Mike Szabo was leaning against a wall near the bathroom at Tetherow Resort’s Event Pavilion in 2013, debating his next move. Having relocated to Bend from San Diego just five months before, he had decided to step back from his professional life as a landscape architect.

With a pregnant wife and young child, he briefly considered taking a job as a server in a restaurant until he realized that “this whole server thing wasn’t going to work—we needed to make more money to support the family.” He decided to go back to the profession he was trained in.

Before the move, Szabo had designed DIRECTV’s corporate campus in Los Angeles as well as a big pedestrian mall for the University of California San Diego. Yet, even with 12 years of experience, he was unable to find work as a landscape architect in Central Oregon. “I was cold calling architects and developers. No one seemed to want to give me a shot,” he recalled. “It was disheartening. We’d burned through all of our life savings.” With no design projects, he called a temp agency, who sent him on jobs pulling weeds and assembling office furniture. 

A Tetherow Resort Introduction

Nearly out of hope, he continued to attend professional networking events, including one that fateful day at Tetherow Resort where Bend architect Darren Thomas was receiving an award. After the presentation, Szabo sought Thomas out, but was disappointed when he couldn’t find him. About to head home, he saw Thomas walking out of the bathroom. “I introduced myself, and he said, ‘Oh, you are on my to-do list to call, and I actually have a couple of projects I want to talk with you about. Come to my office tomorrow.’”

“That was it. He gave me one residence in Tetherow and a new retail and office building in NorthWest Crossing where Washington [Kitchen and Cocktails] is located. He also introduced me to Tetherow’s owners, Erin and Chris van der Velde, who asked me to do some projects for them, including a new sports center and swimming pool for the resort,” he said.

SZABO Landscape Architecture Launches

In 2014, SZABO Landscape Architecture opened as a design firm primarily focused on work in Central Oregon, though the team takes on a diverse range of projects. “We do everything beyond the building footprint—from hardscapes, site lighting, planting design, irrigation design, grading and drainage design, to site amenities like pools, spas, decks, firepits and outdoor kitchens,” explained Szabo, emphasizing that the firm is a landscape architectural design firm, not a contractor.

Just two years after its inception, the firm had more work than Szabo could handle, prompting him to seek support from former colleague Brian Nierman. Nierman soon moved his family from Denver to Bend to join SZABO. The firm currently occupies an upstairs studio space in downtown Bend and has four additional team members with backgrounds in landscape architecture or design, along with marketing assistance from Elizabeth Hanley Szabo. 

In new home construction, Szabo emphasizes the importance of including the firm as part of the design process from the outset. “Our whole goal is to make the site and architecture complementary and harmonious,” he said. “We rarely take projects where everything is already designed and completed, and we’re just putting the lipstick on,” he explained. “We want to be involved early to consider the site, what the architecture calls for, and how the clients will be using the space. The design is always better when we’re there in the beginning.”

Spring Landscape Renovations in Central Oregon

For spring landscape renovations, it’s best to start the design phase in the fall, Szabo advises. If a homeowner starts in the spring, Szabo says it would be “a big hope to get it installed in the fall, which has more to do with how busy landscape contractors are in this town and less to do with how long our design process takes.” 

One change Szabo has noticed in recent years is that people are paying much more attention to their outdoor spaces. “The designs are becoming bigger and more elaborate, with clients saving more of their budget for outdoor spaces,” he said. “To be worth it in Central Oregon, homeowners need to factor in heat and shade to manage our hot summers and cool shoulder seasons.”

After a decade of building a successful landscape architecture firm, Szabo said, ”We’re in the sweet spot of where we want to be. We love Bend and don’t have to drive hours away to projects tucked into faraway neighborhoods or cities,” he said, referring to his practice in California. “The fact that we get to live in this town and create in this town, driving past our projects, taking our families to parks we designed, eating in restaurants and sitting on patios we’ve worked on and getting to be part of shaping what this city looks like is incredibly satisfying,” Szabo continued. “We’ll probably never leave. We love that we see our work come to fruition on a daily basis.”

To see more of SZABO’s work, visit szabo-la.com. See the full Winter 2024 digital issue, including this feature, HERE. Read more from Bend Home + Design Magazine.

Recommended article featuring more of SZABO’s landscaping work:

When Sherry Ortega drops into the Old Mill District off Reed Market Road, she sees stunning views of the mountains, the sparkling blue sky, the iconic smokestacks above REI, people throwing frisbees, kayakers and stand-up paddleboarders, families walking dogs and outdoor diners and she wonders, why wouldn’t she want to live here? As a principal broker with Bend Premier Real Estate and a longtime Bend resident, she believes people come to Bend for the lifestyle.

“When I have clients from outside the area, I take them to Bend’s downtown area along Wall and Bond Streets and then to the Old Mill,” she said, adding that she doesn’t know of another place with so many lifestyle activities packed into one district. But it wasn’t always like that.

A Bit of History

For most of the twentieth century, Bend’s life and economy revolved around two rival sawmills that both opened in 1916, helping fuel America’s growth. After the city incorporated in 1905, Bend grew outward from the early soul of the city—Mirror Pond and Drake Park where founding families arrayed their homes, and essential millworkers built homes closer to the mills.

