is a real producer, having produced payroll(s) in the millions.

*

Yes, ditto.

Hat's off to Becky, the grand dame of Bend Real Estate Flipping.

In a town only concerned with short term 'get rich quick' fuck everyone else. He that end up with the most gold wins,... Becky is a public icon.

The best city hall that RE money can buy.

Anonymous said...

Bruce,

Don't expect much from www.dojuniperridgeright.com

It's ran by Oran Teater, the ex bend mayor, as KURATEK would call a good old boy.

He never quite defines what is meant by 'doJRright", but all the info is quite old, and he really hasn't updated his site since spring/summer 07. He basically has a single page, and references 2or3 articles, this is class inhouse 'opposition'.

JR is a done deal, and its no longer even called 'JR', like the BULL said last money "JR is dead". Long live "Les Schwab Renewal Zone".

Long ago JR was recognized as "Bait&Switch", then in Dec 06, when the highly embarrassed city councilors with enormous amounts of FUDGE packed up their ass; solicited Borgman of Les Schwab to pay off KURATEK and get rid of him, as it was clear it couldn't bring an infusion of CASH to Bend.

In October 2007, all payoffs were accomplished, and all deals were sealed.

Oran Teater was every bit as much a mushroom as a citizen in Bend, he probably had some kid setup his website. Personally its looking more and more like the entire thing was stated ala wizard-of-oz, 'pay no attention' to the man behind the curtain.

Everyone was fixated on KURATEK, but the real deal was handing "Juniper Ridge" [sic ] off to Les Schwab with NO CC&R's, and NO cost of infrastructure.

Like an old lady scammed by con-men, she would never call the police. Embarrassed by the fact that she was bamboozled, she quietly goes to the bank, and pays off the con-men. Doesn't want to look like a MORON in her neighborhood. Teater knew that JR, was a fiasco, so did everyone, but that spring 2007 distraction kept everyone focussed on the wizard, and ignoring the real deal.

Today city-hall has approved KURATEKS $2.5M, Knife-River get $5.5M for putting in the drive-way and ALL infrastucture to the Les Schwab 'industrial' center [ Les Schwab Urban Renewal Zone, aka Juniper Ridge ].

In Dec 2007 the city will get a $5M cdo-muni bond, and use that money to pay Knife-River [ Hap-Taylor ] for services rendered. The same day kuratek gets his check for $2.5M.

It's over.

The only loose problem now is the meeting today. Walmart and Lowes are PISSED, because they don't want to be 'taxed' for the "Les Schwab Urban Renewal Zone", of which they'll get NOTHING.

Who will pay the $30M to fix Cooley/I97?? Certainly NOT Bend.

The WHOLE bypass has been a fuck-up, these boxes should have been on the inside of the bypass instead the end. The BYPASS was made obsolete within the day it was enabled.

Look up to Redmond, at least the Walmart Super, is on the inside of the North Bypass.

The only loose thread how come to date only Andersons head rolled? His fuckup was trying to make Walmart pay for the LS-URZ, that caused a hornets nest that brought in ODOT, and returned Garzini.

Borgman got a good deal for LS I guess, $3M cash, and get's $6M in infrastructure. Its clear the city-hall couldn't get a BOND to payoff KURATEK. So they need LS cash from Borgman. Given that city only had one-hour to accept deal, it certainly wasn't wanted by Borgman that bad, he must have had his back against the wall.

Garzini's grand dream of profitable privatized prison in Central Oregon lives on.

Bewert said...

Anybody going to this afternoon's meeting on 97/Cooley? I want to but have to be teaching until 3:30.

Would love to have coffee with someone that goes.

Re: JR is a done deal--not quite yet. LS can still walk away up until 12/31/07 at a max cost of $100K, including $35K in earnest money.

I am curious as to how the Council planned/plans on financing improvements. The Urban Renewal District is only authorized to raise $41+ million, $8M is going for the LS driveway and utilities, and $15-30 on Cooley interchange. Doesn't leave much for infrastructure.

Anonymous said...

JR is a done deal--not quite yet. LS can still walk away up until 12/31/07 at a max cost of $100K, including $35K in earnest money.

*

Yea, LS walks away after the city spends $5.5M on a driveway to no-where. That's good way to make friends.

LS has a history of bailing out Bend, as even becky pointed out earlier in the day, when the dream of 'Old Mill' was still someones erection, Les Schwab stepped in.

Anonymous said...

The only way I can see Les Schwab walking away is they're extremely embarrassed.

If there might have something 'criminal' about the deal, or questionable. My feeling is that LS lawyers have this deal fairly well protected for LS, its the city of bend, that's going to get fucked, either way.

It's going to take a astronomic FUBAR to make the BULL report this story, and after all BORGMAN wants to shorten his commute from Awbrey awful bad.

This is a great deal for LS, who in the hell else is going to ..

1.) Make you exempt from CC&R's, e.g. zoning rules, ... for ALL TIME.

2.) Pay for ALL your infrastructure,...

3.) Kiss your ass forever, ...

You think Redmond's going to do this??

Economically, as I have already written the best bet for LS, would be to get out of Oregon, all together, but this is about economics, this is about CEO's and their lifestyle.


Look at the deal, the same day the city re-zoned the 'Les Schwab Urban Renewal Zone; [ was Juniper Ridge ] to INDUSTRIAL, on the same day, they bought 5 acres from Knife-River for $4M. LS pays $3M for 20 acres, with everything turn-key, this deal is worth a fortune, if nothing else its probably grand-fathered, and LS can turn around and sell it to anyone they wish. Given its been zoned industrial, with total exemption to CC&R's for all time, this is NOW very valuable property, OH and did I mention ALL the infrastructure is included for FREE!

Bewert said...

My thought is that LS may try to screw us even further at the last minute. Remember, this is the new Borg LS, not the old Les LS.

The Initial CCR's also protect LS's view of the mountains andallow them to stage and move soil back and forth from Phase 2, the second 8 acres, whether they purchase it or not, plus allow LS to approve any land usage south of them in JR.

As for assignment, "9.8 Successors. Buyer reserves the right to assign its interest under this Agreement...subjext to the prior written approval of Seller, not to be unreasonable[y] witheld.

LS is also protected against "...any additional restrictive covenents or master plan requirements other than those...approved by the Buyer...The master planning...for the balance of Juniper Ridge shall include provisions to protect the investment being made by Buyer and the value of the Property from being diminished by incompatible uses on other parts of Juniper Ridge."

Anonymous said...

My thought is that LS may try to screw us even further at the last minute. Remember, this is the new Borg LS, not the old Les LS.

*

Anyone doing the screwing here, its the city-of-bend screwing the taxpayer to cover its ass, the $3M from Broggy (LS) is just to pay KURATEK to go away.

I would rather see the city council get screwed by NOT coming up with this cash, if they don't pay, KURATEK sues, then EVERYTHING comes public and it gets VERY ugly including depositions from Garzini, and Anderson.

