From top to bottom, east Bend’s resident cinder cone is set to get a major face-lift in the next few months.

”Pilot Butte State Park is going to get spruced up this year,” said Scott Steele of Steele Associates Architects, who is involved in two volunteer projects at the butte.

”There is a lot going on both at the base and at the summit,” he said.

The summit will receive some major cosmetic changes, and Pilot Butte visitors will soon find a new green space at the base of the butte’s east side. With volunteers providing all the labor, materials, and money, the public hasn’t been stuck with the bill.

Planners hope to keep things that way.

Pilot Butte State Park is one of the region’s most popular natural attractions, drawing some 2,000 visitors each day, according to the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department.

The Bend Resource Center for Public Awareness is midway through adding the green space area on the former site of a cinder pit located at the eastern base of the butte, Steele said.

Cinder rocks were mined from different areas of the butte at various times in its history. The eastside pit was one of the more obvious relics from this activity.

”It was an ugly scar on the ground, and trash and car bodies had ended up in it,” said Steele, a board member of the resource center, an organization with a goal of adding one new park to Bend each year.

Close to 10,000 cubic yards of dirt – the equivalent of 1,000 dump truck loads -were trucked in to fill the pit earlier this year. Right now, Pilot Butte visitors can get a glimpse of the park-to-be, currently an immense dirt lot next to the hiking trail parking area.

Steele’s firm donated its time to come up with a design for the 6-acre public space. Steele said the vision was of a parklike setting that fits the natural elements of Pilot Butte. While the area could accommodate some types of sports, goal posts or baseball diamonds were not part of the plan.

Because the cinder pit was within park boundaries, the Bend Resource Center did not have to purchase any land to add the green space. The existing parking lot will serve the new park area.

”It’ll be a several-hundred-thousand dollar gift when it’s done,” he said.

Pat Roden, director of the Bend Resource Center, said the project should be finished by September.

”It’s going to be a fabulous eastside park,” Roden said.

One neighbor agrees.

”It would be a great escape,” said JoAnn Larsen, 39, who lives on Zachary Court, only steps away from the future green space.

Pilot Butte visitors who climb to the summit this fall will notice that the view hasn’t changed, but the viewpoint certainly has.

Steele is also involved with that project. He co-chairs Pilot Butte Partners, which has worked to spiff up the park for several years.

Over the summer, Pilot Butte Partners plans to revamp the viewpoint area, constructing new stone walls, adding wheelchair accessibility, creating habitat for native plants and installing a new, brass-cast viewfinder.

If private donations fall short, $50,000 in state parks money will be available to complete summit restorations, according to Curtis Smith, assistant area manager with the High Desert Management Unit of Oregon state parks.

Because the summit plan has taken so many years to get off the ground, Smith said some volunteers may no longer be willing to pledge the money or services they offered in the past. The state parks money is just a back-up.

Both Pilot Butte projects represent unusual partnerships between Oregon state parks and private organizations, he said. While cash donations to parks aren’t rare, Smith said it was quite uncommon to have entire projects – goods, services, and financing – donated to the park system.

Oregon state parks will be responsible for the upkeep of both park improvement areas once the projects are completed.

In recent years, volunteers from a number of local organizations have worked on several improvements, including removing invasive species, landscaping, installing new benches and fixing up trails.

Volunteers call the cinder cone improvements just one way of giving back to a local landmark that offers so much to Bend residents.

The Bend Resource Center for Public Awareness can be reached at 322-6868.