Developers of Bend’s NorthWest Crossing neighborhood have started planning to push home construction west of Mt. Washington Drive for the first time.

The development group filed a land use application with the city of Bend in December outlining plans to add between 200 and 250 home lots on 98 acres north of Summit High School. The plans also call for a new park, called Discovery Park, on the land.

Actual construction is still at least a year away, said David Ford, general manager of West Bend Property Co., which has been developing NorthWest Crossing.

Ford said developers would likely start readying the land to develop home lots in late 2013.

“We’ve got quite a bit of earth work to do out there,” Ford said.

The land used to be a pumice mining site, he said, so crews will need to dig up and then repack the land to ensure it is stable enough to build homes on. The Bend-La Pine school district paid $7 million to fix Summit High School’s athletic fields after a 2006 storm created large sinkholes.

Developers also need a green light from the city to incorporate the area into NorthWest Crossing’s current zoning plan, which would allow homebuilding. The 98-acre parcel is currently zoned as forestland.

But Ford said the zoning change should be routine, putting developers on track to lay out a plan for new roads at the site next spring. The development group has owned the parcel since 1999, according to Deschutes County property records.

“We should be submitting a more detailed tentative plan around March,” Ford said.

The blueprints filed in December show a plan for at least 10 new roadways — westward extensions of High Lakes Loop, Colter Avenue, Lemhi Pass Drive and Shields Drive, as well as the creation of new, unnamed streets.

Several rows of new homes would start at Mt. Washington Drive and stretch west before giving way to the planned Discovery Park. Part of the land, just north of Summit High School, could be zoned for multifamily housing, like apartments, according to the planning documents.

If all goes well with the zoning process, Ford said, developers could break ground in early 2014, and possibly complete homes in late 2014.

The new development would complete the 483-acre NorthWest Crossing plan first drawn up by developers in 2000.

Across the neighborhood, about 700 homes have been built, as well as retail and commercial areas and Compass Park.

Ford said about 200 lots in the existing NorthWest Crossing area are still undeveloped. He expects that number to be much smaller by the time the final section of the neighborhood comes onto the market.

“When we’re all said and done, we anticipate that we’ll probably have about 1,100 homes,” Ford said.