The Lodge at Suttle Lake, along with two other lakeside resorts in Central Oregon, is up for sale.

“Building and operating the lodge for over the past 11 years has been the fulfillment of a lifelong dream,” Ronda Sneva, owner and operator of Suttle Lake resort, wrote in an email. “It’s difficult to let go, but the time is right for a transition.”

Located 12 miles northwest of Sisters, The Lodge at Suttle Lake has been actively marketed for two years and is currently listed for $2.9 million.

In addition, Shelter Cove Resort & Marina on Odell Lake, southwest of La Pine, is on the market for nearly $3.8 million, and Twin Lakes Resort on South Twin Lake, west of La Pine, is for sale for $1.85 million. Owners of both resorts want to retire, according to the real estate listings. The owners of Shelter Cove Resort, which operates year-round, could not be reached for comment, and an owner at Twin Lakes, which is open from late April to mid-October, declined to comment.

Mike Mansker, the listing agent for The Lodge at Suttle Lake, said increasing tourism by out-of-state visitors and Oregon residents has led to an increase in income for many resorts.

Because Suttle Lake operates as a luxury resort — with weekend rates between $293 and $347 for rooms or a suite in the lodge and a two-night minimum, according to its website — it generates income, said Mansker, owner and principal broker of Coldwell Banker Reed Bros. Realty in Sisters. But it doesn’t generate a profit because of the overhead and cost of year-round operation.

The listing price is about half the amount Sneva invested to build The Lodge at Suttle Lake, which she opened in 2005, according to Mansker and Darrell Stewart, general manager at the resort.

Located on 19 acres in the Deschutes National Forest, the resort operates under a permit from the U.S. Forest Service. Along with the lodge, the resort has a marina, boathouse, 16 cabins and a restaurant. Stewart said Sneva recently dropped the price by $1 million. She wants to focus on her primary business, a catering company in Tucson, Arizona.

Resort sales bring challenges not present in other real estate sales, said Peter May, the listing agent for Twin Lakes Resort and a broker with Compass Commercial Real Estate Services in Bend.

“There’s just a lot more factors because you have a real estate play and also a business side of it,” he said. Because most resorts are seasonal, he said, the selling season is shorter.

“If you want to buy it, you want to be able to go there and see it,” May said.

And when resorts are located on Forest Service land, he said, it adds another level of complexity to the financing.

Typically, resort buyers seek a U.S. Small Business Administration loan instead of conventional financing because they would own only the structures and not the land, he said.

New owners must also obtain a permit from the Forest Service to operate on the land, he said.

“One thing about resorts is you can’t go into the national forest and build a new resort,” May said. “Any resort on Forest Service land is not replaceable.”

Kassidy Kern, Deschutes National Forest public affairs specialist, said the Forest Service will confirm a potential buyer is financially capable of operating a resort before issuing a permit.

If a resort has been open to the public, Kern said, it will continue to be operated that way when ownership changes.

“It has operated as a public service, and there are guidelines and policies we have in place to make sure the public in general is served,” she said, referring to The Lodge at Suttle Lake. “So even if a niche group purchased a resort, they would still need to serve the broader public.”

—Reporter: 541-617-7818,

rrees@bendbulletin.com

A project that would add 50 homes west of Bend complete with a public trail system connected to Shevlin Park is under consideration by Deschutes County, which received conditional use permit applications from the developer this month.

The project, named The Tree Farm, would keep more than 400 acres of its 533-acre footprint as permanent open space. The company behind the project, The Tree Farm LLC, is owned by the Miller family, of Miller Lumber, and West Bend Property Company, which is owned by Brooks Resources and Tennant Developments. Brooks Resources and Tennant Developments developed NorthWest Crossing, which is just to the east of this proposed development.

Despite the affiliation with and proximity to NorthWest Crossing, Romy Mortensen, project manager of The Tree Farm and a vice president of Brooks Resources, envisions this new development as a counterpoint to NorthWest Crossing.

“Because of the potential growth that could take place on the west side of Bend, we think that it’s smart to have development denser in town, as in NorthWest Crossing, and to have a less dense area, like we are planning, when you move into more rural lands,” she said.

