Source readers voted Sierra James Construction the Best of Central Oregon in two categories this year. The Restoration team has also taken top honors the past few years.
“I’m proud of our teams and proud of our growth. We’re going into our 10th year,” says Charley Roberts, partner and chief financial officer of Sierra James Construction. His business partner is Jesse Rowden.
The company has more than 200 projects currently underway and about 60 employees. The restoration side accounts for 35% of the company’s business, but takes a larger team than the design/build side. Water and fire damage are the most common restoration projects.
“We’re one of the few, if not only company that’s vertically integrated, or completely enabled to perform big fire jobs,” Roberts explains. “So, someone’s house burns partially, say 40%, we’ll go in and remediate the existing structure that’s salvageable. We can eliminate the odor, and then we can rebuild the house completely because we’re builders first and foremost. We probably have five fire jobs going at any given time (including) cleaning up contents and saving people’s family heirlooms. There’s a whole room devoted to cleaning dishes, vases, musical instruments, records, books, things that may not be financially valuable, but they’re very sentimental.”
Some of the most meaningful builds, Roberts says, involve clients who have very little. “In disaster restoration, our client comes from anywhere. It could be a trailer in La Pine that has snow load issues and being creative to figure out how we’re going to get their underinsured trailer repaired so they can get back in their house is very gratifying to the disaster restoration side. We often encounter people that may get a $15,000 check from their insurance company, and that’s the most money they’ve ever held in their life, and it’s going to take more than that to get their house where it needs to go. Our project managers are really creative about how to get that done.”
In addition, Sierra James builds a lot of ADUs, an area Roberts is hoping the company can expand. “We’re really interested in cottage communities,” he says. “Our marketing department and our architect have gone to great lengths to understand the ADU compliance issues for every jurisdiction from La Pine to Sisters to Bend. Every governmental agency has a different code.”
Sierra James designed the four pre-approved ADU plans offered through the City of Bend, which streamlines the permitting process and saves on the cost of building a small unit.
Roberts says the future in homebuilding is addressing the needs of the aging population. Oregon now has more residents over age 65 than it does under age 18. The median age in Deschutes County is 43.
“Accessibility is the future of our design-build focus for the next 10 years. That’s what the demographics say we should be building. That’s what we want to build. We believe in universal design, accessible, but not looking like what people think ADA looks like… There are a lot of tricks to make great design not look like it’s accessible.”
Sierra James recently partnered with LiveAble Homes, which specializes in accessible, adaptable design for people of all ages and abilities. Roberts says that partnership helped his company learn how to hold difficult conversations: “How to talk to people about designing for their future without offending them, without scaring them, without being doom and gloom about it, because not a lot of people want to talk about their future inability to navigate their home physically…but it’s a worthy conversation.”
Even with thousands of home builds and restorations under its belt, the foundation of the company’s success, says Roberts, boils down to the workers.
“I have really smart people here and they’re all adaptable. We try to pay people well enough that they can actually afford to live in Bend. That’s my biggest pride in this company.”
Runner-Up Home Builder: Hayden Homes
Runner-Up Restoration/Remodel: Black Diamond Woodworks
Sierra James Construction
747 SE Business Way #4, Bend
541-306-3775
sierrajamesconstruction.com
This article appears in Best of Central Oregon 2026 and the Source August 13, 2026.
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