Brog is getting fucked here, the taxpayers aren't even in the fucking game.

This is all BIG fucks fucking each other, just like that happened up at Broken-Top earlier.

The only wild card here is that Walmart isn't going to let these amateurs fuck them.

p.s. POST ALL THE DOC's your referring to, its always better to keep them around here as the links can be destroyed by the city at any time.

Anonymous said...

Please post the entire following document.
***
LS is also protected against "...any additional restrictive covenents or master plan requirements other than those...approved by the Buyer...The master planning...for the balance of Juniper Ridge shall include provisions to protect the investment being made by Buyer and the value of the Property from being diminished by incompatible uses on other parts of Juniper Ridge."

Anonymous said...

Can someone post the following BULL.

Juniper Ridge folly

Honor CC&Rs

Anonymous said...

Here's a good one, for you auction hounds, this builder has stuff in Bend, but is auctioning EVERYTHING. 5,000 sqft homes for $995/mo.
***
Innovative Builder Announces Property Sale Auction
Posted : Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:14:17
LAKE OSWEGO, Ore., Nov. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Buena Vista Custom Homes owner Roger Pollock announced today that the company will offer its entire inventory of completed homes along with a portfolio of investor homes for sale as part of a two day auction.

The auction will be held, Saturday December 15th and Sunday December 16th at the Oregon Convention Center. The event is free to attend and those interested may view the inventory of homes via a special website at http://www.auctiontoday.com/. The sale will feature approximately 200 new homes as well as 30 leased homes targeted to investors.

The homes that will be offered are located in some of the most popular selling communities in the Portland Metropolitan area. Communities include: Beaverton, Happy Valley, Hillsboro, Sandy, Bend and Scappoose. Floor plans range from 1113 to 5073 square feet and many include Buena Vista's popular amenity package's which include designer finishes such as granite counter tops, extensive hardwood floors, cherry cabinets, stainless steel appliances, multiple fireplaces and much more.

Pollock, always the innovator, devised the idea as a unique and aggressive way to market completed and unsold inventory. Buena Vista, like many area builders overbuilt over the past two years and needs to reduce inventory. "As a company, we have always been about selling homes as aggressively as possible. In today's market you have got to try new techniques. We were over aggressive and too slow to react to the changes in the market and that has created an over supply of finished homes. Buyers are going to get amazing deals, but we simply have to reduce our inventory," said Pollock.

Earlier this year Buena Vista earned national attention for its unique financing program that paid a portion of buyer's payments for two years. Buyers were able to purchase a 5,000 square foot home in Happy Valley for $950.00 per month.

Bewert said...

Re: post entire document

It's 29 pages, and all I have is a hard copy. If I can get a PDF or get someone to scan it, I have my own webserver I can post it on. My scanner bit the dust.

It's the actual Purchase and Sale Agreement with Les Schwab.

I've been collecting as many docs as I can to try to make sense of what has happened and where it appears we are going with JR and Bend as a whole. I moved here about two and a half years ago, after spending 20+ years in the Salt Lake area. I plan to stay here for quite a while, too, and don't want it to get to be too big of a mess. I can support myself via the Net, outside of Bend, so I'm not too worried about local blowback.

Plus, I've run into secrecy and favors in supposedly open, public organizations before, and have learned that sunlight is the best disinfectant. And the 99% of people that are paying for the favors are very grateful for someone actually putting up a fight.

Anonymous said...

History
12-13-06:
Agreement of Purchase and Sale executed by City Manager and President of Les Schwab
Warehouse Center, Inc.
4-18-07:
First draft of CCR’s received from Les Schwab.
Background
Section 4.10 of the Agreement of Purchase and Sale between the City of Bend and Les Schwab
Headquarters, LLC (LSH) calls for Seller and Buyer, during the contingency period, to agree on “an initial,
brief set of CCR’s . . . designed to protect the investment in the Property being made by Buyer.” Les
Schwab’s CCR’s are driven in part by the fact that Juniper Ridge CCR’s will not be in place until after
construction of the headquarters building has commenced. Per Section 4.10 the Les Schwab CCR’s are
intended to:
“Protect the view from the Property of the Cascade Mountains by limiting the height of buildings
abutting Cooley Road west of 18
th
Street to a maximum of 45 feet.”
“Allow Buyer the right to approve any use or alteration of the land located south of the Property
between Cooley Road and the south property line of Juniper Ridge, such approval not to be
unreasonably withheld.”

Bewert said...

Re: Borg is the one getting screwed.

Nah, they are getting land "shovel-ready" for $7/sq ft, with no SDC's to be paid. From what I'm seeing else for sale, that is about 1/3 to 1/2 of the going rate, not including SDC's. And LS can resell, at a profit, if it wants to.


Re: "History"--looks like I'm not the only one with a copy, judging from the CCR's post just above. Have a PDF, by chance?

Anonymous said...

The actual doc of interest is the one below, "12-13-06:
Agreement of Purchase and Sale executed by Anderson and Borgman"

Nobody has this doc, and neither do you, its still a "TOP SECRET" in Bend.

***

12-13-06:
Agreement of Purchase and Sale executed by City Manager and President of Les Schwab
Warehouse Center, Inc.

Anonymous said...

I've run into secrecy and favors in supposedly open, public organizations before, and have learned that sunlight is the best disinfectant. And the 99% of people that are paying for the favors are very grateful for someone actually putting up a fight. - bruce

*

You have a lot to learn about BEND, everyone here is here to make a quick BUCK. Nobody gives a fuck about Bend. All the bloggers in this forum are cock-sucking DUBYA voters.

These kinds would drive if there mothers would let them have the car keys. They're all renters, they couldn't buy a house if they wanted to. They blog, because it makes them feel superior to tell people who bought a home how stupid they are.

Regarding the Les Schwab deal, in Bend the way it works is that everybody is stealing from everyone else. Nobody gives a shit that Borgman got a great deal from the city or that Kuratek got even a better deal. The only thing that people in Bend care about is what they get.

Just read Duncans blog, as long as he sells 2 or 3 dumb-ass comics everyday, and makes his $5/hr wage goal, he's a happy clam. All these people would make good Nazi's if this were Nazi Germany, but its not, It's Nazi Bend, and its 2008.

Read the above carefully, and think about the essential truth, next time you delude yourself into thinking that anyone in this town cares about Bend.

I have been here since the 1960's, the folks that cared about Bend, left over twenty years ago, they got tired of fighting, and just wanted to live.

In the last ten years 1,000's of hustlers moved to Bend, that's why today you just have a town of liars, hustlers, and creeps.

Welcome to Bend.

p.s. keep trying to unravel the Juniper Ridge, fiasco, debacle, folly; someone has to do it, the BULL and/or SORE sure in the hell isn't.

Bewert said...