The city prospered in the 1980s. Besides lumber, the city had Mount Bachelor, destination resorts such as Sunriver, Inn of the Seventh Mountain (now Seventh Mountain Resort), a community college and first-rate regional medical care that drew people to the area. But by century’s end, the collapse of the timber industry in the Northwest idled Bend’s last mill and frayed the economic fabric of the area. With the old economic power base gone, the city searched for a new identity. 

William “Bill” Smith, who moved to Bend in 1970 while attending Stanford’s MBA program, had an idea; a really big idea that would add a thumping new pulse to Bend’s economy. As the former president of Brooks Resources Corp., and later head of his own development company, he was inspired after seeing how other cities had transformed blighted areas into lively new space for retail shops, restaurants, art galleries, parks and walking trails for public use.

He formed a partnership to purchase 270 acres on the site of the former Shevlin-Hixon and Brooks-Scanlon mills and spent years cleaning up eroded riverbanks long forbidden to the public. An interpretive sign in the Old Mill details the timeline of restoration: 1994 public access to 14,000 feet of riverfront; 1995 river trails created for public use; and 1997 a fish ladder installed in the Colorado Street bridge for fish migration.  

In 1998, he gained approval of Oregon’s land use laws and city zoning requirements to develop the site, which opened in 2000 with Regal Cinemas and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Today it’s an entertainment hub and river-centric mecca with the recently remodeled Hayden Homes Amphitheater for outdoor concerts and events, shopping, dining, lodging, businesses, residences and miles of scenic river trails. A former air-polluting mill burner has been converted to a flower feature, joining thousands of flowering landscapes throughout the Old Mill—another flourish of Smith’s to beautify the area.  

Urban Life in a Playground

Longtime Bend resident Dennis Oliphant, who built Sun Country Tours into a major whitewater adventure company—owning it from 1978 to 2016 when he sold to Mt. Bachelor—calls the Otter Run neighborhood in the Old Mill District home. “I lived out of town on acreage before moving into the mill,” he said. “It didn’t take long for me to appreciate the conveniences.”

“I seldom drive my car. I ride my bike everywhere, which is a huge advantage because it’s hard to find parking in Bend. We live on the water behind the Hayden stage, which is awesome. I really enjoy the music from our deck,” he said, referring to the home he shares with his partner Traci Porterfield. 

He notes that Otter Run has no short-term rentals and 90 percent of residents live there year-round. There’s a perception that the Old Mill District has many second or vacation homes, but Oliphant said that property is expensive and “it’s not like a summer cabin.” 

Principal realtor Ortega provided information showing that in August, the Old Mill District had only two active residential real estate listings and two pending sales, with prices ranging from $1 million to $2.3 million. She said condominiums and townhomes are highly sought after. 

There are more than 150 residential units in the Old Mill District with more townhome and apartment projects proposed in the future. 

Today’s mill residents may be better off than the millworkers who lived nearby in modest homes, but their legacy endures a century later, carefully preserved by Smith and others who incorporated elements of both mills into the vibrant new district. 

Read more about our vibrant Central Oregon community here.

When the Awbrey Hall fire blazed through a 6-mile corridor west of Bend in 1990, it laid bare a swath of land that would eventually become Shevlin Commons: a high-end neighborhood with some of the city’s most visionary building guidelines and award-winning architecture.

In the late 1990s, a developer with property bordering Shevlin Park proposed construction of 164 homes but abandoned the plan due to intense community opposition centered on the value of Shevlin Park. 

In 2001, the property owners agreed to sell seventy-six acres to Bend resident and attorney, Andrew Crosby, who worked to achieve consensus among disparate perspectives for developing a portion of the property into housing while respecting the landscape. “The conservation community was concerned about the possibility of having multistory townhouses along the park boundary,” Crosby said. “People stepped forward because they cared about the property and wanted to preserve the feeling and keep open space.”

The center concept was a forty-three-acre conservation easement granted to the Bend Park & Recreation District that became a permanent, protective overlay and interface with the neighborhood.

The remaining thirty-three acres would provide lots for sixty-six homes and open-space communal areas. “I didn’t want large, poorly conceived homes packing the landscape. On expensive land, there’s always a pull to go bigger, and that was something we were trying to avoid,” Crosby said. “We capped height and square footage in three different zones.”

Lots ranged from 5,600 square feet to a half-acre in size. Homes closest to the park would be limited to a single story, with the second zone capped at one-and-a-half stories and the third zone at two stories. Construction guidelines promoted at-grade living to create a feeling of homes “being rooted in the landscape,” he said. In addition, design guidelines also promoted green and sustainable housing.

“Andy and his team created design guidelines true to the original idea,” said Susan Castillo, a resident since 2009 who served on the Shevlin Commons design review committee until recently. She and her husband hired James Cutler, the Seattle architect who designed Bill Gates’ 66,000 square-foot home, to design their home in the Overlook Pavilion zone closest to the park. “The neighborhood feels open yet close to town; rural but not remote,” she said. “We can go out the door, walk the dog down to the creek—which we can hear from our house—and see great horned owls on the snag nearby.”

Both Castillo and Eileen Drake, board president of the Shevlin Commons Community Association, agree that most people understand and support the design guidelines. “For some of us, [the design guidelines] are absolutely working,” Drake said. “We can’t find any place else like it.”