Drawing on a principle promoted by the Congress for the New Urbanism, Mortensen said The Tree Farm is based upon the idea of a “transect,” which Mortensen said calls for “a logical transition from urban to rural in a location where any future urbanization onto parks and other public lands seems highly unlikely.”

Under this principle, density should diminish toward what Mortensen called “a soft edge,” which The Tree Farm is intended to provide.

Charley Miller, president of Miller Lumber, described The Tree Farm as a “legacy project” for his family.

“Much of this land will be left open for the public to enjoy in perpetuity,” Miller said. “We’re essentially extending public lands (from Shevlin Park) out to the east.”

The development, which would not be gated, is notable for its intention to cluster the placement of homes on 2-acre plots. Most of the land falls into the county’s urban area reserve zone, which allows for homes to be set on 10-acre plots. This clustered approach, which has conditional approval under county code, will allow more land to be kept open, Miller said.

The placement just outside of Bend’s urban growth boundary is also “taking almost 150 acres out of consideration” from any future expansion of the city, Miller noted. Without this development, the land could potentially be developed in the same dense manner as NorthWest Crossing, were a UGB expansion to bring it into the city.

Most of the homes would be placed on the northern edge of the property’s line, away from Skyliners Road to the south and Shevlin Park to the west.

Miller said he hopes to have approval from the county by the end of the year and to begin work on the Tree Farm in 2015.

— Reporter: 541-633-2160, tleeds@bendbulletin.com

Nearly half the slate of finalists for committees that will shape Bend’s growth plan come from the development, construction and real estate industries.

Some have a financial interest in the outcome of the process, because they own or are developing rural land that could be absorbed into the city through a future urban growth boundary expansion.

Charley Miller is one of the candidates for the advisory committee that will help develop guidelines to determine if and where to expand the city’s boundary, which is the line outside which urban development such as subdivisions and sewers are prohibited by state law. Miller said Friday that his family owns several hundred acres of land northwest of the city, and they would like the city to annex at least 200 acres of that through the boundary expansion process.

“We hope to have it come in,” Miller said. “I think it’s logical development around the schools.” The land is next to Summit High School and William E. Miller Elementary, as well as a new middle school currently under construction.

Miller said he is not the only candidate with a financial interest in the outcome, and overall the group has diverse backgrounds.

“We’re certainly not hiding any conflicts,” Miller said. “It’s a well-rounded group.”

For example, another candidate for the boundary committee is John Russell, a manager with the Oregon Department of State Lands. The department owns what Russell described in his committee application as “a substantial parcel immediately adjacent to the (urban growth boundary).”

City councilors said they were generally pleased with the spectrum of committee candidates. After all, city councilors were part of the Urban Growth Boundary Steering Committee that selected people to serve on the three UGB advisory committees. In addition to the boundary committee, there will be a committee to advise the city on how much land it needs for housing and a committee to identify the need for commercial and industrial land associated with job creation. This is the city’s second run at creating a new urban growth boundary plan. State land use officials rejected a previous version in 2010.

“What I was looking for was not only both ends of the spectrum of interests within our community, but I was looking for people across the whole spectrum,” City Councilor Sally Russell said Friday. “I really felt that all the way along the spectrum, there was enough diversity that I was OK with it.”

There are 57 finalists for the three growth boundary advisory committees, and 28 come from the development, real estate and construction industries, according to The Bulletin’s analysis of public records from the city of Bend and Oregon Secretary of State Corporation Division, as well as the newspaper’s archives. There are eight committee members with professional experience in government, four with legal experience, three with a background in affordable housing and three with various business experience. Three committee members have backgrounds in conservation work, and three work in financial services.

There is also a handful of nonvoting members from the Department of Land Conservation and Development, the Oregon Department of Transportation, Bend Park & Recreation Department and Deschutes County government. The City Council is scheduled to vote at a Wednesday night meeting on whether to appoint the recommended candidates to the three committees.

City Councilor Mark Capell said the large number of finalists with development, construction and real estate backgrounds also reflects the applicant pool for the volunteer positions.

“We tried to fill them with as much variety as possible based on who applied, because what we want to hear is … all the diverse opinions,” Capell said. “I think those folks are more focused on that, because it’s part of their everyday life.”

