Larger lot project proposed for Bend's west side urban-rural interface

            The development team that created Bend’s highly-successful Northwest Crossing is joining another landowner to create a low-density community on more than 500 acres on the city's west-side boundary.

            Known as The Tree Farm on the Deschutes County land use application, the project brings together members of the Miller Lumber Co. family, the owners of the property, and West Bend Property Company LLC, an equal partnership of Tennant Family Limited Partnership and Brooks Resources.

            West Bend Property launched Northwest Crossing in the early 2000s as a master-planned “traditional neighborhood” that now includes single family and town home residences, parks, a retail and office area, schools and pedestrian trails.

Most Northwest Crossing lots are less than 6,000 square feet with a few larger ones of more than 8,000, or about one-quarter acre. The Northwest Crossing master plan allows for up to approximately 1,100 homes on 483 acres, including 200 now proposed for a 93 acre parcel across Mt. Washington Drive from the original development envelope.

            In an application for conditional use permits to Deschutes County, the Tree Farm developers outlined plans for 50 homes, each on about 2 acres, in five clusters of 10 homes each. Each of the five clusters would have a minimum of 81 acres of open space, or more than 400 total in the approximately 533-acre project.

Transect model from Center for Applied Transect Studies

            The concept, developers have said, is to create a community that provides a buffer between more rural land adjacent to an urban neighborhood,

            In comments to local media, the project director Romy Mortensen was quoted that the Tree Farm would be developed along an urban “transect” model to provide a transition between more dense city areas, such as Northwest Crossing, and land where “urbanization onto parks and other public lands seems highly unlikely.”

            A proponent of the rural-to-urban transect is Andres Duany, a principal in the Miami and Washington, DC urban planning firm, Duany Platy-Zyberk. The firm web site www.dpz.com notes that it has been in the forefront of “the New Urbanism movement with innovative techniques to combat urban sprawl.”

Tree Farm tentative master plan

            The Tree Farm property lies mostly in the county’s urban area reserve zone that allows 10 acre lots in areas next to urban boundaries. An example of this is the Highlands at Broken Top community adjacent to the Tetherow golf course and resort community across Skyliners Road from the proposed project.

Homes the Tree Farm would be on the northern edge of the property line, away from Skyliners Road to the south and Shevlin Park to the west according to the development application.     

            The Tree Farm would not be gated and would offer protected open space with public access adjoining Shevlin Park to the east, the developers have said.

            In an  Aug. 20 e-mail on file with the county, a planning official wrote that a hearing date for the project had been tentatively scheduled for Oct. 7, although a final date would be announced after comments from various agencies and the public have been received.