RE: "Nobody has this doc..."

I do. What I figured out is that the secrecy was lifted on Dec. 14th, two days later, when Borgman signed a separate document that included:

"1. Waiver. Buyer waives the obligations of of the Seller under Section 9.7.1 of the Purchase Agreement to keep strictly confidential the existence and terms of the Purchase Agreement."

Maybe the city lawyer got to him re: the Oregon Open Records laws. But this bit of info was not disseminated in any way. I expected to be denied when I put in the request and was pleasantly surprised to see the waiver.

There were a few blank pages in the exhibits (legal defs of the land), along with the CCR's, that I put in another records request for this morning. Along with a request for the Public Notice for the Dec. 12, 206 Special Meeting

BTW, the agreement is dated 12/12/06.

Re: Bendbust--excellent rant. Are you sure you aren't a bitter, lonely old man? Perhaps you need a few friends to rant over beers with ;)

I am a curious and intelligent person. And will continue to be. I simply don't want the city to put resources into a big new development when all the existing ones have so much infrastructure improvements, unfinanced by SDC's, to deal with.

Managed growth is good. Wild speculation is self-defeating. You don't make it up in volume when you are losing money with every sale. The basics.

Anonymous said...

You don't make it up in volume when you are losing money with every sale. The basics.

*

Where the hell did you come from?

I'll assume for a moment your NOT from Oregon.

In Bend for instance, its all about building folks like Knife-River, are who owns city hall, the whole purpose of government is to keep creating public projects, to keep the money flowing.

There is no management, there is no planning, its spend as much as possible, every city in Oregon is ran this way.

In PDX its all about Bechtel, historically Oregon was all about roads, and the folks that built the roads got rich, and owned the politicians ( hap-taylor, now knife-river ). The above is how it used to be,

After 1998, folks came from all over the country to Bend, as they just discovered it and nobody knew about Bend before 1998, and then the city-hall starting spending millions on marketing Bend as the #1 resort in America.

Then in 2001 they let it be known to the national builders that nobody needed to pay SDC's in Bend, that every building permit would be OK'd, and that anybody could come and get rich, The gold-rush was on,

Today, we're sitting on a glut of homes with an average time to purge of 30 years, ...

Now your going to fix this and how??

As someone who has been involved in Oregon Politics for +40 years, I can tell you its always been this way, always will,

Follow the Money, watch the pig trough and see who feeds,

Juniper-Ridge is just one of many rackets in this town, but in generality its always the same people getting paid.

Politicians are a dime a dozen, in five years when ALL the current cunts are long gone, there will be a whole new batch all owned by Brooks Resources and Knife-River and they'll be virgins, but the ownership never changes.

Bewert said...

"As someone who has [followed this BS] for 40 years"

What do you think is a remedy?

Bend Economy Man said...

LS is also protected against "...any additional restrictive covenents or master plan requirements other than those...approved by the Buyer...The master planning...for the balance of Juniper Ridge shall include provisions to protect the investment being made by Buyer and the value of the Property from being diminished by incompatible uses on other parts of Juniper Ridge."

There is no way the City's lawyer reviewed this contract. Arguably this clause gives Les Schwab approval rights over every single Juniper Ridge development for all time. As in, to cover the City's ass, they would be smart now to get Les Schwab's signoff on each building that goes up to make sure Les Schwab won't consider it "incompatible." Otherwise they're open to a claim for damages from LS whenever LS might be in a bad mood or need money at any time in the next 50-100-200 years. Plus, given that LS can fucking ASSIGN the contract, they could give all their rights to Kim Jong-Il and HE would be the one with signoff on all of Juniper Ridge for all time.

I think as far as this Juniper Ridge thing goes BendBust is as right on as right on gets. Something stunk from Day One, but only now are we discovering the dead cat under the porch. An incredibly stupid set of deals and a negative legacy this town will have to deal with for decades.

Bend Economy Man said...

And why the hell is it that some dude named Bruce from Utah has to be the one who makes the public records request for the Les Schwab contract?

Kudos to you, Bruce, but shame on you, Bulletin, Source and KTVZ.

Bend Economy Man said...

Bruce, please get that contract PDF'd and let's get it posted on your server. Please post the URL here. Many many thanks.

Anonymous said...

City of Bend Brands itself with tennis-shoe maker. Bend Brand is now "soiled sneaker"

***

Bend VCB Partners With Merrell

By Press Release

Posted 11.15.2007
(BEND, Ore.)--Mention the words Bend, Oregon, to anyone with a passion for outdoor recreation, and they immediately conjure up images of endless singletrack, meandering trout streams, untracked powder and majestic mountain peaks. Similarly, the word Merrell brings to mind images of hiking, climbing, running or simply relaxing in comfort and style.

That’s precisely the thinking behind a new and unique partnership between the Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau and Merrell, whereby the popular outdoor footwear and apparel manufacturer has become ‘The Official Outfitter of the Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau.’

“The Bend brand is a unique combination of recreation, coupled with the energy of a vibrant, cosmopolitan mountain town that appeals to active people of all ages,” said Doug LaPlaca, President and CEO of the Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau. “This is a great opportunity for us to align the destination of Bend with the world renown premium brand of Merrell, and extend our marketing reach to a new group of prospective visitors.”

While corporate sponsorships are nothing new, partnerships between consumer product companies such as Merrell and leisure travel destinations such as Bend represent a marketing concept that both parties believe has significant untapped potential.

“It’s no longer a secret that Bend is one of the country’s most appealing destinations for outdoor enthusiasts, and Merrell’s commitment to such a lifestyle makes this a great partnership,” said Sue Harvey Brown, Marketing Manager for Merrell. “We’re marketing more than just a product—we’re marketing a lifestyle—and the Bend lifestyle is a perfect fit.”

As part of the agreement, Merrell will provide financial and product support to the Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau for cooperative marketing programs. The BVCB and Merrell will also work together to cooperatively market and promote each other’s respective brands in sales, marketing and collateral materials.

About the Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau:
The Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau is a non-membership, non-profit economic development organization dedicated to promoting tourism on behalf of the City of Bend. For more information or to order a complimentary Official Visitor’s Guide to Bend, contact the Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau at 1-800-949-6086 or visit www.visitbend.com.

About Merrell:
For more than 26 years, Merrell has been providing outdoor enthusiasts with quality performance footwear. What began as a regional brand in the Green Mountains of Vermont, now roams the world as an international leader in footwear and apparel. From all-leather hiking boots to the moc that created the “aftersport” category and hundreds of quality designs for adults and children, Merrell continues to re-invent comfort and style for active outdoor enthusiasts. For more information visit www.merrell.com.

Anonymous said...

Bend Economy Man said...

And why the hell is it that some dude named Bruce from Utah has to be the one who makes the public records request for the Les Schwab contract?

