The design of the westside Century Park development remained up in the air following a meeting Monday between local officials, residents and project developers.

Century Park, featuring more than 160,000 square-feet of retail and office space, has been proposed for the corner of Century Drive and Simpson Avenue on the west side. A 58,000 square-foot Safeway would be the development’s anchor tenant.

Facilitating the discussion were representatives from the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development’s Quick Response Program, a program designed to ensure that proposed commercial developments throughout the state retain proper relationships between neighborhoods, buildings and sites.

Earlier this month, the team, led by George Crandall of Crandall Arambula, an urban and architectural design firm based in Portland, gathered for two days of discussion and planning.

At the Jan. 16-17 meetings, participants helped design alternative site plans that addressed some of the issues important to them, including pedestrian access, traffic circulation and the preservation of 14th Street’s character.

Architect and project designer Ken Diener of Portland’s KJD Architecture PC said he and developer Bob Dietz have worked since the last meetings to modify Century Park’s original design.

Diener said they listened to the feedback at those meetings, and their design is evolving to better meet the residents’ needs.

Diener said the updated design presented Monday had 37 changes, including the addition of tower and trellis elements, the removal of a drive-through building, the addition of buffered sidewalks and plaza corners and the relocation of several buildings.

”This makes it more difficult to operate and lease,” Diener said of the updated plan. ”It’s operable, but it’s not as flexible or desirable for the tenants.”

Regardless of the difficulty, Diener said Century Park LLC is trying to work with city residents, and that the updated design represents a ”good faith participation in the city’s process and represents a large additional commitment by Century Park’s ownership.”

Not everyone in attendance Monday was pleased with the updated plan. Bend resident Shawn Corrigan brought up the subjects of a Safeway boycott and environmental terrorism.

”Those are things you just have to think about,” Corrigan said. ”Those are realities of life, without a doubt, but I’m not threatening anyone.”

Threats or not, the development’s proposal has many residents worried, said Friends of Bend’s Ann Wheeler, adding that she thinks it is as much the nature of the retail as the design of the project that troubles many residents.

”I think we’re still looking at different markets,” Wheeler said, pointing to the proposed drive-thru restaurant pads in the developer’s plan. ”There is a difference of opinion on how we visualize what the west side needs commercially.”

Diener said that fast-food drive-throughs will remain part of the design.

”This is a Commercial Highway zone along an arterial street. We just don’t have the urban character for speciality retail that you look at as somehow politically correct. I just don’t see that at this site,” he said.

Any final design may come down to its marketability, said Peter Lowes of Compass Commercial Real Estate Services, who represents the developer.

”We’re all looking at playing with Bob’s money here,” Lowes said.

”It’s a huge roll of the dice, and he’s the one with everything on the line. That’s the crux of it all financial marketability.

”We’re trying to work with everyone here within the realms of realism and marketability to come up with something that’s a win-win for everyone,” Lowes said.

Participants narrowed down their discussion to Diener’s updated design and one of three alternative designs presented by Crandall. That design, design B, features Safeway and another anchor tenant located at either end of the property, with office buildings, retail and a common area clustered in the center.

”He meets code. He’s doing everything by code,” Crandall said of Dietz.

”But I would hope that the design team could see what can be done to take something like design B and make it work,” Crandall said.

A decision may be just around the corner, said Bend Development Services Director Deborah McMahon.

The city is willing to bend and flex in exchange for the developer doing something a little more creative, she said, but the city needs to get a timely decision out.

”The developer has come forward and gone through a process that’s not typical,” she said.

”We’re doing more than we’ve normally done.”

The city has not used the Quick Response process before, McMahon said, and she said she is grateful that the state funded the grant so that Bend residents, officials and developers could get together to find a solution.

”We don’t want it to drag on,” she said. Neither does developer Dietz.

”Ken and I will see what we can do. We made changes to accommodate what we heard at the last meeting,” Dietz said. ”We have some more ideas we’ll try.”