John Howell is looking forward to winter.

By next spring, the tangled mass of wires, poles and insulators that shreds his view of the Deschutes River from his Old Mill District townhome will be gone.

To replace it, Pacific Power is building a new power substation in front of somebody else’s townhome.

Pacific Power is building a new $6.5 million substation at the heavily traveled Reed Market Road roundabout near the Deschutes River, where Bond Street turns into Brookswood Boulevard.

The station, with its 30-foot steel towers, sits in the midst of a nest of new condos and townhomes that line the bluffs above Brookswood and will soon line the river along Reed Market Road.

But the land it sits on – zoned for industrial uses, with a 115,000-volt Pacific Power transmission line already running over the top of it – could be put to few other uses, said Mary Campbell, administrator for River Bend Limited Partnership, the developer of the Old Mill District and owner of the substation’s corner.

So River Bend negotiated with Pacific Power a couple of years ago for a swap, Campbell said. Pacific Power agreed to remove the old industrial substation that sits behind Howell’s Otter Run townhome. The substation used to serve the Brooks-Scanlon Mill exclusively.

In its place, Pacific Power is building its new Bond Street Substation on River Bend’s land at the roundabout.

For the public, the move brings benefits on both ends, said Angie Jacobson, Pacific Power’s Bend regional community manager.

Taking out the old substation will clear more space on the riverfront in the heart of the Old Mill District, she said. It also will allow the power company to remove the 115,000-volt ”tap line” that currently runs through the heart of the Les Schwab Amphitheater and across the river to feed it.

The line has been a safety concern for years, since people could use the open amphitheater grounds for kite-flying or other activities that could prove deadly if something tangled with the lines, Jacobson said.

The new substation, on the other hand, will give the company plenty of capacity to serve the growing population of southwest Bend. Once it’s functional, the station will handle three ”feeder lines” that currently service surrounding homes and businesses, Jacobson said, but it could ultimately expand to handle six lines.

The remote-controlled substation will include feeder loops, which will let the company quickly route new power feeds around any disruptions, like a car striking a power pole, Pacific Power spokesman Dave Kvamme said. All of its feeder lines will be installed underground.

Substations take high-voltage electricity from main transmission lines and ramp it down to lower voltages for transmission into surrounding neighborhoods through feeder lines. The power is ramped down again to 110 volts through smaller transformers before it enters a home or business.

The new substation will sit directly across Brookswood Boulevard and underneath a series of eight townhomes built by Mountain Crest Homes LLC. But Kvamme said it will be heavily screened by decorative walls, similar to the lava-textured walls that line the Bend Parkway, along with landscaping trees and shrubs.

”In a couple of years, that landscaping is going to mature and it’s going to blend in a lot more than it appears to now,” he said.

The substation won’t generate any more electromagnetic radiation than the site’s existing transmission lines already generate, Jacobson said. And, since it will sit in Pacific Power’s right of way, directly under the lines, new transmission lines won’t have to be built to accommodate it.

The old substation will be torn down and its tap line across the river will be removed after the new substation powers up, which is expected to happen by the end of the year, Jacobson said.

Howell won’t be sorry to see the old station go. With its old wooden poles and its hulking insulators, it was once the main power feed for the thriving Brooks-Scanlon mill. But it has come to seem increasingly out of place, he said, as the area has transformed itself into a bustling commercial and residential district.

”It just doesn’t fit,” Howell said.