*

BEM,

I'm not sure what the hell is going on here. I myself and chamber-of-commerce, and everybody has been down there at city hall since last dec-06 demanding to see the les-schwab agreement from 12-13-06,

What interesting now, according to 'bruce' is that the agreement is date 12-12-06, which is crap, because the meeting was 12-13-06, and 'bruce' says there as a 'waiver' attached 12-13-06, that allows the 12-12-06 doc to go public, I really think that if there is a 'waiver' it was back-dated MOST RECENTLY and added.

Tons of people have been down there since dec 06, demanding this doc, this is why the first thing I did is DEMAND that 'bruce' go to kinkos, pay $3 and get it scanned into a PDF. My first impression is that its all bullshit, now with the waiver non-sense I'm beginning to think 'bruce' is a plant.

The major issue right now is that Les Schwabs "CC&Rs" that they themselves created say explicitly that nobody "west of them" can be over 45 feet, considering the last west is owned by Walmart, and they intend to put in an observation office, they're pissed that Les Schwab is dictating what they can do on their own land. Walmart has been demanding these docs for over nine months.

All this 'bruce' shit is an attempt by city to make it appear that all doc's were publicly available all the time all along, there were never any executive sessions, and there were never any 'secret doc's.

Thanks, Bruce,

Anonymous said...

As can be seen below, Les Schwab, wrote its OWN CC&R's for Juniper-Ridge which apply to all Juniper Ridge for 40 years, now where in the HELL are these CC&R's that Les Schwab's Attorney wrote??

***
Bend City Council
September 19, 2007 Meeting
Issue Summary
Department: Economic Development
Staff Member: Jerry Mitchell, Development Manager
Covenants, Conditions, Restrictions and Easements
for Les Schwab Corporate Headquarters at Juniper Ridge
History
12-13-06:
Agreement of Purchase and Sale executed by City Manager and President of Les Schwab
Warehouse Center, Inc.
4-18-07:
First draft of CCR’s received from Les Schwab.
Background
Section 4.10 of the Agreement of Purchase and Sale between the City of Bend and Les Schwab
Headquarters, LLC (LSH) calls for Seller and Buyer, during the contingency period, to agree on “an initial,
brief set of CCR’s . . . designed to protect the investment in the Property being made by Buyer.” Les
Schwab’s CCR’s are driven in part by the fact that Juniper Ridge CCR’s will not be in place until after
construction of the headquarters building has commenced. Per Section 4.10 the Les Schwab CCR’s are
intended to:
“Protect the view from the Property of the Cascade Mountains by limiting the height of buildings
abutting Cooley Road west of 18
th
Street to a maximum of 45 feet.”
“Allow Buyer the right to approve any use or alteration of the land located south of the Property
between Cooley Road and the south property line of Juniper Ridge, such approval not to be
unreasonably withheld.”
Discussion of the Issue and Alternatives Explored:
Key provisions of the attached draft CCR’s include:
Default and remedies: In the event of a breach of the CCR’s the owner of the LSH Parcel or an
adjacent parcel may bring a suit or other action for abatement or damages.
Term: The CCR’s “shall continue in full force and effect for a period of 40 years . . .”
Partial replacement: LSH “shall be given an advance draft of the [Juniper Ridge CCR’s] and an
opportunity to comment on the same.” If LSH determines that the Juniper Ridge CCR’s adequately
protect its interests then LSH shall “execute and acknowledge an approval” of the Juniper Ridge
CCR’s. Recording of the Juniper Ridge CCR’s would terminate the portions of the Les Schwab CCR’s
Staff Review and Recommendation to Council: Staff recommends that Council approve
the Declaration of Covenants, Conditions, Restrictions and Easements and authorize its execution by
the City Manager.
Page 2
Issue Summary
page 2 of 2
LS CCRs 091907.doc
related to development of land south of the LSH parcel; maintenance of adjacent parcels; and term of
the LSH CCR’s. Other portions of the Les Schwab CCR’s would remain in effect.
Applicability of Juniper Ridge CCR’s: The Juniper Ridge CCR’s will not apply to the 12-acre LSH
Parcel or the eight-acre “option parcel” but these parcels will be beneficiaries of the Juniper Ridge
CCR’s and their owners shall have the ability to enforce the same. However, Les Schwab intends to
improve the property with the corporate headquarters building that is currently being designed and “any
subsequent structures located on the LSH Parcel will not be of a materially lower quality than such
headquarters building.”
Staff Review and Recommendation to Council: The City Attorney, Juniper Ridge Partners
and staff reviewed and commented on the Les Schwab CCR’s as they were developed by Les Schwab’s
attorney. Given that Les Schwab is proceeding through the land use and permit process and intends to
begin construction this fall, staff recommends that Council approve the Declaration of Covenants,
Conditions, Restrictions and Easements and authorize its execution by the City Manager.

Anonymous said...

4-18-07:
First draft of CCR’s received from Les Schwab.

**

Bruce,

Where are they?, and please post them here.

Anonymous said...

Below is one of my favorite 'bruce' excuses of all time. When asked by Walmart why nobody was at the 'public meeting', the city responded - "We mailed out notices to all those withing 250 of the Les Schwab site, as required by law". Now how man notices do you think got mailed out? Given that Les Schwab's drive-way from the site is 2,000 feet.

They didn't mail out a single notice, by law.

***

Issue Summary page 1 of 2
Council Update 020707.doc
Bend City Council
February 7, 2007 Meeting

Issue Summary

Department: Economic Development
Staff Member: Jerry Mitchell, Development Manager

Update on Status of Juniper Ridge


Background

The purpose of this Issue Summary is to update Council on the current status of Juniper Ridge and give a
preview of coming events. Juniper Ridge updates will be presented at every City Council meeting.

Recent Events

12-6-06: Council update presented by staff.
1-9-07: Public meeting on rezoning of Les Schwab site.
1-17-07: Master plan update by Cooper, Robertson Partners.
1-23-07: Executive Session discussion on DDA negotiation team and governance of Juniper Ridge.
1-25-07: DDA negotiation session in Portland.

Coming Events

2-7-07: Council master plan update from Cooper, Robertson followed by
first public open house on Juniper Ridge Master Plan.
2-13-07: Tentative date for hearings officer public hearing on rezoning of Les Schwab site.
2-21-07: Work Session with executive recruiter for higher education consultant.
2-22-07: Executive recruiter meetings with higher education stakeholders.
3-7-07: Master plan update by Cooper, Robertson Partners.
3-21-07: Tentative date for Council public hearing on rezoning of Les Schwab site.
4-4-07: Council master plan update from Cooper, Robertson followed by
second public open house.
5-2-07: Council master plan update from Cooper, Robertson followed by
third public open house.
5-31-07: Master plan completed.

Disposition & Development Agreement

Staff is coordinating with Council to add new members to the negotiation team, which based on Council’s
direction will now include councilors Jim Clinton and Mark Capell, Jillian Bruce, attorney with Harrang Long
Gary Rudnick, and an additional person to be selected by the City Council at the 2/7/07 executive session.