However, two decades into the development, they say new owners don’t always understand the purpose of the neighborhood and can struggle with the restrictive guidelines. For example, the design guidelines don’t allow non-natural siding, and homeowners can’t build fences or plant lawns and vegetable gardens. Landscaping is limited to native plants inventoried at the site or Shevlin Park. The result is open space around each home with pathways for residents and wildlife to crisscross the neighborhood.

“It’s not for everyone if they don’t embrace the nuances of living in nature and preserving the night sky,” said Drake, who along with her husband, built a home in the Forest Lodge, two-story zone in 2015. “We have lots of positive choices, including the option to interact with nature. This neighborhood takes that connection to a degree not found in any other area.” 

Most people knowledgeable about Shevlin Commons agree that strict adherence to the design guidelines and the conservancy overlay makes it unique and highly desirable among high-end developments in Central Oregon. Drake reports that home sales are rare and happen quickly, often within a couple of days or weeks. 

Of the sixty-six original lots, fifty-three have homes on them. Seven of the thirteen remaining lots are in a phase of construction, and the six other lots are not currently for sale—including those owned by adjacent property owners to protect their privacy. Home sales in the past year ranged from $2.2 million to $3.2 million.

Because homes weren’t intended to be large, Crosby built Bearwallows Pavillion, a community center with a large, grassy field to create space for casual gatherings among residents and their guests. The center won awards for its architecture and was a model of green construction, he said. Unlike other nearby developments like Tetherow or Broken Top, Shevlin Commons doesn’t offer resort amenities attractive to certain buyers.

“Shevlin Commons has been successful,” Crosby said. “It appeals to a certain buyer with a conservation mindset.”  

Want to read more HOME stories with us, click here. 

What do you get when you connect a married couple who come from global marketing, design and filmmaking backgrounds at Nike with an award-winning Northwest architect known for sculpture- and landscape-inspired building designs? An artful home drawn from the Central Oregon high desert.

Greg Hoffman, former Nike chief marketing officer, and his wife Kirsten Brady, a former film producer at Nike and now a nonprofit consultant, were looking for an architect to design a home for them in Bend. In doing their research, they found several buildings they admired which shared a common designer, Corey Martin, a principal at Hacker Architects. The company’s portfolio in Central Oregon includes the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship building in northwest Bend and the Lakeside Bistro and pool house at Black Butte Ranch. Both structures are an evolution of Northwest Modern design with walls of glass that transport those on the inside to the desert landscape outside. “We reached out to Corey and asked what a home would look like with similar design elements,” Hoffman said. “We wanted a design that respected the environment and a design language that integrated it into the landscape.”

The result of this creative collaboration is a 4,300 square-foot structure of modern minimalism reminiscent of Japanese homes that blur boundaries between inside and out. “It’s not trying too hard to say, ‘Look at me,’ but rather to fit into the landscape,” Martin said. “It’s sophisticated and at the same time very simple.” Situated in the community of Tetherow, the home is built in three segments that form a “U” shape around a courtyard that serves as the main entry and a place for a moment of Zen, according to Hoffman. Highly polished panels on the ground and fourteen-foot windows reflect sunlight and changing weather patterns that can only be described as spectacular.

The front entry leads to a large open space for living, dining and kitchen areas. The front wall faces the resort golf course through floor-to-ceiling glass. The interior spaces are defined by discrete elements, or panels, that look as if they’re slipping past one another. “We framed the views and also blocked other views,” Martin said. Two large exterior rectangles are offset like squares of a checkerboard and connect with a large roof overhang to create a covered outdoor dining and entertainment area. The remaining exterior space opens to a firepit set in large concrete slabs that blend into the natural landscape, which leads toward the golf course and lake. 

In a traditional home’s living room, the wood-burning fireplace would be the focal point, but in the Hoffman-Brady home, it is surrounded by windows that carry a person’s gaze upward into a protected courtyard between the open room and master suite with a layer of wood louvers at roof level that let the sky in while creating shadow patterns in the living room and hallway. 

Martin’s years as a sculptor influences how he approaches architecture. He designs with a carving versus a building-up process. “We conceptualized a solid form and then removed space from within to create the design,” he said. “The house is seen as having been carved out from within.”

Two wings angle off the main living area—one side contains four bedrooms, including the primary suite with its in-ground whirlpool and a den, while the other wing houses the pantry, mudroom, laundry and garage. 

Keeping with the minimalist design, interior cabinets are devoid of handles, and the sleek, horizontal pendant lights over the kitchen island blend with the kitchen’s horizontal cedar back wall. Panels throughout the structure are unembellished and are “seen as discrete elements” Martin said. Countertops in the baths and kitchen are quartz with a thin reveal—the principle being less is more. And unlike more traditional homes, there’s no trim on any wall or door.

Taking cues from the Central Oregon environment, colors throughout the home are earth tone. The dark cedar walls in the interior and exterior siding are inspired by charred tree trunks from wildfires and volcanic eruptions. A natural cedar covers the open room’s ceiling. The kitchen has dark wood and countertops versus “an entirely white kitchen that screams,” Hoffman said. “The color palette and form should reveal the character and personality of the owners.”

