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• June 5, 2010 50¢
Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com
Brothers once again a place to fill ’er up
BendBroadband plans data center
By Lillian Mongeau
Cable and Internet provider BendBroadband is planning to develop a data center in northeast Bend, converting the former home of Bend Tarp & Liner into an energy-efficient data storage facility by the end of the year. BendBroadband President and CEO Amy
Empire
Company’s project in line for some tax breaks By David Holley The Bulletin
BendBroadband could receive multiple incentives for developing its data center. • Oregon Investment Advantage As long as there are no objections
Property Bend spent millions on for city hall now a drain
BUS 97
from Deschutes County, the planned BendBroadband facility, currently called the Vault, should qualify for a tax waiver on income or excise taxes related to the center’s operations for up to 10 years. See Breaks / A7
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Proposed BendBroadband data center
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18th St.
Tykeson said the company plans to invest approximately $10 million in the first phase of the project, including the purchase of the 30,000square-foot warehouse on Sockeye Place, retrofitting the building for use as a data center, and the purchase of server computers and other equipment. See Data / A7
Sockeye Pl .
Brinson Blv
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Boyd Acres Rd.
For the first time in more than two years, there is gasoline and diesel available again in Brothers — one of only two gas stations on the 100-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 20 between Bend and Burns. For years it was the best place to fuel up, but since the winter of 2008 it has been one of the most common places to break down. Jerrie Hanna, who co-owns Brothers Stage Stop with her sister Dixie, said she had stopped selling gas on the long stretch of desert road that leads to Boise after rising prices and a lack of customers made it difficult to keep buying enough gas to make it worthwhile. “It gets very slow out here in the wintertime, and we couldn’t afford to have it,” Hanna said. “Unless we get enough, they don’t want to deliver it to us.” See Brothers / A6
The Bulletin
Bend Parkway
The Bulletin
By Scott Hammers
Butler Market Rd. Greg Cross / The Bulletin
Feelin’ super on a cruiser
By Hillary Borrud The Bulletin
Five years after the city of Bend spent $4.78 million on land for a new city hall, the lot sits empty and debt payments are cutting into the city’s general fund. The city is trying to sell the property, but even if it succeeds, it could face a million-dollar loss. Currently, the 3-acre parcel at the corner of Olney Avenue and Wall Street is on the market for $3.9 million, and city officials have estimated the value could be lower than that. The city tried before to sell the property without success, in late 2006. Taxpayers will likely shell out $1.34 million on interest payments if Bend does not sell the property until June 2015 when the city is scheduled to repay the loan it took out to buy the property, according to a city staff report. The city borrowed the money to buy the property in 2005, and City Manager Eric King has said the city needs to sell the property for at least $5.5 million to break even. The idea that the city should buy the land came from the two developers who owned it five years ago, and city councilors went ahead with the purchase although they could not reach a consensus to move city hall to the site. “For what it’s worth, I consider that to be a mistake,” City Councilor Jim Clinton said of the land purchase. “And so it’s been kind of a white elephant on the city’s books since then.” Clinton is the only remaining councilor who was involved in the decision to buy the land. “It was a time when everyone was very optimistic about buying real estate,” Clinton said. “Downtown was booming. Prices were going up.” The land is often referred to as The Bulletin property, because the newspaper’s office was formerly located there. See Property / A7
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We use recycled newsprint
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The Bulletin / Rob Kerr
Josh Gobershock, 35, front, dressed in a Wonder Woman costume, with Cate Hass, 33, as Superman behind him on a tandem bike, ride in the “Inaugural Official, Unofficial Downtown Cruiser Crit” on Friday night in downtown Bend. The group bike ride featuring a variety of bicycles and costumed riders made several circuits of downtown Bend as a part of the First Friday Art Walk. The group hopes to make the event a First Friday tradition.
Scientists identify mystery For tribe, bitter history gets worse meteors in Whitman poem
GULF OIL SPILL
By David A. Fahrenthold
Inside
The Washington Post
POINTE-AUX-CHENES, La. — The best thing about this place — where the dry land of south Louisiana gives up, and marshes and bayous stretch away to the gulf — used to be that white people had so much trouble finding it. Here, a French-speaking Indian tribe has lived for more than a century, isolated from a world that had proved itself unfriendly.
• BP’s latest solution meets with limited success, Page A3 But the oil found its refuge in a month and a day. Now, this tribe is feeling an especially sharp version of Louisiana’s despair. Its members worry that the oil will kill the
The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper
Vol. 107, No. 156, 66 pages, 6 sections
marsh, and seethe at the idea that a bitter history now seems to be getting worse. “They come in and take our land. Now, the oil’s taking over. It’s like it’s happening all over” again, said Grace Welch, 26, in a stilt-legged house across the street from the bayou. Across the living room, her father was fantasizing about killing Christopher Columbus. See Tribe / A6
By Amina Khan Los Angeles Times
Scholars have for decades tried to identify a puzzling celestial event in one of Walt Whitman’s poems from his collection “Leaves of Grass.” Now they’ve done so — using clues from a famed landscape painter. In the July issue of Sky and Telescope magazine, a team that includes both astronomers
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and a literary scholar, all from Texas State University, details the existence and nature of the rare event, in which meteor fragments crossed the sky in stately, synchronized fashion. The heavenly display is described in the poem “Year of Meteors (1859-1860),” in which Whitman writes of the tumult leading up to the Civil War. See Whitman / A6
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BLOCKADE: Another ship bound for Gaza; Israel forges agreement to unload, transport cargo, Page A2