Yep, I've gone to the dark side.

You ever seen that picture of the little ol' Victorian house surrounded by skyscrapers?

But, really, if these rich folk (or deeply in debt folk) want to fix up the neighborhood, why should I complain? In theory, I miss the old funky downtown, but you know what? I'm doing better with the new downtown, people walk in the door who have money and are willing to spend it.

The old buildings? You know what, most of them were crap. Seriously. Nothing very charming about them. The few that had a little history have already been fixed up, the rest were pieces of junk. Sure I could wish they would vary the styles a bit, but really they aren't that bad. Certainly better than what was there before.

I figure that almost all these construction and storefronts were incubated between 2004 and 2007. You want to buy a house, bang you do it. You want to tear down an old building and put up a new one? You want to open a new business? That's going to take some time.

So, we are in a time-travel zone where the building you see is from 2005. It just happens to be built in 2007 and 2008. But all that money flowing into downtown Bend is nothing but good for me now.

Of course, I may regret it down the road a couple of years. I hope my landlords are living in the same time zone and universe as me, but there are no quarantees. I figure in a couple of years the bloom will be off a bit, and keeping tenants will be a priority. But in the meantime, build, build, build!

Just don't do it on my block.