As sunlight spreads across the sagebrush-covered land above Shevlin Park, onto the tops of ponderosa pines below and west to the Cascades, walkers, runners and mountain bikers move along the trails on the eastern rim.

They’ve used the trails for decades, but this is not public property.

Yet, within just a few months, a few key players could decide the fate of the land.

The 76-acre parcel that has been in the spotlight of public debate in recent months could be transformed into a housing development called Shevlin Commons and a conservation easement to protect Shevlin Park.

Andy Crosby a 36-year-old environmentalist, lawyer and developer who grew up in Bend is the man with the plan. He wants to buy the $1.95-million property using money from private investors and then sell 46 acres to the Bend Metro Park and Recreation District for about $900,000 for the easement.

The district would likely use some of the property taxes it collects to help pay for the easement.

Supporters, many of whom testified at a public hearing on the easement earlier this month, say the park is a crown jewel and must be protected. Some offered to donate money for the cause.

Opponents say public money should not be used to buffer an existing park, especially in the face of rapid growth when the community needs more youth sports fields and other facilities.

Crosby understands the concern.

”There are legitimate questions about the financial impact this might have on the district’s other projects,” he said.

Yet, when asked whether his project would be doomed without the park district’s purchase of the easement, Crosby said he didn’t know.

He declined to comment further about the financing of the project.

The controversy has not deterred Crosby, who is steadfast in his vision for the property and commitment to protecting the park.

He plans to build 60 to 66 luxury houses on property that could hold a maximum of 554 houses under city zoning laws. Some local developers and environmentalists laud him for his choice to build a lower-density project there.

”On the outskirts of the urban growth boundary you want lower density and you want higher density as you get to the core of downtown,” said developer Mike Tennant, who has earned a statewide reputation for ”green development” or ”smart development” due to his sensitivity to natural land features and the community’s wishes.

”I like the plan as far as the clustered homes and the preservation of green space and open space,” Tennant said of Shevlin Commons. ”In that regard I think it’s smart development.”

The plan may be ambitious for a new developer with only one project to his credit the development of two duplexes on the west side a couple years ago but Crosby is confident.

”I feel like I’m the right person in the right project at the right time,” said Crosby, a former Deschutes County attorney. ”I feel like this role fits me very well.”

By all accounts, it’s the role of a so-called ”green developer,” someone who develops land while trying to preserve its natural features, topography and the surrounding area as much as possible and remain sensitive to community concerns.

Environmentalism is in Crosby’s blood. His mother, Susan Crosby, strongly supports environmental issues, he said.

Crosby’s parents moved to Bend 32 years ago when his father, physician Jack Crosby, accepted a job with Bend Memorial Clinic. He grew up in a house on Riverside Boulevard across from Drake Park and graduated from Bend High School in 1983.

During his sophomore year at Stanford University, Crosby met his wife, Kendall Crosby, a music composer who writes documentary film scores and most recently composed a choral piece for Cornell University’s choir. He followed her to Los Angeles after graduation and worked on air-quality issues for the Sierra Club while she attended music school.

When the couple moved to San Francisco, Crosby began thinking about obtaining a law degree as a way to further his environmental work. He saw that many people doing effective environmental work held law degrees. In 1993, he graduated from Boston University School of Law, after spending a summer working for the Nature Conservancy in Portland.

He and Kendall then moved back to Oregon, where he passed the bar and began working on salmon habitat restoration issues at the Pacific Rivers Council in Portland. In Deschutes County, his work also was related to the environment: he focused on solid-waste issues.

Although Crosby said the roles of environmentalist and developer are not mutually exclusive, playing both roles at once presents some conflict for him.

”I kind of war with myself over that,” Crosby said. ”In my heart I’d like to see the entire property protected. That’s on a very emotional level.”

Others in the community have noticed his philosophical struggle.

”He appears to be a complex individual, in that on the one hand he’s for the environment and on the flip side he can play the rough and tumble developer,” said Interim City Manager Ron Garzini, who does not know Crosby personally but met with him regarding the West Bend Traffic Consortium.

