Kirk Schueler always had an interest in the hospitality business, even when growing up in Las Vegas. When a job opened up at Brooks Resources Corporation, which along with acquiring and developing property, manages parts of the Awbrey Glen Golf Club and Mt. Bachelor Village Resort, Schueler applied. Bend, at that time a budding resort town, seemed like the perfect place to ditch his past jobs in engineering and accounting to start a new career.

He was already familiar with Bend since he had made trips to the area when he was a student at the University of Oregon. But after an interview in 1992, he was turned down for the job at Brooks Resources. Eighteen months later, Schueler was contacted and offered a job as corporate controller of Brooks Resources. Over the years, he became the company’s chief financial officer and eventually was promoted to president in January 2000.

How did Brooks Resources begin its business? What does the company do?

At the turn of the century, a company called Brooks-Scanlon built a mill here. That’s the smokestacks you still see. Those people who built that mill were from Minneapolis.

In 1969, Brooks-Scanlon decided that they should form a subsidiary to do real estate development, not unlike a lot of lumber companies that own holdings of land. They started doing things like Black Butte Ranch, Tollgate, Wagon Wheel Resort and some projects in southern Deschutes County. Mt. Bachelor Village was started in the 1970s.

In the early eighties, the mill was sold. When they did that, they spun out Brooks Resources. All the share owners of Brooks-Scanlon got a share of Brooks Resources. For every share they had, they got a share of Brooks Resources. Now it was a stand-alone company owned by the same people. These people sold the lumber company and they kept this little real estate development company.

We were public for a while in the mid 80s but thinly traded. Then they did a squeeze-out merger in the late 80s.

What we do is, Brooks Resources develops and manages residential, commercial, industrial and recreational real estate. In those categories, we develop it, sell some of it, we keep some of it and manage it.

What was the competitive field like when Brooks Resources began? How has that evolved?

The eighties was dead, and not a lot went on. I came here in 1993, and I can tell you that Bend has grown and the tourism engine is in full swing so it has supplanted the timber company.

People are moving here for different reasons. So for what we do, that environment is good for selling.

Probably the biggest change has been in the process of acquiring land and getting it through the process of approvals. We call it the entitlement process. And that’s just become more difficult because one, the scarcity of land, and two, the increase or growing tension to the impact of development on a community by the city, by the constituents, or by the city as a whole, not just the government. So, what does that do? It raises the bar. You can’t do this on a handshake anymore.

As one of the largest developers in this area, the company can make significant impacts to the local economy.

How does Brooks Resources weigh its decisions to taking on new projects?

That’s an interesting question because we’re real estate developers. We’re going to develop real estate each day to market. That’s a very basic sense. The next level of decisions is: What do you build? That’s probably the more important one when it comes to impact on the community. That’s really the key. It’s not if you’ll build.

Does the growth of one project impact the sales of another?

Take Awbrey Butte. We’ve developed 750 lots up there and we’ve probably sold 730. At some point, you start competing against your old product. We’ve got a hundred more lots to do, but there are people reselling their lots and their homes in our project. So now a buyer has a choice: I can buy a new lot that they’ve done or I can go to their same project and I can buy a lot that they’ve previously sold. So there’s that. But certainly there’s competition amongst projects. It’s very competitive.

Has the company been affected by the weak economy?

Not yet. Sept. 11 certainly affected a segment of our business. It affected the golf membership sales, which are discretionary purchases. But it really didn’t impact residential land sales.

What are the biggest hurdles the company has had to clear?

City-wide, I think it was a big obstacle when they elected a new city council over two years ago. There was this fear that it was this no-growth city council. I don’t think those fears were ever really realized. Certainly there was a change in perspective, but our worst fears were not realized. Those people that were elected, they thought rationally about a lot of things. They just brought a different perspective. And they brought forth ideas that we didn’t agree with.

Brooks Resources has been working to develop Northwest Crossing, a mixed-use development between Skyliners and Shevlin Park. How is that coming along?

Northwest Crossing is going very well. In April, we released our first phase of residential lots and it had one commercial lot. We sold 60 of those to our builders. Of those 60, 45 are under construction or have been approved for construction, and they’re up for sale. And probably 32 or 33 of those have been sold. In our opinion that’s great.

We are getting ready to release phase two and three, which is all residential, and there are 66 lots in that. We’ll be releasing that in the next couple of weeks to our builders, and they’re all spoken for by those builders. So it’s expected that they’ll close on those.

Is mixed-use development an experiment or a trend?

That’s really a huge question and a national question. A cool organization is called the Congress for New Urbanism, CNU. It’s really the guiding organization now for this type of development. What’s the perfect traditional neighborhood design? Well, that’s up for debate. But we tried to introduce as many principles from this national movement. So is it an experiment? The form and texture of it is a proven format. So it’s not an experiment and I don’t think it’s a trend. I think it has its place.

Is the residential market in Bend flooded now?

I think the majority of answers right now from people in the real estate business would probably tell you that the residential real estate market is inflated price wise. So it’s probably setting itself up for being flooded. Meaning the demand will shrink because the prices are high. Now that’s what everybody’s gut feeling is and it’s kind of out there. Prices are really high for land right now, construction costs are pretty high, good thing interest rates are low. If interest rates rise, maybe that could be the pin that pops the bubble. It’s always a bit of speculation.

What is the state of commercial real estate? The available space seems to be growing new projects coming on line.

New projects like St. Claire’s Place. That’s a beautiful building downtown at a great spot. The medical community is driving Century Washington Center. I think there’s a slowdown in Shevlin. There’s vacant spaces. Commercial brokers that we use have told me that there are several years of vacant inventory on the market right now.

What do you expect in residential and commercial growth in the next 5 years?

Hard numbers that have come out of the county and their population estimates growth to continue. We believe that as Bend continues to grow, the West Side will continue to have very strong appeal to it. We think from a product type standpoint we should do as well, if not better than Bend in general. At Northwest Crossing, we hope to have about 15 to 20 percent of the market share in that price range.

So we’re obviously tied to how residential growth occurs in this town. But the real issue is what jobs are created in this place. That will drive residential, commercial and office, industrial, demand. That’s what it’s all about. What opportunities are here for someone?