Public Information


Issue Summary page 2 of 2
Council Update 020707.doc

Master Plan: At 7:00 PM Wednesday, February 7, Cooper, Robertson will make a public presentation on
the master planning process, in the Barnes Room at the Deschutes County Service Center. The
presentation will be followed by an open house. Drawings will be displayed and consultants and staff will be
on-hand to answer questions.

Les Schwab Zone Change: For the public hearing on the Les Schwab zone change, a public notice will
be published in the Bulletin and mailed to property owners within a 250’ radius of the Les Schwab site.

Juniper Ridge Partners, LLC: The developer has retained public relations consultant Lori Gleichman to
enhance the level of professional public outreach for the project.

Education

Ilene Nagel, principal at Russell Reynolds Associates, will attend a Council Work Session on February 21,
2007, to receive Council input and provide an overview of the recruitment effort. On February 22 Ms. Nagel
will meet with higher education stakeholders in small groups; staff is currently scheduling these meetings
and will keep the Council informed of progress that is made.

Transportation

Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU): City staff has continued to meet with ODOT and County staff to
discuss a memorandum of understanding among the three jurisdictions on access to Juniper Ridge. At the
most recent meeting, on January 29, ODOT presented a memorandum listing “key concepts to include in
an MOU.” The key concepts provided by ODOT generally align with earlier City staff updates to the City
Council, and staff will continue to keep the Council apprised of progress on the MOU.

97 / 20 Environmental Review: City staff is meeting twice a month with ODOT as members of their
technical management team for the NEPA study. Currently ODOT is setting up a steering committee and
citizen’s advisory committee.

Cooley Road Improvement Project: Design is proceeding for the Cooley corridor from the Swalley Canal
east to 18th Street. Having recently resolved several issues associated with the canal and railroad crossing,
staff is now looking into expanding the consultants’ scope to continue the project from the canal west to US
97.

Anonymous said...

“Framework of good design” – what happens with Les Schwab? They
do not have to follow CCR’s so what good is your “green” design?
How will the city ensure that all of this “green” planning is bought into
by businesses/tenants if agreements like Les Schwab continue?

Cooper, Robertson & Partners
[ Kurateks buddy's from cali days ]
February 15, 2007
1 of 4
FIRST OPEN HOUSE: Juniper Ridge
Public Workshop Open-Ended Comments:
2-7-2007
Need fire department
Multiple access points – more routes into Juniper Ridge will reduce the
demand on any one of them and allow each one to be more
bike/pedestrian friendly. It will also tie Juniper Ridge into the
surrounding neighborhood and the future neighborhood that will exist to
the east of Juniper Ridge
Please be certain to take noise from 97 into consideration when
planning. Also the noise and air pollution impacts to Cooley road and
18th street
Please do not let the city council or staff discount the importance of deal
with noise and air impact
Green community?
“Framework of good design” – what happens with Les Schwab? They
do not have to follow CCR’s so what good is your “green” design?
How will the city ensure that all of this “green” planning is bought into
by businesses/tenants if agreements like Les Schwab continue?
Pay attention to connections to the rest of Bend – integrate Juniper
Ridge into the rest of Bend – don’t want to create a new town like
Celebration
Some parts of the survey I didn’t like, forced one into assumptions that
were not relevant
Plan for public transit to Juniper Ridge – not everyone will live there that
use it – maybe a shuttle service within Juniper Ridge
Since it is located between Redmond and Bend, think about connections
to Redmond
Like idea of edges helping determine what happens in Juniper Ridge –
good neighbor policy
Save as many trees and rock out crops as possible and integrate them
into development. Don’t blast the site flat which is typical in Bend (I
have examples of an area (residential) in Bend that worked around rocks
– Judy Clinton)
Leave room in design standards for new architectural ideas. Don’t just
limit to traditional Bend or NW style – check out Warm Spring Museum it
is not traditional or NW style, just plain good building respect of site and
Indian traditions but not literally
Due to the potential for the realignment of HWY 97 under concept 1B
approximately 5 businesses and 5 residences would have to be
Cooper, Robertson & Partners
February 15, 2007
2 of 4
relocated. Under concept 3B there are approximately 35 property
owners. This represents over 100 businesses and at least 500
employees. I have no made an exact study, however, I believe that 100
acres of real estate is involved
I believe we can all agree that Juniper Ridge is the driving force for the
HWY 97 realignment, as such, accommodation need to be written into
the plan guaranteeing property for the dislocated businesses
I am seriously concerned how the Les Schwab debacle will affect the
master plan. Will you plan around this hideous sprawling building that
you know wont meet your 10 principles? It would be great if you could
mitigate its ugliness and sprawl somehow if at all possible
Emphasized priorities:
o Walkability
o mass transit
o preserving natural features
o community spaces/place making/distinctive character
o variety of housing types/income considerations
o respect for surrounding land uses
o Public input!
Buffer zones between residential, landscape berms, lighting,
Safe crossing for kids to school on Cooley (under or over crossing)
Noise level
Park at west end of development
Develop visual images that show xeriscaping and water conservation –
otherwise people will not understand/appreciate them and incorporating
water conservation will be a difficult sell
Develop/take advantage of architectural features to minimize need for
trees
Preserve native “islands” (communities) not just trees. Many native
flowering plants provide seasonal color and interest
Develop alternatives to clean and green (goose habitat)
Develop new CO streetscape vernacular that meshes with juniper and
sagebrush
Utilize natural areas for runoff
Develop drainage master plan during early concept planning
Public service facilities – health clinics, local police facilities, public
transportation, fire protection, retirement communities
I would like to maintain the western desert character of Juniper Ridge
with native planting as well as “native” buildings. With so much growth
in the area I am concerned about the loss of native habitat that sustains
wildlife here. Also, the examples you showed were very urban in
character and I would prefer a more rural western feel
Cooper, Robertson & Partners
February 15, 2007
3 of 4
I believe separate focus should be on the cultural and educational of the
proposed university
When thinking about Bend’s future, the need for retirement communities
will grow. With the educational, shopping and parks/trails, a retirement
community could be ideal for this area. However, Bend has few, if any,
not-for-profit retirement and/or assisted living facilities. Therefore, even
moderate and middle income people may have trouble finding an
appropriate place. In addition, few places are “continuing care”...starting
in independent apartments/homes with the availability of assisted living
and nursing home care if the need arises. These retirement
communities are CCRC’s (Continuing Care Retirement Communities).
Many religious organizations: Presbyterian, Lutheran, United Methodist,
Roman Catholic and Jewish – develop and manage CCRC’s on a not-for-
profit basis. The acceptance of potential residents is done on a non-
sectarian basis of course. I strongly believe a not-for-profit CCRC should
be part of the plan (Carol Smalley – 306-6883)
Neighborhoods west and south of Juniper Ridge have been for the last
two years dealing with the city, county, and Oregon dept of
transportation on revisions of hwy 97 and 20. ODOT is currently doing
an environmental/economic impact analysis on the two alternatives on
the table
I am concerned that juniper ridge will raise new traffic issues that will
have an adverse impact on our neighborhoods
o Specifically – an interchange on US 97 in the vicinity of Bowery
lane that will have a large footprint and impact on existing homes
and neighborhoods on the west side of US 97
o Make clear to the public the traffic impact of juniper ridge on
Cooley road, intersection of Cooley and US 97, and Deschutes
Market road
Manage light pollution vis a vis the night sky
Please give the canal at the south end where the large waterfall is very
careful consideration. It is a great feature and has great rock features
nearby
Would like to get together to discuss a joint venture to redevelop my
property
Bike trails, walkability, traditional not conventional, low rise buildings,
keep the trees, don’t isolate from Bend – Juniper Ridge should not be a
new city but rather part of Bend
Buffer zones, safe crossings for schools
Park at west end of Juniper Ridge to join property owners to site
Cooley alignment – headlights coming into my house, I do not want that.
Also with icy roads I don’t want someone to come off the road into my
property
Cooper, Robertson & Partners
February 15, 2007
4 of 4
Medians – I do not want my driveway access blocked – while the plat
shows no access, the county granted access when we built in 1990
Take care of transportation issues first before adding any type of traffic
(i.e. construction, cars) onto Cooley Rd/18th corridor
Create alternative entrancesnow (i.e. N. Hwy 97 and Deschutes Market
Road)
New Cooley/97 interchange needs to be completed with ODOT blessing
before any more traffic added to Cooley/97 interchange
Cooley and 18th are already congested with school traffic. Bad idea to
use Cooley and 18th