City Councilor Scott Ramsay said it was important to make sure people with an interest in the process were involved early on, because city officials want a boundary plan that will have broad support across the community.

“Hopefully we can avoid some of the litigation and things we experienced last time,” Ramsay said.

City of Bend Principal Planner Brian Rankin said Thursday that selecting committee finalists was a balancing act.

“You don’t want these committees to be stacked with only people that have participated thus far, and you probably don’t want all people who are brand new and would require a lot of startup and education,” Rankin said.

— Reporter: 541-617-7829, hborrud@bendbulletin.com

Bend planners will share with the public the latest version of a plan to encourage redevelopment of the city center into a “vibrant district” at a final meeting on the topic Monday. The plan focuses on the area between the Bend Parkway and NE Fourth Street and from NE Revere Avenue to approximately NE Burnside Avenue.

The transportation and zoning plan is aimed at converting the area from an industrial and drive-through retail area to a pedestrian-friendly district where people can live, work and socialize. City planners wrote in the plan that “some community members have suggested that a portion of the area could become a new arts or cultural district for the city in the future.”

Industrial and commercial zoning in the area made more sense when Third Street was U.S. Highway 97, before the Oregon Department of Transportation built the parkway, according to the new plan. Proposed changes would include accepting some traffic congestion in the area.

“It should be noted that a certain amount of congestion can be healthy and beneficial for a city or neighborhood,” city planners wrote. “For example, driving more slowly through an area can increase retail sales and real estate values.”

The draft plan could also lead to zoning changes for land in the area and the following types of development:

• Along NE First Street: A combination of light industrial, residential, commercial and other land uses will fill out this section, which “could lend itself to a significant amount of redevelopment,” with buildings up to eight stories in height.

• Along NE Second Street: This stretch will be a mix of office, residential and small-scale retail land uses. This area would also have the potential for significant redevelopment and “is likely to be where the bulk of higher density residential” development would be located. Building heights could range from three to six stories, or taller, possibly with underground parking.

• Along NE Third Street: Large-scale commercial operations will likely continue for a while here, according to the proposal. In the long term, planners expect the area to transition to a mix of commercial, retail and residential development, especially near the southern end of the plan area. Building heights could range from four to six stories, or taller in some places.

• Along NE Fourth Street: Redevelopment would lead to mostly residential buildings, with some offices and small-scale, ground level retail establishments to serve the neighborhood to the east. Homes would be a mix of multifamily buildings and single-family houses, with height limited to three stories.

• Along east-west streets: It will be mostly commercial and offices along the busier sections of Greenwood Avenue and Franklin Avenue, with a mix of residential, small-scale retail and commercial or offices along other streets.

“It will likely require decades of public and private investment to realize this vision,” planners concluded in the draft plan.

Senior Planner Wendy Robinson said the city will incorporate the central district plan into the larger plan for the city’s urban growth boundary. State officials rejected a previous version of that plan, and one of the critiques the city must address is that it did not sufficiently plan for infill and redevelopment inside its existing boundary.

— Reporter: 541-617-7829, hborrud@bendbulletin.com

Millennials, what are you waiting for? You should be buying a home right now. That’s the conclusion of a pair of recent studies that looked at homeownership.

Zillow, the online real estate website, considered how rising interest rates and home price appreciation would affect a buyer’s ability to purchase a home. Even though interest rates have been hovering at yearly lows, most observers expect them to begin rising soon. Home values have been steadily climbing for some time.

Assuming that home values stayed constant and that a homebuyer would put 20 percent down and take out a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, Zillow found that a D.C.-area buyer, for example, who waits one year to purchase a home would probably pay an additional $186 per month.

According to Erin Lantz, vice president of mortgages at Zillow, the rule of thumb is that a 1-percentage-point increase in mortgage rates decreases affordability by 10 percent.

Meanwhile, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies wondered why first-time homebuyers were staying out of the housing market, especially now that home affordability was near an all-time high.

The center focused on 25- to 34-year-olds, the group most likely to become first-time home buyers, to find out how many earned enough to afford a median-priced home in the top metro areas. It discovered that in 42 of the 85 metro areas, more than half of the renters can afford the monthly costs of homeownership.