Brady selected textural items such as rugs and furniture, and worked with Portland interior designer Hether Dunn to choose interior elements. Furnishings include mid-century modern European pieces that soften and contrast with the home’s angularity. Art is present in every room, including sculptures, paintings, prints and wall hangings by mostly Northwest artists. A painting of Sparks Lake hangs in the entryway, seemingly saying “welcome to Central Oregon” to those who enter. 

As the family’s second home, the couple travels back and forth from their primary residence in Portland but would eventually like to spend half their time in Central Oregon, where they love hiking and walking their two dogs, Ruby the Tibetan terrier and Rocco the French bulldog. Their two college-age children are welcome to bring their friends to the home so long as they always use a coaster—dad’s cardinal rule. “Overall, it’s important to always be in an environment that is greater than yourself,” Hoffman said. “What draws people to Central Oregon is being surrounded by geographic wonders. It keeps everything in perspective.”

Architect: Hacker Architects | Principal designer: Corey Martin | Design director: Nic Smith | Project Architect: Jeff Ernst | Builder: Kirby Nagelhout Construction Co. | Interior: Hether Dunn, Hether Dunn Design and Kirsten Brady (homeowner) | Landscape: Hacker Architects and Ani Cahill Design

Please enjoy more Central Oregon home stories here.

High density housing—no way. Modern homes of purely glass and steel—nuh uh. Traffic tie ups, congestion at popular restaurants and parks—forget it. This is Brasada Ranch, where cattle and sheep once roamed and density is measured in junipers, sage and the star-capped night.

Located on 1,800 acres on the flank of Powell Butte in Crook County, the developers had something else in mind when they created Brasada Ranch back in 2005. The window and door company Jeld-Wen envisioned Brasada as a luxury residential resort built around environmental sustainability standards. In 2010, the company sold the resort to Northview Hotel Group, which repositioned it as a destination sanctuary in the desert to complement the residential community.

Then and now, Brasada Ranch pays homage to its Western roots, natural landscape and dizzying views of the Cascade Mountains. From the Ranch House Restaurant to the Equestrian Club and welcoming archway, every structure incorporates those features. The established Design Review Guidelines ensure that the architecture of each home forms part of the cohesive whole.

Like the rest of Central Oregon, the community has experienced an active housing market, catalyzed by the pandemic, according to D. Alan Cornelius, director of real estate at Brasada Ranch. “In March 2020, I was thinking of battening down the hatches, believing the pandemic would cease real estate activity,” he said. “Instead, the opposite happened, and real estate exploded.” As evidence, he cites sales last year of $61 million in residential lots and homes at Brasada Ranch. He said the average turnaround for homes and homesites is less than thirty days if priced relative to the market. Lots swing from $200,000 to $600,000, and homes typically sell in the $1.5 to $3.5 million range. 

The master plan permits a maximum of 750 home sites. Currently, the ranch has 273 finished homes with fifty-four under construction and another twenty-four in design review. Roughly 450 people live on the ranch while another 150 own a second home there. “Most people when they come to Central Oregon are looking for the expansiveness this area naturally provides,” Cornelius said. “Brasada wanted to capitalize on that and give people room to breathe.” Lot sizes range from a half-acre to two acres, with roomy setbacks and no so-called zero-lot lines common in high density housing in other parts of Central Oregon. “We’re never going to have homes next to one another,” he said. 

Feeder markets for home sales have consistently been Portland, Seattle and the Bay Area. “The pandemic had people realizing they need to slow down and enjoy more time with the kids in this wilderness expanse that is Central Oregon,” Cornelius said. “Brasada is a basecamp with a sixty-mile radius of all types of outdoor experiences.”

Trading hustle and bustle for life among the junipers

Not all residents come from outside the area. Jerry Jackson, who was born and raised in Bend, and his wife Kim, were ready to sell their home on Awbrey Butte. They planned to downsize and build or remodel a home that could accommodate an adult son with muscular dystrophy.

“We couldn’t find a lot in Bend, and existing houses were so close together,” Jerry said. They connected with a friend who was building a home in Brasada. “We looked at the plans and got excited,” he recalled. “It was perfect for us—no steps, and it had accessible hallways and an accessible bedroom.”

The family moved into the home in July 2018. “After forty years in Bend, I was over the hustle and bustle of Bend and tons of traffic on the west side,” Kim said. “People asked why we’d want to live among the junipers, but we’ve found they have a special beauty, and the desert is home to bobcats, coyotes, deer, rabbits, hawks and other wildlife.” The Jackson’s home, like all others at the ranch, has a commanding view of the Cascades, and is consistent with the native color palette and Western Ranch architectural theme. The property is LEED gold and Earth Advantage certified for energy efficiencies and environmental sustainability. 

Instead of feeling isolated, the couple discovered a strong sense of community where residents often meet at the pool or for bike rides and hikes, book groups and nights around a firepit listening to live music at one of the restaurants. 

The resort part of Brasada features sixty-five cabins and eight suites for nightly rental, indoor-outdoor pools, a spa, a golf course, horseback riding, fishing ponds, a dog park and an athletic center. In other words, it’s a perfect playground for grandkids, friends and family to visit. Plus, residents have access to members-only parts of the resort. “We had no expectations when we moved out here,” Jerry said. “Every day is like being on vacation. It’s an incredible place to live.” 