Anonymous said...

http://www.ci.bend.or.us/depts/urban_renewal_economic_development/juniper_ridge/exhibits.html

Exhibit 2 - Property Deed

***

Bruce,

If you really are who you say you are, then go to the above site, and read the 'property deed', which explicitly says that use of the county land, known as juniper-ridge, can only be used by the city and public, if the ENTIRE process is conducted in PUBLIC.

The VERY foundation of this entire project is a violation of the county DEED from Day One.

Anonymous said...

***
http://www.ci.bend.or.us/depts/urban_renewal_economic_development/juniper_ridge/exhibits.html

Exhibit 2 - Property Deed
***
The JR deed from day one says ...
1.) there must be a master-plan ( this is why the bait&switch from kuratek was staged from day-one )
2.)The plan must be public, and adopted by city in public hearings.
3.) no less than 10% of the land dedicated to public park.

Yes, there was a master plan, but from day-one Les Schwab was exempt. There was NEVER a public hearing, everything was conducted in executive session.
The whole reason for paying $2.5M to kuratek was a done-deal all along, they had to have a master-plan in place, even though it would only get shelved.
The entire plan all along was to pass JR off to Les Schwab on their terms for free. Deschutes County commissioners should be furious. There are going to be ton's of lawsuits.
***
http://www.ci.bend.or.us/depts/urban_renewal_economic_development/juniper_ridge/exhibits.html

Exhibit 2 - Property Deed

***

Bruce,

If you really are who you say you are, then go to the above site, and read the 'property deed', which explicitly says that use of the county land, known as juniper-ridge, can only be used by the city and public, if the ENTIRE process is conducted in PUBLIC.

The VERY foundation of this entire project is a violation of the county DEED from Day One.

Anonymous said...

Something stunk from Day One, but only now are we discovering the dead cat under the porch. - bem

***

This WHOLE DEAL was setup by Garzini & BORMAN years ago.

1.) Wait until Les Schwab dies

2.) City Council forces master-plan ( county requirement ) to be done by KURATEK, an out-of-town hitman, with dog&pony show - cooper. This way they didn't have a local Oregon firm question legality. The exact same game that KURATEK did here, he did prior at San Mateo, CA. Even the Master-Plan, is largely the same work that Cooper did for him there, and did the dog&pony for him.

3.) Do everything in secret in violation of country Juniper-Ridge deed. Develop a master-plan, but have NO intention of ever using it, just get it in place, so as to pacify the community, and show pretty pictures. Bait & Switch.

4.) Dec 06, a few days after Les Schwab the 'man' is DEAD, BORGMAN has secret meeting with city-council present, and Anderson signs off secret purchase deal. Later a waiver is backdated to make it appear that the agreement was always public.

5.) In April of 2007, Les Schwab ( borgman ) produces a CC&R written by Les Schwab attorneys. It stipluates that Les Schwab has complete control over all of Juniper Ridge, and adjoining land owned by Walmart. Walmart is PISSED, and a war has begun.

6.) October 2007, the Bulletin announces that "juniper ridge" is dead, and that Kuratek is out, Anderson is fired. Behind the scenes city council approves a payoff of Kuratek for $2.5M, for services rendered.

7.) Fall of 2007 Les Schwab starts access to land courtesy of city money, and labor by Knife-River. Plan is to have the the building done, before it can be stopped, even though the Bulletin publicly announces that Juniper Ridge is over.

8.) Anderson trys to convert Juniper Ridge into "Les Schwab Urban Renewal District", and demands tax from Walmart & Lowes. A hornets nest is created and Anderson is fired.

9.)Juniper Ridge becomes a 1500 acre tire-flipping and rotation park. Garzinis dream of the biggest, most profitable privatized prison in America is born.

10.) Garzini & Borgman become the richest men in Oregon.

Anonymous said...

This is all about 'lifestyle' and money and like duncan said, 'lifestyle' is a delusion. Borgman CEO of Les Schwab, wants to commute from Awbrey to Juniper Ridge, and his quest for that lifestyle, tore a city apart.

***

Something stunk from Day One, but only now are we discovering the dead cat under the porch. - bem

***

This WHOLE DEAL was setup by Garzini & BORMAN years ago.

1.) Wait until Les Schwab dies

2.) City Council forces master-plan ( county requirement ) to be done by KURATEK, an out-of-town hitman, with dog&pony show - cooper. This way they didn't have a local Oregon firm question legality. The exact same game that KURATEK did here, he did prior at San Mateo, CA. Even the Master-Plan, is largely the same work that Cooper did for him there, and did the dog&pony for him.

3.) Do everything in secret in violation of country Juniper-Ridge deed. Develop a master-plan, but have NO intention of ever using it, just get it in place, so as to pacify the community, and show pretty pictures. Bait & Switch.

4.) Dec 06, a few days after Les Schwab the 'man' is DEAD, BORGMAN has secret meeting with city-council present, and Anderson signs off secret purchase deal. Later a waiver is backdated to make it appear that the agreement was always public.

