I've been trying to imagine what this town is going to look like in ten years. The announcement of yet another major department store is coming to Bend, (where Jakes used to be) along with tens of thousands of retail square footage, is like the other shoe dropping. There seemed to be a short pause in the new retail there for awhile, especially on Third Street, but it looks like we're off to the races again.

While downtown has never really stopped growing, there certainly has been a sudden surge. Answering the question of who was going to inhabit all these new buildings.

And then there is the contempt a local developer has for our laws in cutting down all the trees he wanted for land he won't even be building on for a long time to come. He's might be fined 50k. What? The timber is probably worth more than that!

With the housing bubble really kicking in, all this is hard to explain. The only analogy I can come up with is the way the Russian Army handled minefields in WWII. They simply sent waves of soldiers over the mines until they were exploded.

As I mentioned the other day, new retail appears ready to open whether it makes any sense or not. Some of them are going to explode mines, but the army will get to the other side.

Like I said, charging the enemy with a couple of other soldiers is insane. But if everyone else in the division joins you, it has a chance of success. The machine guns will mow alot of men down, but the army moves on.