A tour of Mike and Cindi O’Neil’s home offers treats for the eyes—mountain and desert landscapes—and for the body—warmth, comfort, bountiful natural light and rooms that flow easily from one to the next. But hidden within the walls, windows, roof and floors are planet-saving features.

 This award-winning contemporary house is green—meaning that it’s packed with energy efficiencies from LED lighting to a ductless mini-split heating system and solar panels. These and other features add up to a net-zero home that produces as much energy as it consumes over the course of a year. 

As owners of SolAire Homebuilders, the O’Neils have helped nearly 400 clients create high-efficiency, healthy custom homes since 1995. “Our clients enjoy homes that are more energy efficient than their neighbors’ homes,” Cindi said. 

When it was time to build their own “forever home,” as Cindi puts it, they hired Bend architect Neal Huston to design a house in the countryside near Sisters. The site had few trees, allowing for unimpeded views of Broken Top and the Three Sisters and endless blue skies.

The 2,800-square-foot home has vaulted ceilings over the living room, dining room and kitchen, four bedrooms (two are used as offices) and two baths on a single level with ADA universal design features. They also have two outdoor living areas which together offer a grill, sitting alcove, a mobile firepit and a chiminea.

The O’Neils drew on their backgrounds to ensure that the home’s energy needs would be sustainable over the years, relying heavily on Central Oregon’s sunny climate. Mike now has 45 years in construction, and Cindi’s work as an ecologist strongly influenced her desire to build their business and residence around green practices.

Completed in 2020, the home was on the Central Oregon Builders Association Tour of Homes in 2021. An Earth-Advantage Platinum certified home, it won the Green Building Award in the $500,000 to $999,000 category. It also won the Best Kitchen and Best Value Awards in the $975,100 to $1 million category.

Airtight living 

Central Oregon’s famed year-round sunlight can be tricky to manage. Taking advantage of a southwest orientation, the
O’Neil home recruits passive sunlight through expansive, high-efficiency windows on the view side.

But as longtime residents of the high desert know, the sun can also be punishing on a home. To mitigate sun exposure, the couple extended the eaves for shade and installed exterior solar shades that block 95 percent of heat from crossing into the building. In wintertime, the shades remain up to harness the sun’s abundant warmth.

The couple also created a nearly airtight dwelling by paying special attention to walls, doors, attics and ceilings where typical homes leak heat and air. The exterior walls are 10-inches thick and filled with blown-in fiberglass. Rafters and ceilings are super-insulated with foam and loose fill fiberglass. 

To eliminate major heat loss through ducting in forced-air heating systems, they installed a whisper-quiet heat pump outside and wall cassettes, or “mini-splits,” inside. Whereas forced-air systems consume a lot of electricity to heat or cool outside air, heat pumps reduce electrical needs with technology that requires only heating or cooling air from the inside. “It’s a cool technology,” Cindi said. “The efficiency of a heat pump is astounding, and you don’t have to bring in outside air to get the comfort level down to a set temperature.”

Airtight homes also require that stale air be ventilated out. Two devices, an energy recovery ventilator, or ERV, and a HEPA filter help maintain indoor air quality. These companion pieces draw fresh air into the HEPA filter, which removes dust, pollen, pollutants and wildfire smoke, and then expel stale or smoky air to the outside.

Most of the electrical needs for the O’Neil home are handled within the system. The roof-top solar array provides power during the day, but in the morning before the sun rises, and in the evening as it sets, a Tesla Powerwall kicks in as a backup. When the Tesla runs out, the home pulls from the local power grid, Central Electric Cooperative. Winter grid usage is offset by excess electricity generated from solar panels in summer, which goes back into the grid. Hence, the net zero designation. Net zero also shields homeowners from inflation because whatever they buy on the grid is reimbursed by their contributions to the grid. 

Aesthetics balanced with efficiencies

Inhabitants of energy efficient homes must balance their aesthetic desires with health-minded compromises. For example, carpet is a no-go in most green dwellings because it produces VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and collects dirt that sullies the air. The O’Neils chose engineered white oak flooring and porcelain tiles for most of the home but couldn’t resist adding a bit of carpet in their closets. And because bare feet love a warm floor, the couple installed radiant heat in the bathrooms.

The gourmet kitchen combines energy efficiencies with modern design, featuring a large quartz-topped island with bar stools. “We’re often in the kitchen together,” Cindi said. “We call Mike the sous chef. At SolAire, he’s the builder. At home, the kitchen is my territory, and I get to be the boss there,” she said and laughed.

Cabinets are white oak and don’t off-gas VOCs. The kitchen faucets as well as bathroom shower heads are Waterwise to conserve water. Appliances are high end, Energy-Star rated, and a walk-in pantry is large enough to stock a couple of weeks’ worth of groceries—a handy feature when living in the country.

“It’s a joy to live in. It feels sometimes like I don’t need to go outside because of the way Neal Huston designed the views,” Cindi said.  

The couple is committed to intentional and thoughtful design to create high-efficiency, healthy homes. “The built environment consumes 25 percent of the nation’s energy,” Cindi said. “Why don’t we reduce the dependence on carbon? Every home has a roof to support solar panels. Every builder has a choice on whether they super-insulate and build a home to reduce energy demand going into the future.”  

“We’re concerned about the world and what we’re leaving our grandchildren,” Mike added. “Building sustainable homes that last 200 years will improve the environment for future generations.” 