The median home is considered affordable if mortgage payments — with a 5 percent down payment, typical of first-time buyers — property taxes, insurance and nonhousing debt payments make up no more than 43 percent of a household’s income.

The shortage of affordable rental housing in Bend has placed local officials in the unusual position of calling for the city to emulate an infill development tactic used by Portland.

Bend city councilors will soon hear a proposal from the city’s Affordable Housing Advisory Committee that would make it easier for property owners in Bend to build accessory dwellings, commonly referred to as mother-in-law apartments. The small homes are already allowed under city code, but the approval process required in older areas of the city makes it simple for a neighbor to halt a project.

“It’s not too often you hear something come out where Bend wants to be more like Portland,” said Andy High, chairman of the committee and staff vice president of government affairs for the Central Oregon Builders Association. However, High said that with a streamlined process, people could build these small homes in as little as two months.

“In my view, this is the quickest way to get rental housing up,” High said. “This is a great way to put an issue out in front of the community to see how much we … care about affordable housing.”

Members of the advisory committee said during a meeting on Wednesday that they do anticipate their ideas will run into some opposition. The proposal would allow accessory dwellings without a conditional use permit on all lots across the city and increase the cap on size to 800 square feet, a change that committee members said is necessary to allow for two-bedroom apartments and to make the units pencil out financially. High said the committee will likely present this recommendation, along with a couple of other ideas it is still developing to increase the supply of affordable rental housing, to the City Council in late September. Earlier this year, City Manager Eric King asked the committee to pitch ideas to ease the housing shortage.

Portland is the most dramatic example in the state of the infill development that occurs when it is easier to build accessory dwellings. Property owners used to build about 30 accessory dwellings each year, but Portland received approximately 200 permit applications for the structures in 2013, according to the city.

The increase followed a 2010 Portland City Council decision to waive development impact fees for three years, in an effort to encourage construction of more small homes. The change allowed homeowners to save as much as $11,000 per project in city fees. Portland also increased the allowable size of accessory dwellings, from the previous limit of 33 percent of the living area in the primary home to 75 percent. An overall cap on the size of the homes remains 800 square feet, according to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. City officials there have extended the fee waiver through June 2016.

So far, no one in Bend has proposed waiving any fees for accessory dwellings.

The Bend Planning Commission has also started to discuss possible changes to the city development code for accessory dwellings, and two commissioners attended the affordable housing meeting Wednesday. Commissioner Laura Fritz said the concerns that residents raised at planning commission meetings were that it can be expensive to build accessory dwellings, and the new apartments can change the feel of neighborhoods.

Fritz said she heard “mostly concern about the integrity of the neighborhood, and getting a big (accessory dwelling) over a garage that is then looking down over this smaller property’s yard, so the privacy is lost.”

Jim Landin, an architect and member of the affordable housing committee, said he knows of accessory dwelling projects that stalled because of opposition from neighbors. A neighbor might object that an apartment above a garage will invade his or her privacy, despite the fact that the property owner could increase the height of the existing home and add a deck that would be just as intrusive. Landin said he believes the real reason some people object to the accessory dwellings is that they will be occupied by renters, and some property owners do not believe the renters will care as much about the neighborhood. “It’s the fact that now it’s renters,” Landin said.

High said the $1,400 fee for the city to review conditional use permit applications — as currently required for lots developed before 1998 — discourages many people from trying to build apartments above their garages or other forms of accessory dwellings, because one neighbor could derail the project.

“I know that’s not a ton of money, but that’s still a pretty big commitment in terms of if they’re just exploring,” High said.

— Reporter: 541-617-7829, hborrud@bendbulletin.com

The city of Bend so far this year has reviewed developers’ plans for at least a half-dozen subdivisions that would add more than 400 new homes in the city.

Overall, the number of planning applications of all kinds, from individual lot-line changes to multi-unit housing projects, reached 677 in the fiscal year that ended June 30, said Colin Stephens, Bend city planning manager.

Those numbers signal a climb back to levels not seen since fiscal year 2007-08, when the Community Development Department received 603 total applications.

“That tells me the economy has rebounded significantly from where it was when we were doing 180, 190 applications,” he said. “The (department) work volume has really increased across the board. But there’s a significant increase in the creation of new lots to put new homes on.”

