Bank of the Cascades is back in the game.

Or, as Cascade Bancorp President and CEO Patricia Moss said last week, “It just feels good to be back on offense.”

That came with the receipt Jan. 28 of about $150 million from private investors. That culminated a deal first announced in November to provide a much-needed injection of capital to the Bend-based bank battered by losses from the real estate collapse.

As Moss said, the bank had to play defense for the past 18 months, after receiving a regulatory order in August 2009 to raise its capital ratios. During that time, it had to preserve capital, which made it difficult to do much more than service existing bank customers, which included renewing their loans if their credit quality was good. The bank didn’t originate any big stuff, though, so multimillion-dollar loans for new customers were off the table.

“Now we’re actively calling on businesses and saying, ‘If you have a need for the dollars and ability to repay, we’re here to do small-business lending,’” Moss said. “We were not out actively looking for credit during the last 18 months.”

The bank will make loans up to about $10 million, in general, with rates and terms contingent on the type of loan.

Getting the bank back in the credit game is welcome news for this region.

The capital allows the bank to return to growth mode in making loans “and we are assertively in the position of being in the position to make loans” to qualified borrowers, Moss said.

That means loans for small businesses, homes, cars, commercial real estate and operating lines of credit. But don’t look for the bank to make loans for raw land development, Moss said. That’s where the bank got clobbered in the crash. The bank will still make construction loans as long as repayment isn’t based on the sale of the asset, unless the borrower can demonstrate he could carry the loan without the asset’s sale.

Small-business lending is the bank’s lifeblood, along with real estate lending for businesses and consumers. But many small businesses are struggling with the economy and won’t qualify, Moss said. Nevertheless, the bank ought to be able to tell businesses what they can do to make the improvements necessary to qualify later, she said.

While Cascade Bancorp got three new board members representing the investors, increasing the board to 10 directors, the bank’s operating philosophy won’t change, Moss said.

“That’s why (the investors) bought the shares in the company, because they believed in the business strategy.”

As for the bank’s condition, “we’re very strong fundamentally, from a capital position, (and) obviously there’s no question about depositors and the safety and soundness” of their money, she said. “We’re still in a bad economic time, so we still have a lot of work to do to help our customers make it through this period of time.”

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As Moss noted, times remain tough here. That was proven again last week in the latest Associated Press Economic Stress Index, which measures counties’ economic stress based on their levels of unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies. It shows Central Oregon’s three counties continuing to suffer.

All posted stress scores higher than the 10.4 national average for counties. Higher scores mean higher stress. A county is generally considered stressed if its score exceeds 11, according to an AP story on the December index.

Local county scores were: Crook, 22.53; Deschutes, 20.64; Jefferson, 18.37.

The five most stressed counties, with populations of at least 25,000, were: Imperial, Calif.; Lyon, Nev.; Nye, Nev.; Merced, Calif.; and Yuma, Ariz. The five healthiest counties, according to AP: Ellis, Kan.; Buffalo, Neb.; Ford, Kan.; Ward, N.D.; and Sioux, Iowa.

The story also noted that “the sharpest increases in economic stress (in 2010) occurred in counties with heavy concentrations of real estate workers.”

Instead of location, location, location, we need diversification, diversification, diversification.