5.) In April of 2007, Les Schwab ( borgman ) produces a CC&R written by Les Schwab attorneys. It stipluates that Les Schwab has complete control over all of Juniper Ridge, and adjoining land owned by Walmart. Walmart is PISSED, and a war has begun.

6.) October 2007, the Bulletin announces that "juniper ridge" is dead, and that Kuratek is out, Anderson is fired. Behind the scenes city council approves a payoff of Kuratek for $2.5M, for services rendered.

7.) Fall of 2007 Les Schwab starts access to land courtesy of city money, and labor by Knife-River. Plan is to have the the building done, before it can be stopped, even though the Bulletin publicly announces that Juniper Ridge is over.

8.) Anderson trys to convert Juniper Ridge into "Les Schwab Urban Renewal District", and demands tax from Walmart & Lowes. A hornets nest is created and Anderson is fired.

9.)Juniper Ridge becomes a 1500 acre tire-flipping and rotation park. Garzinis dream of the biggest, most profitable privatized prison in America is born.

10.) Garzini & Borgman become the richest men in Oregon.

Anonymous said...

Good story today in WSJ, its ALL OVER FOR MUNI-CDO-BONDS,

They're tumbling, $2.5 TRILLION dollars, going south!

WHY? Because city like Bend are imploding with sub-prime, and that effects the ability to pay debt. A sub-prime city, is NO better, than its sub-prime two-bit hustling con-artist citizens.

Now is a terrible time for the City of Bend, to try to issue a MUNI-BOND to finance the Knife-River drive-way on behalf of Les-Schwab-Urban-Renewal, aka Juniper-Ridge.

Just like CDO-MTG bonds, MUNI-CDO-BONDS are now dropping like a rock, and only worth a small percentage of face value, all those 'retirees' sitting on this tax-exempt shit are fucked. Bend is fucked.

Friday, Nov 16, 07 WSJ pg-1, money&invest section.

Anonymous said...

Think about the Juniper Ridge 'DEED", now note the master-plan, albeit "bait&switch" was NOT even in place when the city sold Juniper-Ridge to Les-Schwab for the cost of the master-plan ($3M). Then in Mar06 the city rezones Juniper-Ridge. Then in May07 the master-plan is done! Trouble is the 'DEED' says that nothing is to be done until the master-plan was completed, and approved by the public.

***

12-12-06: Les Schwab purchases Juniper Ridge

3-7-07: Master plan update by Cooper, Robertson Partners. [ Cooper, Robertson is a hired gun of Kuratek, he used this firm in San Mateo, CA to create the same boilerplate. ]

3-21-07: Tentative date for Council public hearing on rezoning of Les Schwab site.


5-31-07: Master plan completed.

***

Cost of master-plan was $2.5M to Kuratek ( cooper ), and the rest to local Bend public-Relations. Total $3M, paid by Les Schwab purchase of Juniper Ridge.

Anonymous said...

So Buena Vista is hitting the auction block December 15 and 16. They have some new homes in Bend. Good location? Good homes? Whats your take? The builder was expecting the homes to go for 40% of asking price. bearlee

Anonymous said...

All this 'bruce' shit is an attempt by city to make it appear that all doc's were publicly available all the time all along, there were never any executive sessions, and there were never any 'secret doc's.

Another deluded conspiracy theory brought to you by bendbust.

Anonymous said...

Yep, BV bites the Dust!!

"Home builder Roger Pollock got a little too excited with Portland's frothy housing market.

Now, he's cashing out -- for whatever his homes will fetch.

Pollock's Lake Oswego company, Buena Vista Custom Homes, built too many houses during the boom in towns from Scappoose to Happy Valley to Bend. Next month, Pollock will put all 230 of his unsold homes and condos up for a two-day auction. The asking prices have ranged from $300,000 to $650,000. The bids will start as low as $69,000."


"Pollock's move is the first clear public signal that a Portland-area homebuilder is feeling serious pain from the housing slowdown -- and doing something drastic about it.

Portland's housing market remains relatively stable compared to the busted markets in Florida, Ohio and California. But home builders here also sit on a growing backlog of finished but unsold homes. In September, the region had 8.6 months' worth of homes to sell, nearly double the figure from a year earlier.

Home builders, conditioned to be optimists, typically don't like to talk about bad news. It will only discourage consumers, they say, creating more bad news. But Pollock was unusually frank in dissecting his troubles.

"We were over-aggressive and too slow to react to the changes in the market and that has created an over-supply of finished homes," he said in a statement."

tim said...

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN1235621120071112

Shiller says perhaps five to ten more down years.

Areas to be hit hardest will likely be the ones that went up the most during the bubble.

Anonymous said...

Conditioned to be Optimists!

Talk about bad news? It'll only discourage consumers.
--------

What crap.

Maybe that line of reasoning can be applied to Bend's Public Meeting Laws.

"Open meetings? You mean Public Meetings, with pre-published Agendas?"

"No, we feel that will discourage citizens. Citizens will find out how the sausage is made, and get grossed out with all the negative details that are involved in saugage making. Better to leave the citizens in a more encouraged state by delegating the hard work to the elected representatives. Isn't that why we elected them in the first place?"

Anonymous said...

Hey, are you guys having any new-house AUCTIONS yet? Here in Portland, Buena Vista Homes (who offered a trip to Hawaii with the LEASE of a new house) decided they wanted to clear the 230 houses they have in inventory. Minimum bid $69,000… Portland Convention Center, December 15. See today’s Oregonian Business section.

Anonymous said...

BV was clearing $150K profit per house in the heyday. And turning 50 homes per month at the peak.

From the article:
"Even the closed sales came with discounts that cut into profits. Pollock said he cleared as little as $25,000 per home, an 80 percent drop.

Pollock said he's current on all his construction loans and isn't in danger of bankruptcy. But he decided he'd be better off taking a direct hit now with an auction than suffering a slow bleed with interest payments on construction loans as he struggles to sell off inventory."

Anonymous said...

More on the BV auction (not just in PDX, also he has homes in Bend).
-------
"That's why Pollock decided on the auction.

Homes at auctions elsewhere have sold for about 40 percent of the original asking price. Pollock said the same figure would be realistic here. He wants to clear all his inventory by the end of the year even if it's "very possible" the company will lose money in the process. "We'll pretty much do whatever it takes," Pollock said.
--------------

But he is still a believer... read on:


--------------
Despite the auction, Pollock plans to start new subdivisions early next year in Tigard, Oregon City, Southwest Portland and Happy Valley.

Only this time, Pollock said, he'll build only after he has a buyer on the hook.

tim said...

>>Only this time, Pollock said, he'll build only after he has a buyer on the hook.

He'll need better hooks than other builders are using. The cancellation rate is enormous.

Anonymous said...

Tits!

Anonymous said...

Need a Portland vacation home? Things too dry in Central Oregon? Here you go:

http://www.publicredcauction.com/

Anonymous said...

