A Bend hotelier is launching plans for a new residential community at Bend’s southern edge, expecting to build 371 housing units — one third of which will be affordable to lower income workers — of single-family and multifamily homes, plus commercial space and a park.

A planning application is in the works for the 40-acre Ponderosa community, slated for land just south of Ponderosa Street and directly west of U.S. Highway 97.

The application is not yet complete. But the potential for 125 new affordable housing units means Bend city staff will work as quickly as possible to move the plans through the review and permitting processes, said Aaron Henson, senior planner with the city of Bend.

Plans resurrected for housing at former school site

Behind the development are Curt and Hayden Baney, members of the family that built Oxford Corporate, owner and operator of downtown Bend’s Oxford Hotel and others in 15 cities across the Northwest. Planning consultants filed initial application forms June 27 on behalf of property owner Curt Baney, the president of Oxford Corporate. The Ponderosa development is the venture of Ponderosa Pine Estates LLC.

Read more

Land for 2,500-home development east of Bend moves closer to sale

Baney did not return phone calls by The Bulletin’s deadline.

He acquired the land in 2006 through an exchange, according to property records. It’s the former site of the Sunriver Preparatory School, which closed in 2003 after 20 years of classes.

A small parking area with faded paint and a grown-over asphalt play area are all that remains today. The property is mostly wooded. The land is valued at $3.5 million, according to Deschutes County property records.

Baney wanted to build apartments on a 5-acre portion of the property in 2012. The plan died, likely because the land was outside the urban growth boundary, Henson said.

That changed in 2016, when the 40-acre Baney property, 250 acres on the other side of the highway and more than 2,000 other acres around the city’s perimeter, were drawn in.

Bend has added a little more than half of the land from that expansion into the city limits so far, according to BreAnne Gale, senior planner with the city of Bend, and 749 housing units have been built on the expansion land. Nearly 5,000 more are in progress.

The Bend City Council still needs to approve annexation of the Ponderosa property and rubber stamp the Ponderosa Master Plan, which shows the layout of housing, the park, streets and businesses.

That could happen by the end of 2024 or early 2025, Henson said.

Increasing density

Planning consultant AKS Engineering & Forestry hosted a required informational meeting with neighboring residents on Aug. 13. Preliminary plans presented at the meeting show 5 acres of high-density housing abutting the highway, a 2-acre mixed-use neighborhood north of there, and a limited commercial area along Ponderosa Street. Further from the highway would be a 3.5-acre park, 14 acres of medium density housing and 16 acres of single-family homes.

Developers plan to build nearly 200 units of multifamily housing, 135 single-family homes and 42 townhomes.

Community master plans are required for developments larger than 20 acres. The plans must comply with standards for minimum and maximum densities, and provide a transportation analysis that ensures “orderly construction” for a network of streets and walking, biking and transit facilities, according to the Bend Comprehensive Plan.

Read more

Petrosa community shifts to smaller homes, tweaks transportation plan

Joey Shearer, an associate with AKS Engineering, said a transportation engineer is finalizing elements of a full traffic study.

“We intend to work with the city to make sure actual impacts of this project are mitigated appropriately,” he said in an email.

Still, some neighbors are skeptical of the city’s process.

Not long after Peggy Mancuso moved into her home on Ponderosa Street four years ago, construction finished on a 240-unit affordable housing project a few blocks away. Mancuso said she recognizes the need for housing in Bend, but fears transportation upgrades will take a back seat.

“With so many high-density builds going in, the traffic has increased exponentially,” she said.

Some housing targets low incomes

The Baneys will turn the job of building affordable housing over to Home First, an affordable housing developer with experience across Oregon. The level of affordability planned for housing in the Ponderosa development is on par with goals of recent state legislation aiming to boost supply: Senate Bill 1537, which allows cities to rapidly expand their urban growth boundaries by 100 acres, a process Bend recently started.

Read more

Bend seeks development plans for hastened UGB expansion

The lion’s share of the 125 affordable units are targeted at households making a little more than half of the area median income. About 13 units will be targeted at households making less than one-third of the median, or about $31,400 for a household of four.

That’s roughly the income of a household of four working full-time on minimum wage, said Lynne McConnell, housing director with the city of Bend.

“Creating units for the 30% AMI (area median income) population in Bend, and really anywhere across the country, those are the hardest populations to reach,” McConnell said, because of the deep subsidy from state or federal government. “It’s fair that council and staff pay attention when we see the opportunity for 30% AMI.”

Because of its affordable housing component, the Ponderosa Master Plan application triggered an expedited city review process based on standards first set by resolution in 2003. The resolution allows staff to prioritize the application as it moves through planning, engineering and building departments.

To accommodate growth, Bend needs a little more than 1,000 new housing units attainable to households making less than the area median income by 2030, according to a recent analysis by city staff.