On a recent weekday afternoon, Troy Field is bustling with activity. Children play a game of flag football while others lounge in the grass soaking up the summer sun. In the mornings and evenings, locals can be seen walking their dogs in the former Bend High athletic field. And every Memorial Day, Tracy Miller hosts a daylong reading of the names of military service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the 0.8-acre patch of grass on NW Bond Street won’t be a public gathering space for much longer. Bend-La Pine Schools, which had declared the property surplus, accepted a developer’s $1.9 million offer on the land at its Friday board meeting. That sale is contingent on getting the public facilities designation lifted and the completion of an environmental assessment, but if successful, it could transform the quasi-public space into private playground for the wealthy.
Though the offer came from Portland-based Brownstone Development, that company’s president Randy Myers says he is representing an unnamed out-of-state hotel developer. The plan, he explains, is to build a four-story, boutique hotel-condo, in which high-end condos are individually owned and rented out to visitors when the owners are away, much like a vacation rental.
“Vacation rental sounds kind of low end,” Myers says. “These will be nicer units that can be leased out.”
He goes on to explain that the condo owners will likely have multiple properties around the world, and would open them up for short-term renting when they are off in another location. Myers says that the unnamed developer has experience with these types of properties and has other developments in Bend, though none like the one planned for Troy Field. Similar condo-hotels can be found in tourist destinations like Aspen, Vale, and Deer Valley.
The future of Troy Field has been a point of contention, with some community members (and a majority of Source readers polled) arguing that the field should remain green space.
“We already have this important, communal public space that serves a purpose that everyone agrees is vital for a healthy urban environment. To replace it would cost many times its current value,” says Foster Fell, a local activist who advocated for preserving Troy Field. “Why not keep it?”
The school board received a total of five offers, primarily from developers but also including a rejected offer from the City, says real estate broker Brian Fratzke. The Brownstone offer was initially received in April, he notes, but the board held onto it to give public entities an opportunity to make offers of their own.
“There was no interest at the price we needed to get the deal done,” Fratzke explains.
Troy Field was initially listed for $2.62 million, but school board co-chair Nori Juba says Brownstone Development made the most competitive offer.
“This was the offer that was financially acceptable,” Juba explains. “It really met all the criteria. It was a fair value for the property. It’s not an easy transaction from the development perspective.”
In order to move forward, developers will have to petition the City for removal of the public facilities designation. In the past, that land had been envisioned as part of a large public courtyard called Heritage Square. And while debate over the future of Troy Field reignited conversations about the square, it has been effectively stalled since 2010.
And while some had hoped that Bend Park and Recreation District would put in a bid for the property, BPRD Director Don Horton told the Source that the property was too expensive for its size to be a practical option for Parks.
“From the school board perspective, one thing we’d like the community to know is that we heard the community, and we respect everybody’s expressed interest in different intended use for the property,” Juba says, “but we have a pretty pressing need to raise money for new schools.”
Still, the development is expected to have some local benefit. Though the development company isn’t from Bend, Fratzke says Brownstone has expressed a desire to use local engineers, architects, and contractors. Juba says the project is expected to create 50 local jobs.
Assuming the City removes the public facilities designation, Bend-La Pine Schools will follow up with Phase 1 and 2 environmental assessments. Because the adjacent parking lot was the former home of Troy Laundry, some have raised concerns that toxic dry cleaning chemicals might be residing below the field.
If all goes according to plan, groundbreaking is expected to begin sometime in spring 2016, says Brownstone Development President Randy Myers. The development will change not only the skyline of downtown Bend, but the ambiance as well.
“I would even go so far as to call this move one more notch in the plan to gentrify and develop downtown Bend beyond recognition,” Fell says. “Surely [Bend-La Pine] could have come up with the additional needed funds—chump change in comparison—through some other means than to sell off a popular, heavily used—dare I say ‘iconic’—park, one of the few open and free spaces left in downtown Bend.”
This article appears in Jul 1-8, 2015.
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To call Troy Park “Iconic” is just hubris. It’s a patch of grass barely the size of a football field (if that). As the article states, public entities had plenty of opportunity to purchase this land. They didn’t. Iconic would more aptly describe Drake Park.
As everyone seems to want to turn downtown Bend into an urban oasis, the only way to do that is infill. Well… welcome to infill.
Troy Field is a featureless patch of grass surrounded by a very tall, unattractive chain link fence that gives the impression the field is private and not to be trespassed upon. It is more a waste of water than it is an icon.
That said, I’d rather see it turned into loft condos for local housing with retail on the bottom floor; a plan that would positively impact many Bend residents. High end rentals seems like a plan showing no respect for established downtown hotels or homeowners, plus an entire property dedicated to high end condos is a plan asking for bankruptcy.
Thank you Bend La-Pine school district for proving again that you have no understanding of the community involvement part of the sustainable loop for your own survival. Families-housing-schools. Your decisions impact the viability of this community, yet you continually ignore your responsibility, as a major employer and land holder, to step up, do the right thing and be benevolent thinkers and community leaders. Your small mindedness is a big loss for Bend.
Thanks Bend La Pine for thinking of us, the community, first. I’ll be sure to think of YOU next time a school bond vote comes up. I’ve voted for and paid taxes on all the school bonds that have been placed on the ballot for the last 40 years. I hope the offer you got from Condopalooza LLC exceeded the City’s offer by such a huge sum that you’ll never need to go to the voters again for money. I’m also hoping a kickback is coming my way from this golden egg windfall for all the years I kept you afloat during the lean times, but I’m not holding my breath. Looks like you won’t be needing voter’s money now that you are wheelin’ & dealin’ public land with the big dogs.
Hank Savage
After spending a lot of time and money restricting vacation rentals on the Westside, I hope the City doesn’t allow more vacation rentals/condos within 250′ of residences. Maybe the School District should work with a developer (non-profit) to provide moderate priced housing for teachers on Troy Field. That would help the school district and the community and create a more vibrant local population downtown instead of just an exclusion zone that is sanitized for more tourists.
Bend and Eastern Oregon should secede from the State of Oregon. Then they would not need to have an urban growth boundary and high density condos, both are required under the Oregon Growth Management Act. In this situation every square inch of Bend will ultimately turn into expensive high rise condos for Californians, just like Boulder, Colorado. This field should be saved for the children to play. Perhaps the City residents could vote to increase sales taxes to purchase open space. That’s what Ashland, Truckee, and Scottsdale, Arizona have done. 30 percent of land within the city limits of Scottsdale is Open Space. Smart growth, as required by the State of Oregon, is not green, since it ultimately leads to the loss of most downtown areas of open space. Tom Lane
Appears to me that the Bend-La Pine school district owes the taxpayers a $700,000 rebate since they determined that a bid of $1.9 million on property listed at $2.6 million was an acceptable way to steward limited public funds. There was no rush to sell this property at this time as the funds from the sale have not been sequestered for purchase/construction of a specific school project. Perhaps school board chair co-chair Nori Juba can explain how the construction of high-end rental condos are not “an easy transaction from the development perspective.”
Citizens of Bend have a couple of opportunities to kill this one-sided transaction. One, demand the public facilities designation for the property not be removed until the asking price is increased to the listed price. Two, demand that when the offer is raised to $2.6 million, also require the developer to accept the hazardous clean-up costs as part of the acquisition. Third, when those two contingencies are meet, also require the developer to provide parking on the site of the condos, either in a basement setting or at least above ground, not on-street parking spots. Obviously, the developer community will scream loud on how affordable housing would be affected by these requirements, but let’s be honest, this is not affordable housing, but just another step in the Vail-ization of Bend.