Hey is it my computer or is the bend economy bulletin board site down?

Did all the "Becky banter" bring the site down? LOL

Anonymous said...

One amigo here sure says Bend is "Fucked" a lot, why don't we just have Bush drop a bomb on the area and put us all out of our misery! He can play Slim Pickens and ride that baby right to detonation - maybe that will actually get him off, I think he has a problem...

Anonymous said...

bend-economy

informe.com goes down about once a week, get over it,

Anonymous said...

Get over yourself asshole. You need an enema.

Anonymous said...

I can't wait until I'm facefucking all of you socialists in Garzini's new Juniper Ridge Prison. You've ruined everything and now you'll soon pay for it. Better practice swallowing. We'll have you all working 24/7 making tires. I hope you like the smell of vulcanization. There are many of us in Bend that are 100% behind the dreams and goals of Bend. The future is security. The best paid citizens will be working Bend's prisons. Abu Ghraib will be childs play, and there will be no internet.

Anonymous said...

God you are boring as you rant on...

Anonymous said...

Bruce,

You say your a entrepreneur/high-tech, patent holder, ...

Then scan 32 page purchase agreement in graphic format, and put it on tinyurl.com, and give us the link.

Or, take it to kinkos, and have them do a text-scan and place it here,

Or take it to duncans, where you have already been, and let duncan take care of doing it,

Bem, asked you nicely to post the info, I'm saying if you know how to turn a computer on, or put a dime in a copy machine, then just make a copy and give it to duncan.

There are TWO critical missing doc's.

1.) the agreement from 12/12/06
2.) the les-schab CC&R's written by Les-Schwabs attorney and presented to city-hall in may 07,

We need these two documents, have you have them, then get them, and make them public.

Anonymous said...

Bozo,

If you had bothered to search the thread for Pollock or Buena-Vista, you would see that all this information had been posted earlier this week.

sincerely,

p.s. It's about Bend, Oregon.

Anonymous said...

Just an FYI......

I went to a (mandatory) Realtor meeting today on "Ethics" here in Bend. The speaker was discussing, ethics for agents that represent buyers. Knowing that I was likely the only "Bear" in the room , wondering if I was going to get booed out the room and very curious the response would be from the presenter that is trained to speak on realtor ethics....I knew I had to ask and did.....

"With all the credible evidence that is available and all of the unbiased 3rd party economist that are predicting a very long turn around for real estate, do you feel the "realtor" is ethically obligated to be aware of these views and share these with their clients....."

Response..."No, the media does enough to inform people; they can make up their own decisions"

My response,, “ not even to share with these people, so they can make up their own mind, whether this is a good time to buy or not, i am not talking about expressing my opinion, simpling sharing information “

The speaker and others in the room response (more or less)....

"if your going to live in the home for awhile with your family and you love it your fine and if interst rates go up, your more at risk for your payment going up" (flawed, but not an awful argument and buying now i an ok thing for some people)

HOWEVER other including the speaker said ( more or less)......

" NO......most of that information is not accurate and people should be able to do their own research on the real estate market,
hmmmmmm............so what exactly is the job of a realtor if it is not to inform someone about current real estate conditions?

but hey as a ethical realtor , i do need to disclose in 3 different ways that your home may have lead based paint and my mother once had a relationship with the sister of the person who is selling the home you are interested in buying.

Anonymous said...

It's now been four days since 'bruce' announced he has the infamous "Les Schwab 12/12/2006 Juniper Ridge Sale Agreement". He still has not posted it, thus he's as I suggested full of shit.

Just like the rumor a few weeks ago about the Sebastian "Renaissance" bankruptcy. If you cannot backup the assertion, then it will get shutdown. This makes us all honest.

It would have been trivial for 'bruce' to make the document available, if he actually had the document, or his handlers actually wanted the public to have it.

Anonymous said...

There are TWO critically 'missing' doc's.

1.) The sales agreement from 12/12/06, where les schwab bought Juniper-Ridge for $3M, in order to payoff the Kuratek 'consulting' obligation.

2.) The les-schwab CC&R's written by Les-Schwabs attorney and presented to city-hall in Apr 07, these CC&R's are critical because they dictate that Les Schwab has control over ALL Juniper-Ridge and surrounding property, including Lowes & Walmart.

We need these two documents, have you have them, then get them, and make them public.

It's impossible to have a valid debate without authenticated documents.

The 12/12/2007 window is coming up shortly, we have to get this moving. Please 'all' involved, get off your fucking ass.

Anonymous said...

I think this internet blogging thing might have a future. - duncan

*

Duncan,

It's been that way a long time duncan, over a year, the critical mass is here. Like I have said you'll not see a story reported in the BULL until long after all the participants are dead, thus the BULL & the SORE have become obituary's. For instance by the time they report this entire Juniper Ridge Fiasco in entirety, the Les Schwab Prison will up and running, and they'll have a mea-culpa.

I would be careful of this 'bruce' shows up from no-where, wants to be everyones friend, ... Whatever. This is a classic agent-provacteur technique, someone from out of town, with a token of useful value ( claims to have LS sales agreement ) , all of a sudden everyones friend, ... Remember that this whole process is a Billion Dollar ROI, with this kind of money at stake the 'stake-holders' will stop at nothing.

Let's all remember what George Seldez said long ago about journalism "A Newspaper Should Have No Friends", I say that a Blogger Should Have No Friends. If we want to debate the truth, then EVERYTHING must come out, and then let the chips fall. If you can't handle the fucking truth, then avoid the blogs.

The blogs are becoming too powerful. I would be very careful about the presence of discrete microphones and what you say, and to whom. The agent provocateurs, can have the whole process demonized if we're not careful.

Sorry to be hard on you Ned Flanders, but you really are on nice guy, you didn't say anything nasty about Acacia, and you certainly never said anything nasty about Becky.

The SORE & BULL, are as everyone knows completely complicit in the bankruptcy of Bend, and I think Cunt's ( citizens of Bend ) and the chipmunks now realize that neither are a source (sic) of news.

To quote Andy Grove of Intel, CEO and founder. ONLY THE PARANOID SURVIVE.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

All this 'bruce' shit is an attempt by city to make it appear that all doc's were publicly available all the time all along, there were never any executive sessions, and there were never any 'secret doc's.

Another deluded conspiracy theory brought to you by bendbust.

***

Bring it on, if BENDBUST is wrong, I would love to see it. Which deluded conspiracy? Your not helping the debate with one liners from your iPhone.


If ants can collectively organize to move a mass of food ten times there body weight, then why cannot Bend's finest businessmen organize to steal juniper ridge?

Are the ants 'conspiring' when the organize? Remember 'conspiracy' requires secrecy. There is NO secrecy, well there is the executive sessions and missing documents, but other than that there is NO conspiracy. Just well organized 'businessmen', note Bend is a mob town.

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