Bend and Central Oregon briefs

New lodging to be ready for summer tourism

           

            Bend will have more than 160 new lodging rooms ready for the summer tourism season as construction enters the final phase for two new lodging facilities.

            The 114-room Hampton Inn & Suites on 4 acres across the Deschutes River from the Old Mill District and the 50 room Tetherow Lodges, part of the residential and golf community adjacent to Bend’s west boundary will provide a major boost to available accommodations.

            The Hampton Inn is a project of Boise-based AmeriTel Inns, which also operates the Hilton Garden property on the ridge above the Old Mill District retail complex.

            The Tetherow Lodges include two buildings on each side of the existing Tetherow clubhouse, the original building that opened with the resort community’s links-style golf course.  The estimated construction cost of the approximately 40,000 square feet is $10 million.

            Also under construction but not scheduled to open this summer is the 105-room Pronghorn lodge, branded by Auberge Resorts.

            Both the Tetherow and Pronghorn projects have been delayed as the real estate market contracted just after the resorts were underway earlier the last decade. County officials had allowed both projects extensions on the time required to build overnight lodging facilities.

Back to square one for proposed Thornburgh Resort

            A Deschutes County hearings officer has essentially ruled that the new owner of a proposed resort project on Cline Butte east of Redmond will have to start over in the quest to develop the property.

            The ruling by hearing officer Karen Green said that current developer Terrence Larsen has not shown adequate progress for the project, nor requested an permit extension, within a two year period.

            Deschutes County planning officials had approved the preliminary development plan for the approximately 1,300 acre project, which included a proposal for more than 450 lodging rooms, 950 homes, and three golf courses.

            The developer argued that about $7 million has been spent on roads and other site prepration. However, Green said such issues as water rights had not been adequately addressed.                   

OSU-Cascades to offer hospitality degree

           

            Reflecting Central Oregon’s robust tourism industry, OSU-Cascades is taking steps to launch a hospitality management program that would offer the state’s first public unversity four-year degree program in the field.

            The program would be jump-started with a $320,000 grant from the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association and various other related businesses.

Major markets attract bulk residential investors

            National investment groups have continued their appetites for distressed and entry level homes across the country, with the resulting mixed blessing for the housing market.

            But  investor housing capital also appears to be shifting among markets across the country as prices rise in previously hard hit regions.

            In the Seattle area, three large investment buyers have acquired nearly 2,000 homes in the three county Seattle metro area in 2013, according to a report in the Seattle Times based on statistics from RealtyTrac which provides information on distressed properties nationwide.  

Most activity in the greater Seattle area has been in suburban King County towns and in Snohomish County to the north and Pierce County (Tacoma) to the south according to RealtyTrac.

The three largest investors in the Seattle bulk buying trend are Invitation Homes, a subsidiary of The  Blackstone Group, which purchased 1,585 homes in 2013; Premium Partners of New York, 272 homes; and American Homes 4 Rent of the Los Angeles area, 188 homes.

Blackstone has reportedly spent nearly $8 billion on 43,000 single family homes, while the total acquistions of investment groups nationwide in the past two years has reached $20 billion in the purchase of 130,000 homes.

On the positive side, investor purchases have served to reduce the overhang of distressed properties in the real estate market. But the acquisitions also tend to remove from the market homes in price ranges accessible to entry-level buyers.

Many of the purchased homes also flood the rental market, which can have the effect of changing the character of mostly owner-occupied neighborhoods when multiple tenants occupy a single property.

Deschutes tops state population growth rate: Newcomers double in a year

            Deschutes County’s pace of population growth is leading Oregon and also ranks among the top 100 counties in the nation according to recent statistics from the US Census Bureau.

            And from the period of July 2012 through July 2013 most of the growth was the result of new residents moving from other areas of the country.

            The Census Bureau reported that Deschutes County added 4,065 residents in the one-year period, bringing the total to 165,594.

Of those newcomers, 3,794, or more than 93%, came from other areas. That was more than double the newcomers arriving in the previous one-year period.

Deschutes County’s estimated one-year population growth rate of 2.51% placed it 97^th among 3,200 counties. Washington County was second in Oregon at 1.36% growth.

Deschutes also led the state in three-year growth at 5.21%.