Pity the poor Bend office of the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles. For the past year or so it’s led a nomadic existence, wandering around like a lost child.
First the lease expired on its longtime home on Emkay Drive on the Westside. That forced it to move into a building on the north end of Third Street that old-timers will remember as the former Bend Welcome Center.
But the DMV needs to find cheaper quarters, and its continuing search led it to Brookswood Meadow Plaza, a small shopping center on the southwest side of town. Unfortunately, that location is a bad choice for a number of reasons.
To begin with, it’s in the middle of a residential neighborhood. The people who live there are concerned about the effect that an average of more than 300 DMV customers driving through it every day will have on their peace and tranquility. They also fear for the safety of their children, who play on the quiet (for now) neighborhood streets and cross Brookswood Boulevard to go to Elk Meadow Elementary School.
Adding to the neighbors’ irritation is the fact that the DMV didn’t bother to inform them about its plans before it signed the lease. It wasn’t legally required to, but good public relations – and good manners – dictated that it should have.
In the past we’ve been critical of NIMBYism, but there are times when “Not in my backyard” is a perfectly legitimate response, and this is one of them. A small shopping center surrounded by homes, schools and playgrounds just isn’t the right place for something that will generate as much traffic as the DMV office will.
On the other hand the office might not generate as much traffic as the DMV predicts, because people are going to have a hard time getting to it. The chosen location is off the beaten track, far from the main population centers of town and not easy to find if you’re not familiar with the area.
So why, with all these problems, did the DMV pick this spot? The answer mainly seems to boil down to money: The Brookswood location was the cheapest the DMV could find that suited its needs. DMV officials say the rent over the 10-year length of its lease – starting at around $8,200 a month and rising to about $9,500 – will be $1.8 million less than it would pay to stay in the old Welcome Center and about $300,000 less than it would cost to return to the Emkay Drive location.
Nobody can blame a state agency for trying to save money, especially in these penny-pinching times. But with the huge amount of commercial space currently available for lease all around Bend it’s hard to believe the DMV couldn’t find just as good a deal, or close to it, in some spot that’s more suited to its purpose.
The DMV should join us in giving THE BOOT to its current choice, try to find a way out of the lease and resume its search for a new home.
This article appears in Sep 9-15, 2010.
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Appears that neighbors are organizing a boycott of the grocery store in that plaza for being partially responsible for letting the DMV rent that space. Good for them.
I live about a mile and a half away, so it’s probably IMBY, so it’s probably not surprising that I’d say NIMBY. That said, there are many more appropriate places closer to me that I’d be happy with. Something on 3rd, or Old Mill, or somewhere over in the business park area between Old Mill and it’s old location. I don’t care if it’s close to me, but dear god that little shopping center is clearly the wrong location.
Boycotting the businesses in the plaza is a great idea. That way you can put more Bend residents out of work! Think before you act.
@RationAl
No one wants to see business suffer in our plaza, or Bend residents out of work. You should direct your ‘think before you act’ to the owners of the plaza, who are owners of the grocery store, who employ these folks. They are creating this collateral damage by inserting a state run facility in our backyard, in a plaza that didn’t zone properly. These are the people that are ignoring it’s neighbors to make money. If we were to boycott business in this plaza (who have a vested interest in leasing to anyone), it’s not like we’re going to be buying groceries or coffee on line or across state lines. We will go to another BEND business.
@RationAl
As @Scottr mentions, certainly don’t want to see anyone lose their jobs, but those jobs and the grocery store shouldn’t exist if it requires them to bring a state agency into a quiet neighborhood.
First and foremost, let’s remember that there wouldn’t be a community of River Rim unless the Lovejoy’s stepped up to build the Plaza in the first place. Many of my misguided neighbors have not lived in the neighborhood long enough to know the building of the Plaza was a condition to getting the neighborhood built! Second, the “Horrible Money Grubbing” Lovejoy family built the store, with partners who will also get hurt along with the 30 employees, by the thoughtless actions of our neighborhood. Lastly, lets not forget, that when every major grocery chain both big and small declined to provide our neighborhood with a store, the Lovejoy’s took an even bigger risk and put the money out on their own behalf. Yep, these Lovejoy people sound horrible. Building a Plaza so the neighborhood could go in, then building a beautiful market for them, hosting charitable events, offering support to our schools and giving this neighborhood a place to be proud of. I’m not suggesting they did this out of charity, they believed they could provide this community with services and make some money at the same time. Let’s not play around here, save your arguments of “Children’s Safety” and not being “Centrally Located” because if these were valid concerns, then they pertain no matter where the DMV is located. The children of the SouthWest side of town are more important than the children of the NorthEast side of town? Think about what your doing, you may not agree with the DMV, but please dont make comments about people you CLEARLY dont know. By the way, @RationAl, the grocery store had nothing to do with the DMV going in. The other owners and daily operators of this store didnt have advance notice of the DMV either, as it is not part of the partnership. They are separate! A boycott will never hurt the Lovejoy family but it will most certainly hurt their business partners as well as the 30 families they support. Why dont you go into the store, ask for the owner, and see the hurt and stress you cause an outsider in this situation. For those of you thoughtless people who would say, “That’s what you get for partnering with the Lovejoys’. Clearly dont know the quality of people, how much they care for the community of Bend and how much they believed in our neighborhood when NO ONE ELSE WOULD! Good job neighbors, let’s prove all the other grocery retailers they were right, River Rim wont support a LOCAL grocery store!
@RationAl
You don’t need to boycott the business in River Rim, because it gets so little business anyway. It was such a poor idea to put a plaza way back in there to begin with.