The Petrosa housing development — located off Eagle Road and Butler Market Road just outside Bend’s northeastern city limits — isn’t much to look at yet.

There are a handful of finished roads, and some foundational work, but passersby wouldn’t see the frames of any buildings. The actual houses won’t be ready for move in until the summer or fall, said Jessica Seidel, marketing director for housing developer Pahlisch Homes.

But that didn’t stop Bend-La Pine Schools from spending nearly $2.9 million to purchase 10 acres of land in the northern part of Petrosa, with the intention of building the district’s 19th elementary school at that site.

Carrie Douglass, chair of the Bend-La Pine School Board, said this purchase was a smart financial decision at Tuesday night’s board meeting.

“Our community may not have the context to understand how strong our district has been at managing land acquisitions … and looking far out into the future,” she said Tuesday. “There are many, many other districts that act in a really responsive, rather than proactive, way.”

The Petrosa development is projected to be massive, with an estimated 1,260 homes, according to Bend-La Pine documents. Buckingham and Ponderosa elementary schools are nearby, but the new elementary should ease overcrowding of those two schools when it’s built, according to Mike Tiller, director of facilities for Bend-La Pine Schools.

Purchasing this land from Pahlisch Homes was a shrewd financial decision, Tiller told the school board Tuesday. The surrounding area will have all its infrastructure complete.

“We’ve got electric, water, sewer, cable, gas … it’s development ready,” Tiller told the board. “That is a very cost-effective way to do this.”

In comparison, Bend-La Pine only spent about $1.2 million in 2018 for the land that would become North Star Elementary. But, the school district spent an extra $3 million on infrastructure in the area, including rebuilding O.B. Riley Road near the school, Tiller told The Bulletin in an email Thursday.

The $2.8 million used to purchase the 10 acres in Petrosa was funded by Bend-La Pine’s $268 million bond from 2017. This will be the third new school partly funded by that bond, as it completely paid for North Star Elementary, which opened in 2019, and Caldera High School, which will open in September 2021.

The building for the new elementary in Petrosa will need to be funded by another bond, Tiller told The Bulletin. Because of that, he said it was still too early to estimate when the new school would be built, or how expensive it would be.

Seidel, from Pahlisch, wrote in an email to The Bulletin on Thursday that the developer is thrilled to work with Bend-La Pine on this land deal.

“We’re strong supporters of complete neighborhoods and selling this land to the school district supports that vision,” she wrote. “This is an incredible asset for NE Bend, and we’re excited to be a part of that.”