Patrick Trowbridge and his wife Karrie own twenty-four acres on a pumice butte with 360-degree views from Mount Bachelor to Mount Jefferson, Lava and Pilot buttes to the Ochoco Mountains, and Awbrey Butte to Smith Rock. It’s a unique property in Deschutes River Woods, an area not generally recognized for its views. Patrick said it was “the de facto neighborhood park” before they acquired the property in 2012.

A quarter-mile south of Bend’s city limits, Deschutes River Woods, or “DRW,” was developed in the early 1960s as an unincorporated part of Deschutes County. Its main entry points are from Brookswood Avenue in southwest Bend and the Baker Road exit off south Highway 97.

In the past, it was known as a place where Bend’s working class could buy larger parcels of almost an acre in an unmanicured environment and with no design requirements. People built homes pursuant to their own desires and tastes, leading to a diversity of home styles and types. In the early days, the east boundary along the railroad and Highway 97 attracted a rough crowd, and the community over the years earned a reputation for run-down properties.

As Central Oregon grew in recent decades, DRW gradually improved its status as a livable place for families close to Bend but far enough out to retain its original character with large lots, dense pine forests and privacy. Apartment complexes, condos and other high-density housing is almost nonexistent in this rural development. The 2020 census showed a population of 5,532 people.

The Trowbridge’s family story illustrates how far this neighborhood has come in just the past decade. The couple moved to Bend in 2000 from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and spent ten years in downtown Bend, where they could walk to most places. In 2010, they wanted more space. As a broker with Knightsbridge International Real Estate, Patrick saw opportunity in the oft-forgotten DRW neighborhood. The family bought a 5.6-acre property for $204,000 and renovated it while getting a feel for the area. (They sold the house three years later for $425,000, and it sold again this past December for $1.1 million.) “We met people out here and really liked it,” he said. “The neighbors are down to earth.”

“DRW used to have a bad rap, but I think it’s changed now,” said Leslie Graff, another resident who, along with her husband Dan, bought a lot with a manufactured home in 2000 and have been steadily improving the property. “We almost bought a teeny, tiny fixer-upper house off Franklin Avenue (in Bend’s core) with a postage stamp of a yard on a very busy street,” she recalled. “We’ve always been thankful we decided on DRW. We’ve seen a lot of change in the twenty-two years that we’ve lived here. We’re in a good pocket with the greatest neighbors. It feels like we’re living in the country, and yet we’re just a hop, skip and a jump away from the city.”

The area still has buildable lots, but the supply is dwindling, according to Trowbridge. Recent sales show a mix of new but primarily older homes where values are on pace with the rest of Central Oregon’s hot real estate market. A home built in 2004 on the Graffs’ quiet, dirt road sold in 2017 for $370,000 and is now listed for $749,000. Realtor.com shows the median price for a sold home was $525,000 in September, with thirty-one listed homes ranging in price from $329,900 to $2 million.

The western edge of DRW is bounded by the Deschutes River where homes with low-bank frontage are valued in the $1- to $2-million range and look across the river to Lava Island Falls and Meadow Camp. “People are starting to realize that parts of DRW offer gorgeous home sites,” Trowbridge said.

Google Maps reveals one of the more unusual aspects of the neighborhood—ancient lava flows that comprise an impenetrable southern border. Several main streets dead end at the lava flows that form part of Newberry Volcanic National Monument. Although there are no parks in DRW, residents can access trails that lead to Lava Butte within the national monument.

Several businesses operate out of DRW, including the Alker Family Farm, a small-scale organic vegetable farm, Bend Pine Nursery, High Desert Mulching, Motokidz Motorsports, a dog groomer and boarder, an upholstery shop and others, along with a private Christian school and two churches. Riverwoods Country Store near the Baker Road exit and C. E. Lovejoy’s Market off Brookswood are the nearest convenience and grocery stores.

Deschutes River Woods today is a community in transition, where you can find a jumble of RVs, jalopies and tractors in some yards, farm animals and gardens in others, gated driveways, quiet streets with little traffic, parents who walk kids home from their bus stops, and most residents loving the rural environment where they and their pets have room to roam.

photo Central Oregon Real Estate Photography

Like buying a car, sometimes you have to test drive a few homes before settling on just the right one. Since visiting Central Oregon in the early 2000s and then moving to the area permanently in 2008, Lisa and Darren Pleasance have owned a vacation cabin and later a house on the Sunriver airport. “It was a pilot’s dream,” said Darren, who flew himself weekly to the Bay Area for his job at Google.

When they enrolled their two kids at Seven Peaks School, they moved to The Parks at Broken Top in Bend. Darren said he started missing a view, which they’d had in Sunriver. In 2014, a friend gave the couple a lead on 40 acres in Tumalo, with only an abandoned pink single-wide trailer. They got in touch with the owner who told them the property wasn’t for sale. The Pleasances made several offers over the next three years. With hope dimming, they bought a lot with a spectacular view by The Rim in Tetherow and hired an architect to design a home.

And that’s when the owner of the Tumalo 40 acres finally said yes to their offer.

