Bend neighbors fed up with Mt. Bachelor park-and-ride

It’s all white picket fences and well-groomed lawns out front of a southwest Bend neighborhood on Allen Road.

But head to the back and it’s a different story.

Randall and Victoria Davis live right across Mt. Bachelor’s park-and-ride, a large, public parking lot where skiers and boarders can leave their cars and ride Mt. Bachelor’s shuttle buses up to the slopes.

The Davises said they were fine with Bachelor putting a lot right across the alley behind their home–until they realized just how trashy it would get.

“Debris, weeds, trash, and of course there’s pallets and stuff sitting around,” Victoria Davis said Tuesday.

NewsChannel 21 received an email from Mt. Bachelor officials late Tuesday, saying they plan to meet with the city about the complaint and will deal with the issue, doing whatever the city requires.

“I would just like to see them take a little bit better care and be a better neighbor to us here,” said Victoria’s husband, Randall Davis.

Randall said it’s not just he and his wife who are concerned. He said more than 15 other residents from the neighborhood are sick of the eyesore.

A few weeks ago, tired of waiting for an answer, Randall filed a code complaint with the city of Bend.

Randall said many people in the neighborhood worked closely with engineers when the lot was developed a few years ago.

He said an agreement in the building site called for six-foot-high berms with landscaping and regular upkeep by Mt. Bachelor.

Years later, some of the berms are not six feet high, parts of the lot are covered in trash and wood pallets, and irrigation tubes are exposed.

Randall said he and others have tried contacting Mt. Bachelor several times without response.

Tuesday afternoon, NewsChannel 21 received an email from Mt. Bachelor officials, who gave this statement:

“We are aware of the complaint and we made arrangements with the city of Bend in late December to meet with their officials at the site in January to review the complaint. Mitigation of any issues will be delayed until the spring and Mt Bachelor, as it always has, will live up to any binding commitments.”

“It is a little bit frustrating,” Randall Davis said earlier, “the lack of response from Mt. Bachelor, because this could be a nice facility, but they just built it and then kind of walked away from it.”

Other neighbors, including Linda May, said they are also upset by the maintenance of the lot. They said it’s not just about aesthetics, but also health and safety.

“The buses now are warming up on the alley side, and so, .the diesel smell seems to migrate down into the alley,” Victoria Davis said. “And talking to the neighbors, they’ve been really concerned about that.”

The Davises said they had tried getting Mt. Bachelor to warm up buses on the Columbia side of their lot, away from homes, but so far, nothing has changed. They said they worry not only about noise, smell of exhaust and appearance of the lot, but also that it’s taking away from the property value of their homes.