The momentum is building to expand the Oregon State Universtiy-Cascades Campus to a full four-year institution with its own campus in Central Oregon and a potential student body of 5,000 by 2025.
If successful, many community and business leaders say the expansion would dramatically enhance the region’s status as a diverse economic center extending beyond its current reputation as a tourism and retirement hub.
As the effort intensified with private fund raising and support by the legislature and Gov. John Kitzhaber, OSU officials in early 2012 hired a Portland firm, SRG Partnership Inc., to assess requirements for classrooms, administration facilities, student housing, parking and other facilities. A report is due in April.
OSU has also picked Compass Commercial, long-time Bend commercial brokerage, to work from the SRG needs analysis to target specific locations for the campus facilities.
Compass is already the broker for seven properties within the City of Bend’s 1,500 acre Juniper Ridge project on the city’s northern boundary. Bend’s master plan for the project includes the possibility of a university campus in addition to research, business and residential uses.
However, Compass and university officials have said the brokerage will be working from the guidelines established in SRG’s report to OSU officials. The university has already expanded some graduate programs into facilities along Columbia Street above the Old Mill District.
An announcement by Compass noted that the company was selected after responses statewide to the university’s requests for proposals. The company said it “will utilize the results (of SRG’s work) to identify the optimal properties,” including those, “available and potentially available.”
Currently OSU offers junior and senior level courses and some graduate instruction at facilities integrated within the Central Oregon Community College campus on the soutwestern slope of Awbrey Butte off Mt. Washington Drive.
In his 2013-2015 biennial budget, Gov. Kitzhaber asked the legislature to approve $16 million for the OSU expansion, or two-thirds of the $24 million goal set by university officials. Another $4 million would come from fund raising within the community and the university would match that with another $4 million.
The community effort had yielded $2.9 million by late 2012 including a $1 million commitment from the Tykeson Family Charitable Trust, the family that
controls Bend Broadband, the region’s leading internet and cable corporation.
There is also a separate $2 million endowment established by Mike and Carmen Cutting, 1965 OSU graduates. Earnings from that endowment could be used at the discretion of the OSU-Cascades vice president, who is now Becky Johnson, until the entire endowment is released from the Cuttings estate.
As of early 2013, the OSU-Cascades enrollment was slightly more than 1,000 students. About 75% of those are juniors, seniors and graduate students with the remaining taking classes at COCC before entering the OSU programs.
