Website created to assist new Bend residents
Movingtobend.com launched 2 weeks ago
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The number of families moving to Bend continues to grow each year. If you're one of those families, there's a new website that was created to help you learn more about the area and what it offers.
The website is fittingly called movingtobend.com. Bend Relocation Services and the Bend Chamber of Commerce partnered to create the website, which launched two weeks ago.
On the home page, you can find drop-down menus that share more about the area. For example, if you want to find out about different parks you can take your dog to, just hover over the ‘Play’ tab and click on ‘Parks and Dog Parks.’ The same applies if you're looking for schools for your children to attend, or different breweries to visit.
Melissa Gottlieb, the owner of Bend Relocation Services, moved to Bend six years ago from the East Coast. She knows first-hand it can be a difficult process.
"There are a lot of options in Bend, which is wonderful for people that are living here," Gottlieb said Wednesday. "But it can be really overwhelming for people that are coming here and don't know where to go to school, and what neighborhoods to live in, and how to access local business and resources."
“I felt like it was really important to have a centralized place for people to be able to find all of that information in one website," she said.
Gottlieb said her business has helped 176 families moving to Bend so far this year. That's about a 56% increase from last year.
NewsChannel 21 asked a moving company in town how that's affected business.
"It's very difficult to hire drivers for household goods,” said Denise Clancy, Bend Storage and Transfer’s office manager. “You have to have a commercial driver's license, but then you actually have to be willing to get out of the truck and move furniture. Hiring those people has been very challenging. We only can book as many moves as I have staff to do it well. So I have to turn work away."
Gottlieb said there have already been more than 4,000 visitors on the site since it launched 13 days ago. That's an average of more than 300 visitors a day.
One of those visitors is Jenn Cieslar. At the end of July, Cieslar and her husband recently moved to Bend from a suburb outside of Austin, Texas with their four children, two dogs and three cats. So she certainly has her hands full. However, Cieslar said this tool has helped ease the process.
"It's like a one-stop-shop,” Cieslar said. “You can just go there -- it's almost kind of like the Amazon of moving. Everything, every question, everything that you think of, it's like a quick -- 'let's go enter a search, figure out what there is,' and it just gives you the answers and the things that you're looking for."