More than a country home

With the Tumalo land now in their possession, the couple made a ten-year plan for the property which would include an equestrian center. While the whole family enjoys riding, Lisa competes at the highest level in the “AA-rated” Hunter and Jumper circuit. Having her own show horses out the back door and a place for others to board, train and rehab their horses was a long-held dream.

For their residence, the couple decided to adapt the Northwest lodge style home intended for Tetherow to the more spacious country site. “We took those plans which included a two-level design and stretched them out into a single floor,” Lisa said.

Capturing the unobstructed views of the Cascade Mountains from Bachelor to Jefferson became the number one priority. “The house was designed to honor the site and maximize the views while maintaining privacy from the equestrian center buildings and clients,” said builder Scott Knox, owner of Madrone Construction. He noted that the “big beautiful front door has spectacular views to the mountains.”

The layout of the 4,400-square-foot residence spreads across a north-south axis, placing the kitchen, dining and living rooms in the middle with wings on either side.

The home is faithful to the lodge style with soaring ceilings, exposed wood inside and out, stone and forged metal accents and arching roof lines. And while the common central area has traditional lodge pieces such as an authentic antler chandelier and a rustic fireplace, the style isn’t overdone. “(Architect John Muir) scaled the home well,” Knox said. He points to the dropped ceilings in the dining room and a slightly different elevation in the kitchen to add human scale.

In the Details

Interior designer Sunny Maxwell added, “while we wanted a ranch-y, comfortable feeling, we tried to avoid the cliché and focused on classic, timeless touches.”

Among the standout features are the hand-scraped, textured hickory floors tough enough to withstand dogs and dirt tracked in from the ranch, a farm kitchen sink made of solid granite and custom fireplace doors, countertops and stove hood forged from zinc by Ponderosa Forge in Sisters. One of the couple’s favorite places is the great room with the view of South Sister and the drink bar and up-lit cabinet that displays spirit and wine bottles for entertaining and for pouring out a glass of wine to enjoy around the outdoor firepit after a long day on the farm.

The master wing includes the Pleasance’s bedroom with a rare feature—views of both the sunrise and sunset from bed. Darren’s office is conveniently located nearby. He now runs the Global Sales Strategy and Operations Teams for the high-tech firm Cisco and has worked from home during the pandemic. “His office was well thought out with a fireplace, providing a nice background for video calls,” Maxwell said.

One of Lisa’s favorite places is a special purpose mudroom off the master suite. It offers convenient access to and from the horse barn and a place to hang her riding clothes and drop muddy boots before heading straight into the shower or soaking tub.

The other wing consists of their two children’s bedrooms and a combined bunkroom and media room. The large laundry and mudroom off the four-car garage has cubbies and hooks for outdoor gear, and a spacious dog wash for the three Golden Retrievers who cohabitate with the family.

An equestrian center from the ground up

Concurrent with starting the building permit process on the home, the Pleasances began with infrastructure for the equestrian center, which they would call Meridian Peaks Farm. “They’re extremely high touch and knew what they wanted to accomplish,” Knox said. He said they chose to do much of the work themselves when they could easily have outsourced it. For example, Darren rented an excavator, and a friend showed him how to use it to dig a trench for electricity and water lines. Along with contractors, they fenced the entire property, dug a well and installed irrigation to grow hay for horse grazing.

They finished the first barn in 2018 and within eighteen months added another barn. It contains an outdoor riding arena, a pond stocked with fish, a meandering riding path around the property, a large equipment storage shed and finally an indoor riding arena suitable for competition. 

A lifelong friend and Hunter and Jumper competitor of Lisa’s, Simone Starnes of Starnes Equestrian, runs the training business and manages the clients and their horses while Lisa oversees the day-to-day operations of the entire facility which has grown since its opening in 2018. Another handful of employees help both Lisa and Starnes with chores related to the care of about twenty-five horses on the property. Still, Lisa retains responsibility for feeding and tucking in all the horses each night.

Starnes said the indoor arena is a dream, “built like an upper-class facility with high-end touches but homey and oriented to horses and their riders.” It was built with steel-framing so it could be bigger than wood-framed arenas and to withstand heavy snow loads. Lisa admits her horses are “super spoiled” with heated waterers and their own private turnouts during the day.

With a finished home in the rear-view mirror and a lifestyle complete with show horses, ponies, chickens and dogs, the former Bay Area residents are fully immersed in their new country lifestyle. Neither can imagine living anywhere else. 

It’s hard to imagine a home more perfectly aligned with a family’s narrative than the Jayson and Megan Bowerman home located on the Deschutes River between the Bend Whitewater Park and Drake Park. The renovated residence blends a historic Craftsman bungalow with a contemporary addition for a home befitting their love of the river and the eclectic neighborhood of “Whiskey Flats” in the heart of Bend.

“I literally grew up in the bottom of a canoe,” said Bowerman, who was raised in Sunriver. “The Deschutes River has been my teacher my entire life, as well as my training grounds when I was a competitive whitewater kayaker as a young man.” As a member of the Bend Paddle Trail Alliance, he helped raise community support and funding to build the whitewater park before its completion in 2015.

Megan and Jayson met while Jayson was living near Tumalo, from which he felt “enslaved to my steering wheel while driving to Bend all the time.” Meg was living only blocks from where they currently reside, and Jayson realized that he had a “deep need” to be back in the heart of the community.

