REDMOND — Historically, the northern section of Redmond’s city center has been quite different from its charming, brick-fronted shopping area to the south. From Black Butte Boulevard to the North Y, for years the area that city officials have begun calling “midtown” consisted of roadside motels, junkyards, dry cleaners, gas stations and other utilitarian uses needing large parcels of land.

Now, a portion of a $400,000 grant obtained by Deschutes County to identify and promote redevelopment of potential brownfield sites will be used to create a master plan for Redmond’s midtown with the aim of filling its empty or underused properties with more viable uses.

Brownfield sites are defined as land having industrial or commercial uses that may be contaminated by hazardous waste. The Department of Environmental Quality lists about a half-dozen potential brownfield sites in Redmond’s general midtown area.

“Don’t let the word ‘brownfield’ scare you,” Clark Henry of CIII Associates, a consulting firm, told the Downtown Urban Development Advisory Commission in a recent meeting. Merely being on a list doesn’t mean a site is a brownfield, he explained.

“However, even the word ‘potential’ can scare off a buyer,” Henry said.

The goal of the grant is to help determine if there are problems in the area and figure out how they can be mitigated so redevelopment can occur. The $90,000 grant does not pay for a full environmental assessment or cleanup, but there are other funds available for that, he said.

Property owners can decline to participate in the planning effort, Henry said, and at this point the city doesn’t plan to focus on any specific sites because it doesn’t want to alarm owners.

According to Heather Richards, the city’s community development director, the next step in the process is to create two citizen advisory groups in a manner similar to the recent master planning efforts for S. U.S. Highway 97 and southwest Redmond. One group would be focused primarily on the technical aspects of the planning, the other on the big picture.

Basic steps in the process, Henry said, include working with citizens to develop a vision for the area, creating draft concepts and developing an action plan. He expects the project to take about a year.

Midtown is perfect for redevelopment that can’t occur elsewhere in the city center, Richards said, because there are so many large lots, including entire blocks in control of a single owner.

“My hope is that we’ll identify things the community would like to see happen in that area and the market can respond,” she said.

— Reporter: 541-548-2186, lpugmire@bendbulletin.com