In 2006-07, the height of the building boom, the department received 830 applications. The current crop of subdivision applications is in various stages of bureaucratic review, from pre-application meetings to final checklists. The city must rule on subdivision applications, called Type II applications, within 120 days, Stephens said. From first applications to breaking ground typically takes from 18 months to two years.

Recent applications include the 40-lot Glen Eagle subdivision on the northeast side of Bend; Aspen Reserve, a 65-lot development on 20 acres at Brosterhous and Alstrup roads; and phase three of Stonegate, which would add another 50 lots to a planned 187-unit development on China Hat Road.

“We will begin pulling permits later this summer for phase three home building,” wrote Dan Pahlisch, vice president for new business development at Pahlisch Homes, the builder at Stonegate.

Pahlisch Homes dusted off the Stonegate site plan in April 2013, and city planners ruled it valid. The Stonegate developer, Tualatin-based developer Stonegate Development LLC, cited the “recent economic downturn” for delaying plans to build out the subdivision.

The previous owner, Elk Horn Development LLC, foresaw completing the entire four-phase project in four years when it first submitted plans in 2004.

By 2008, however, many developers in Bend stymied by the housing market crash in 2007-08 stopped moving dirt and instead moved paperwork, filing requests to keep their plans current as they passed city deadlines to build.

“Probably from 2008 to 2012, we didn’t see any land-division applications,” Stephens said. “Developers kept getting extensions to keep their approvals alive through the recession.”

In southeast Bend, Aspen Reserve, formerly known as Sun Ranch, a project of Hoviss Development Group LLC, was also on pause. Hoviss, of Vancouver, Washington, in June asked the city to approve changes to the original plan, which the city OK’d in 2007. Hoviss’ tentative site plan, filed July 3, outlines 65 lots for single-family homes and 81 units of multi-family housing on the former mobile home park, a total of 147 units. The original plan outlined 432 multi-family housing units.

Pete Mann, Hoviss’ director of construction and land development, said Hoviss retooled its plans to meet demand for single-family homes.

“It’s pretty self-evident right now that multifamily isn’t as popular as single-family in the Bend real estate market. A lot of market conditions are in play right now,” he said.

Also, he said, the reconfigured plan for Aspen Reserve generates less traffic than the original plan.

In northwest Bend, the West Bend Property Co., the developer behind NorthWest Crossing, in the past year recorded 113 lots in three phases of its subdivision project, said David Ford, company general manager. He said NorthWest Crossing, unlike many other developers, never stopped actively recording and selling lots during the recession. In 2013, sales picked up. Today Bend is a seller’s market, Ford said.

“Last year saw the biggest growth in lots and lot sales that we’ve seen in the last four years,” he said. “In fact, most of the homes in NorthWest Crossing in the last year have probably sold before the home is completed.”

In northeast Bend, Glen Eagle, first proposed in 2006, covers 7 acres near another, larger project, called Mirada, now under construction but first approved in 2008.

For a site near the Old Mill District, a firm from Portland Project, filed a preliminary plan to build 27 row houses on property bounded by Colorado and Arizona avenues, Wall Street and Industrial Way. THA Architecture filed the rough plan, called Mill Quarter, on July 10 along with a request to meet with city staff to discuss the project, the first step in the development process. Project managing partner Tom Cody said Friday the firm has not closed on the property and is exploring the feasibility of developing the site.

MonteVista Homes, of Clackamas, and Chet Antonsen of Pacwest II LLC, of Bend, in June started the approval process for 34 single-family homes on 8.3 acres in northeast Bend. The subdivision, called Rock Ridge Park, would lie between Rorick and Stonewood drives and Bobwhite Court. MonteVista bought the property from the developers of adjacent Quail Crossing and drew up its own development plans, said MonteVista marketing director Luke Pickerill.

“All of the developers have confidence in the market again,” Pickerill said. “We all … think it’s going to be real good until the end of 2016.”

MonteVista Homes also developed Sundance Meadows, a 43-lot subdivision of single-family homes going up off 27th Street and Bear Creek Road. Pickerill said builders barely keep up with eager buyers.

“Demand over the last 16 months means it’s hard to build on spec,” he said. “As soon as you get the walls up, they’re selling.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com