Juniper Ridge's trippy plans.

I'm going to try to step up my observations about the local scene, now that the Wandering Eye has wandered off, taken it's eye off the ball, so to speak. I'm in no way plugged in politically; I only know what I read in the local news sources, and compare that to my life-long experiences in Bend and my 30 year business experience in downtown Bend.

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I see that the city of Bend of still delusional about Juniper Ridge. While the recent zone change to "light industrial" is exactly what I think they should be pursuing at this time, they still couldn't help but add this little nugget of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds...:

"Once completed, the development might resemble something like NorthWest Crossing on Bend's west side, but on a much larger scale. Mitchell has even described Juniper Ridge as sort of a "city within a city." The Bulletin.

It doesn't seem to me like NorthWest Crossing has proven it's commercial viability, yet. Much less the much larger Juniper Ridge plans.

On a much smaller scale, Northwest Crossing seems to be viable as a sub-division, (does Bend really need to encourage subsidized sub-divisions?) but I see way too much office and retail space empty over there.

The possibility of a university is so long term as to be non-existent. I mean, it could happen 20 or 30 years from now, and they could point out their plans in the year 2010 and say, "See? We planned ahead." But, really. Not much chance of that happening anytime soon.

Well, let's see how quickly new businesses come to town to scoop up the newly available industrial park, shall we? Hopefully, not taking away jobs from another local community, like Les Schwab, or simply moving from one part of town to the other because of tax breaks.