Seven years after hundreds of houses started to rise in the RiverRim subdivision in southwest Bend, the neighborhood is about to get a shopping center of its own.

Earthmovers are expected to begin work this week on the new Brookswood Meadow Plaza at the corner of Amber Meadow Drive and Brookswood Boulevard, according to Brookswood Meadow LLC President Walt Ramage.

By the time the 49,650-square-foot, $11 million center is done, Ramage said he and his five partners hope to have signed a 7,000- to 12,000-square-foot full-service grocery store to anchor the space. Letters of intent are already in on a variety of small restaurants, along with a preschool, a dry cleaner, an insurance office and a hair salon, Ramage said, and he and the rest of the DuBois Wicklund Group leasing agents are hoping to attract coffee shops, a deli, a fitness center and other small service businesses as well.

The center is expected to be ready for occupancy by October, Ramage said. When it’s done, the center will give the residents of RiverRim, along with people in Deschutes River Woods and the older neighborhoods to the east of Brookswood Boulevard, the chance to take care of some routine business without making the long drive north to Powers Road or south to Baker Road to cross the busy Bend Parkway.

The developers agreed to build a lighted footpath into the north end of the center to allow neighbors to walk in, if they want, and they agreed to build raised crosswalks to get pedestrians across the busy streets. So “basically, we’re happy,” said RiverRim Community Association President John Wytsma.

Subdivisions have blossomed throughout south Bend during the last six years, while commercial growth has remained stunted, said Steve Wicklund, broker with DuBois Wicklund Group. But there are signs that a commercial renaissance may be about to sprout.

Since word spread last month that the regional department store chain Gottschalks plans to anchor the new Pioneer Crossing shopping center at Badger Road and South U.S. Highway 97, interest from national retailers and restaurant chains has picked up considerably, Wicklund said.

“They like to be together,” he said. “They get comfort in that, and you also create a synergy when they all connect.”

Wicklund said he and his partners are trying to develop a mix of restaurants, specialty clothing stores and a bank branch to complement Gottschalks on the Badger Road location. Meanwhile, LibertyBank is building a new branch at Powers Road and South Highway 97 where a Kayo’s restaurant once stood.

The Oliver Group is marketing another shopping center concept just across the street.

Winco Foods is still working on plans to build a new grocery store complex on the west side of the parkway, and the city is looking for ways to build a Murphy Road overpass over the parkway to link the new suburbs in and around RiverRim more directly to the Highway 97 commercial core.

The reason for the renewed interest is simple, Wicklund said — new rooftops.

More than 2,800 people took up residence within a three-mile radius of the new Brookswood Meadow center between 2000 and 2006, according to a demographic profile of the region that AmeriTitle put together for Ramage’s group — a 21.6 percent population increase in six years.

With new subdivisions already under construction along Southeast 15th Street east of the parkway and pockets of new construction still cropping up along Brookswood, the trend is expected to continue, with more than 2,200 new residents expected to move into the three-mile zone by 2011, according to AmeriTitle’s numbers — another 13.9 percent growth spurt.

The three-mile radius includes much of the city to the south of Southeast Division and South Third streets.

“There’s a lot of demand down there,” said Wicklund, who’s also a partner in the Brookswood project. “I think the south end is really going to take shape over the next few years.”