The couple bought the home in 2013, believed to have been built by Bend ski pioneer Nels Skjersaa in 1917. They loved the location and the structure’s historic roots, despite the dilapidated kitchen and the cottage’s small size (1,040 square feet). In 2016, with their first child on the way, they hired longtime friend and home designer, John Jordan, to envision a remodel that would preserve the original house as much as possible, while integrating a new two-story addition.

The Challenge Begins

Creating enough space for a growing family would hardly be a straightforward task since the footprint of the dwelling would be tightly constrained by the small lot size and a forty-foot riparian setback from the river’s steep, diagonal bank, as required by Bend city code.

The first major decision was what to do with a beloved detached “boathouse” near the water’s edge. In 2015, the boathouse had flooded, and Jordan suggested that if they demolished the structure, new design opportunities would open up. The Bowermans decided to tear it down.

The next big decision was what do with the century-old house—demolish it too, and start anew, or preserve the old? The structure wasn’t square to the property lines, it had been sitting on soggy, water-table soil and a new roof installed in the 1990s was underbuilt. The builder they chose, Dean Edleston of Monolithic Builders, faced many logistical challenges, including finding a drop site for materials and tools, parking for subcontractors and bringing crane to the site multiple times to supply the addition.

But the character, history and appearance of the home were important to the Bowermans, and consistent with the neighborhood, so they decided to build an addition that would straddle a second story over the original craftsman and create new space extending off the backside.

Jayson said they spent two years developing plans and let the architectural vocabulary of the early craftsman—from gables and molding to door styles—dictate overall design. To tie the two structures together, the design would match roof pitch, siding and windows and copy bracing and other features of the original home but in a larger, more contemporary format throughout the addition.

In 2018, with permits in hand, they demolished the master bedroom, kitchen and sunroom. They removed some of the original lath and plaster walls and parts of the hand-stacked foundation to incorporate structural steel framing to support the second story. “It was a big job,” Edleston said, adding that Bend Welding spent a couple days bolting the steel supports to the foundation.

The remodeled home would end up with 2,700 square feet of combined space encompassing four bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths, laundry and mud room, with river views from nearly every room, as well as two covered decks.

Exterior colors—aspen bark and red clay for trim and sage green for the body—create a seamless impression from front to back. “The plan was to make the new and old look like they’ve always been there,” Edleston said. “Kudos to John and Jayson who spent a lot of time on the initial designs.”

The final layout retained the front porch and front door, which lead to a “pick-n-parlor” music room. Jayson completed a luthier apprenticeship with Kim Breedlove in the mid-1990s and after fifteen years at Breedlove Guitar Co. went on to form Bowerman Guitars. Today he handcrafts custom guitars, mandolins and other string instruments for musicians worldwide.

The historic first floor also includes a guest bedroom, bath, mechanical room, and utility and laundry room. A hallway ushers guests out of the traditional bungalow into a contemporary craftsman structure with 21st century amenities and upgrades. The wood-beamed great room is cozy yet open. The panoramic four-panel glass (yes, glass) door opens wide to extend the living room outside to the covered deck in warm weather. A mudroom with lockers for each family member is conveniently accessed from the kitchen and leads to the garage and backyard. The second story, which overlaps part of the original structure, contains three bedrooms and a deck off the master.

Infusing Architecture with Personality

The Bowermans’ personal touch and stories permeate the remodel. The window, door, baseboard and box-beam trim came from reclaimed fir bleacher boards which Jayson found in Seattle and hauled back to Bend in a trailer during the “snowpocalypse” of 2018. “We spent days scraping miles of bubblegum off the wood,” Edleston said with a laugh. He estimates that they plugged about 1,500 bolt holes, but the result is trim that “looks historic and will age beautifully.”

The couple retained the original front door, including its skeleton key lock. And instead of ripping out the old fir floors, they stripped the fir and chose a compatible narrow-plank white oak for the new section.

“Those guys have really good taste,” Edleston said. The family searched out vintage fixtures for the old house, including a cast-iron enamel laundry sink from the historic Dalles Hotel, and rejuvenated the plaster walls with age-appropriate push button light switches.

The couple built the fireplace mantel and kitchen pantry shelving from a windfall maple salvaged from the farm of Bill and Barbara Bowerman, Jayson’s grandparents. The two decks are wide-plank Port Orford Cedar, a durable Oregon timber that Jayson says never splinters and remains soft to bare feet.

With the help of interior designer Kelly Warner, the couple chose slabs of quartzite that mimic the river. Edleston said it’s “the most beautiful quartzite I’ve seen in my life.” The kitchen also has a unique window cabinet through which the outside shines through.

The couple is grateful to its team of designers and builders who persisted through various challenges. “We have an addition that is both beautiful and functional while meeting our design goal of being a modern home which received its architectural bloodlines very clearly from the old mill house,” Jayson said.

In late 2019, the Bowerman family, which now includes their second child, moved into the home. They look forward to daily canoe paddles with their two young boys. And anyone who knows Jayson suspects it won’t be long before his kids are riding the waves with him.

Resources:

Designer: John Jordan, Evolution Home Design
Builder: Dean Edleston, Monolithic Builders
Interior: Kelly Warner, Kelly Warner Interior Design
Landscape: Chris Hart-Henderson, Heart Springs Landscape Design