Crosby approached the consortium to ask whether he should be included, as Shevlin Commons will be another new westside subdivision, just as most of the other consortium projects. The consortium is a group of developers who signed contracts with the city to help finance needed road improvements, including the southern bridge, in exchange for approval of their development applications.

Consortium leaders Kirk Schueler and Mike Hollern, both of Brooks Resources, said they told Crosby it was too late in their planning to include him.

Ironically, Crosby has since challenged the consortium plan by filing an appeal against it with the state’s Land Use Board of Appeals. He initially inquired about the consortium because he wanted to be sure it was in fact the systemwide solution it was touted to be, he said.

”I had some concerns about the risk that might create for my property,” he said.

After learning about it, though, he said he concluded that it would fall short of solving westside traffic problems.

In recent months, Crosby and two other consortium appellants the others are attorney Paul Dewey and Friends of Bend have been meeting with city officials and consortium representatives to determine whether the parties can agree on a compromise deal.

Crosby was a key player in another arena recently, too. During the campaign season prior to the November 2000 election, Crosby was one of Bend’s top financial contributors to the slow-growth effort. He gave three slow-growth candidates money: $100 to Bruce Abernethy, $200 to John Hummel and $200 to Kyla Merwin. He also supported the political action committee called Slow Growth Down with $275 in cash and loans for $1,325.

”I support the cause of Slow Growth Down. Although they’ve been labeled as anti-growth, I don’t believe they are,” Crosby said. He thinks the group is working toward livability and sustainable growth that is good for Bend in the long-term.

Abernethy has known Crosby since 1992 and considers him a friend.

”We share similar concerns with respect to environmental issues and livable communities,” Abernethy said. ”He’s sort of a renaissance man. He has a lot of different interests, and he feels passionately about a lot of them. He’s very versatile.”

Although some may see a contradiction in a developer supporting efforts to slow growth, it all makes sense to Crosby. He isn’t anti-development or anti-growth, he said. He wants to be an active player is determining what Bend’s growth will look like.

”I don’t think the two are inconsistent,” he said. ”Clearly there’s a place for development. People need housing.”

The one project he has completed to date the two duplexes is at Northwest Quincy Avenue and 12th Street. His goals were to use an urban design, preserve the natural features on the lots and respect the existing houses. The project was tricky, he said, as the properties are on a steep hill.

Crosby’s idea for the duplexes was to sell them as higher-priced starter homes where the owner could live in one unit and rent the other unit for additional income. The idea was successful, but Crosby is ready to move on.

”It was fun, but I wouldn’t want to do it again,” Crosby said. ”It became clear to me that I wanted to focus on a bigger project and create a neighborhood.”

That project is Shevlin Commons. After a two-year stint as a county attorney and a couple years working on the duplexes, Crosby discovered he was looking for something different in his work. What that something was, however, became clear only when Crosby started talking to his Saginaw Avenue neighbors, Steve and Diana Cook, one of the three couples who own the 76-acre property on Shevlin Park’s eastern boundary.

The story of how Crosby became involved fills in many of the gaps in the recent history of the 76-acre parcel. As the property and any talks about its fate are private, many details of the negotiations about a purchase have not been made public.

Thoughts about development east of the park and its effect crossed Crosby’s mind, he said, long before the first potential developer of the 76-acre property, Jim Clabaugh, entered the picture.

In 1997, Crosby met with the Cooks to discuss his ideas. At that point, he did not have his own involvement in mind, he said. He merely wished to raise the idea that the Cooks had an opportunity to do more than just sell their land; they could create a conservation easement in a variety of ways.

”The ideas we had just didn’t fit the picture,” Crosby said, referring to Brad Chalfant, the executive director of the Deschutes Basin Land trust, who joined him in the talks with the Cooks.

About a week later, Crosby approached the Cooks again to discuss the possibility of creating seven 10-acre lots under the land’s current zoning, which is called UAR-10 and means Urban Area Reserve, 10-acre lots. That idea didn’t work either, Crosby said.

”Then Clabaugh came along,” he said.

Clabaugh received a denial from the city of Bend in October 1999 for his land-use application. He wished to build 164 houses, but a city hearings officer said the subdivision would create a significant traffic burden on the already congested westside intersections.

