OUR BEND OREGON REAL ESTATE BLOG

July 2, 2015 · by Cheri Smith & Molly Brundage

By Beau Eastes / The Bulletin / @beastes
Published Jun 30, 2015 at 12:01AM

Base Camp, the first Central Oregon project for the Portland urban developer called project^, is planned to be built on about 1.7 acres of land near the confluence of NW Colorado and Arizona avenues in Bend. The first of 25 townhomes is expected to be completed within six months, Portland developer Tom Cody said Monday.

“Each of the eight buildings will contain up to five homes,” Cody said. Homes at Base Camp are expected to start around $650,000. All units will feature two-car garages and a ground-level studio apartment. In preliminary plans filed with the city, Project PDX outlines 25 townhomes, each with an accessory dwelling unit, arranged in a circle with an internal parking and a common area. The three-story townhomes, at either 2,000 or 2,500 square feet each, would stand in eight clusters of two to four units each. The accessory units would measure about 300 to 400 square feet, Cody said. The design will be simple and spare, with “little trim or ornament,” according to the preliminary plan. The townhome clusters will appear “as stacks of raw lumber that once were a common sight in the area.”

“We’ve always thought that Bend and our approach to urban development would match up,” he said. “The tuning fork went off with the Base Camp opportunity. As the single-family home market recovers, that really compelled us to put together a for-sale product in Bend.” In addition to the recovering housing market, Cody said his group chose the Colorado Avenue property in part because of its location to the soon-to-be finished grocery store Market of Choice and the near-complete Bend Whitewater Park. “Those are transformative changes for that area,” Cody said. “It was an incredible site and neighborhood before that, but those projects really propelled it to the next level. Having a grocer is so key. And being able to walk downtown and walk to the river, that’s extraordinary.”

Base Camp could be the first in a series of developments for project^ in Bend. The company has also had preliminary talks with the city about an apartment complex in the city’s NorthWest Crossing neighborhood.

“We really are interested in applying creative and new ways to live,” Cody said. “In-fill locations (in Bend) historically have been filled with very traditional homes. We think there’s an opportunity to change that and build homes and places that more deeply resonate with the consumer and provide better places to live and a better quality of life.”