Clabaugh’s plans evoked opposition from those in the community who dislike the notion of development on the park’s rim. Due to Shevlin Park’s location inside a canyon, development above it may be visible from the park.

After the Clabaugh denial, Crosby became more actively involved.

It was now early 2000, the post-Clabaugh era in the history of the Cook property. Crosby heard that another local developer, Al Tozer, was talking to a small group of partners about buying the land and developing it into seven 10-acre lots where each partner would build a house and live.

Crosby, Tozer and the others had similar ideas for the land, Crosby said. None could afford to buy it alone, all accepted the inevitability of its development and all wished to protect the park.

Yet, meetings with city officials revealed some facts that made the project impossible, Crosby said. Requirements to meet city standards for water and sewer would make the project prohibitively expensive.

”We hit a road block,” he said. ”We were on the verge of calling it quits when I kind of flipped the thing on its head.”

Why not do the larger development necessary to generate a profit that would make the whole project possible, Crosby asked himself.

So he ran the numbers.

”It looked like it might make sense,” he said. ”I just started feeling confident in the project, that it was the right way to go, and the group gave me their blessing.”

Private investors will provide the funding for the development, Crosby said, declining to comment further. He also would not say whether he would be investing his own money in the project. Planning work for buying and developing the property is Crosby’s full-time job right now, he said. The purchase price of the property is $1.95 million, he said.

After months of meetings with his design team and the park district, Crosby has honed the future development to two options, depending on which easement the park board chooses: a 46-acre option for $897,000 or a 43-acre option for $597,000.

The easement would be protected as public property forever and have trails for public use. The trails near the houses in Shevlin Commons would also be open for public use, Crosby said.

The idea for the easement came from Crosby, according to park district Executive Director Carrie Ward. As the park district is a public agency, it tries to keep some distance from developers, Ward said. Discussions with them about parks and trails can be difficult.

Yet, several aspects of the district’s work with Crosby have made this project different, she said. First, Crosby invited park district staff to participate in the design and planning process from the beginning. The district had never been included in any private development planning so extensively, she said.

Second, Crosby considered the district’s goals for preserving the park when designing Shevlin Commons. Usually the development component drives the process, Ward said, and open space, trails and parks are secondary.

”This was in reverse,” Ward said. ”Crosby said, ‘I recognize the importance of Shevlin Park and that any development that happens next to it must be very carefully done.’ ”

While visiting the property last week, Crosby recalled walking around the land with Mary Evers, who was recently elected to the park board and had concerns about the cost of the easement.

Concerns about the public cost are legitimate, Crosby said. Yet, to frame the questions as either-or choices between the easement and other park district projects, such as building sports fields, is ”contrived and wrong,” Crosby said.

”We need ball fields here. I grew up playing on ball fields,” he said. ”But that either-or choice has been contrived by people who have other axes to grind.”

While some Bend residents may still be questioning the value of the easement and deciding whether they support using their tax dollars to purchase it, the park board now faces a deadline for its final decision.

According to its option agreement with Crosby, the board must decide by June 1 whether to exercise its option to buy the easement. Three of the five current board members have consistently supported the easement. Although the new board will have a majority that opposes the easement, new members do not take office until early July.

If the current board decides not to buy the easement, Crosby said he didn’t know how that would affect his project. He must close on the property by June 30, according to his agreement with the current property owners.

Despite the public controversy over the easement and possible pressure on Crosby as the deadlines approach, his wife said he is taking it all well.

”I’m amazed by how little he’s brought that home,” she said. ”All the negative stuff doesn’t weigh on him.”

That’s right, Crosby said, because the fate of Shevlin Commons and the easement is just one part of his life. A lunch break at the Harmon Park playground earlier this week showed Crosby in his most favorite role: dad.

As his son, Sawyer, 5, and his daughter, Ella, 18 months, played on the swings and the slide, Crosby and his wife watched with the grins of happy and proud parents. ”That’s our base,” Crosby said, looking at his children. ”The rest is just fluff.”

Despite the joys of parenthood, Crosby looks forward to a time when he can really dig into his work.

”The idea of conservation development is intriguing,” Crosby said. ”It’s the process of creating something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. I just dig that.”