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Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com
SNO-PARK
Wanoga out, Ellis in: The story behind the new name
Why not
⢠Tech giants are building data centers across the Northwest, including in Prineville
Juniper Ridge?
REDMOND
Low 4-year grad rate explained: 5th year is college level
By Dylan J. Darling
By Ben Botkin
The Bulletin
The Bulletin
The sno-park long known as Wanoga is Wanoga no more. In winter 2011, the U.S. Forest Service renamed the snowmobile side of the sno-park, southwest of Bend off Cascade Lakes Highway, the Frank Ellis Sno-park, though the nearby sledding hill is the Wanoga Snoplay Area. Although there are small signs indicating the Frank The new Ellis Snonamesake park, Marv of an old Lang, recsno-park, reation forA5 ester for the Deschutes National Forest, said the Forest Service may eventually add more. Meanwhile, the Oregon Department of Transportation intends to replace signs that say Wanoga along the highway this summer. âWhen that happens, it will get a new sign,â Lang said. Installing new signs will be one of the last chores for road crews working on a project along nine miles of the highway, said Peter Murphy, ODOT spokesman in Bend. âIt wonât be until the project is more or less complete,â he said. See Sno-park / A5
REDMOND â Redmond High School students donât need to graduate in four years. Through the schoolâs advanced diploma program, they may opt instead for a fifth year of college-level courses, with the state picking up the tab. Students pursuing such a diploma take advanced, college-level classes during their extra year, graduating with 27 credits in hand from Central Oregon Community College. The program has been in place since 2007. Roughly 100 students take advantage of the program every year, and its popularity, paradoxically, erodes one measure of school performance: the schoolâs fouryear graduation rate. Redmond High Schoolâs four-year rate is 47.5 percent, according to the Oregon Department of Education, significantly below the statewide average of 67.2 percent. Those numbers refer to students who entered high school in 2007 â the same year the advanced diploma program began. However, Redmond Highâs five-year graduation rate topped the average. Statewide, 70.5 percent of students who entered high school in 2006 graduated within five years. Redmond Highâs rate is 71.3 percent. âThe idea behind the advanced diploma was, essentially, âLetâs ensure that students exit the high school and move on to postsecondary education prepared to be successful,â â said Jon Bullock, the districtâs strategic planning director. See Redmond / A5
Swampy Virginia Lakes Meissner Sno-park Sno-park
46
97
Greg Cross / The Bulleti
45 DESCHUTES N AAndy T I OZeigert N A L F/ The O R Bulletin EST
the clang of metal and hum of diesel
engines fill the air. Along the horizon, a steel skeleton rises from the sagebrush. Facebook is expanding.
Photo by Rob Kerr / Background photo by Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
Facebookâs 333,400-square-foot data center in Prineville (above) employees about 55 people. The company is building another data center that could be just as large. That would seem to be one of the problems with siting such a facility at Bendâs Juniper Ridge business park (pictured in the background, in 2009).
Meanwhile, on the far northeast side of Bend, the silence is interrupted by the occasional whir of a car in a multilane
Juniper Ridge
roundabout. Yellow signs warn of dead ends.
Itâs supposed to be a burgeoning business park, with a four-year university at its core and mixed-use, urban livability in its heart. Instead, itâs mostly vacant. Over the past several years, large companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook have built giant server farms throughout Oregon and the Pacific Northwest to store the little bits of data found in everything from online shopping carts to profile pictures. These facilities are likely to multiply, given the increasing
popularity of âcloudâ computing â a trend in which data is stored on remote computer servers and accessed through the Internet. Oregon is well-positioned to lure the large-scale data centers companies like Facebook are building. Theyâre attracted to the stateâs cheap power, lucrative tax breaks, and even the temperate climate in eastern and central Oregon, which can lower the cost of cooling the servers that fill data centers. Prineville has managed
to plug into this data center surge. But not the city of Bend, which simply canât compete despite the glut of land at Juniper Ridge. There are several reasons for this, including a lack of infrastructure. But land prices, geology and tax incentives also play a role. Thereâs also a matter of fit. Would the city even want a Facebook-like data center in Juniper Ridge if it had the chance? Some say no. See Juniper Ridge / A6
BN SF Rai lwa y
Welcome to Juniper Ridge, the cityâs 1,500-acre real estate gamble.
Dale Rd.
Findlay Ln.
97
Cooley Rd.
Les Schwab Tire Center
Deschutes Mkt. Rd.
BEND
O
n a plateau overlooking Prineville,
18th St.
Frank Ellis Sno-park, Wanoga Snoplay Area
By Nick Grube ⢠The Bulletin
Yeoman Rd.
BEND
Mk t. Butler
Rd.
Andy Zeigert / The Bulletin
Andy Zeigert / The Bulletin
WHITNEY HOUSTON ⢠1963â2012
On eve of Grammys, a fallen superstar dies By Nekesa Mumbi Moody The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES â Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop musicâs queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, died Saturday. She was 48. Beverly Hills Police Lt. Mark Rosen told reporters outside the Beverly Hilton that Houston was pronounced
SUNDAY
We use recycled newsprint
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Whitney Houston was one of the worldâs best-selling artists in the 1980s and â90s, but she became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use, and Houston (pictured in 2000) never truly realized a comeback in the way millions of fans believed possible.
dead at 3:55 p.m. in her room. Her body remained there, and Beverly Hills detectives were investigating. âThere were no obvious signs of any criminal intent,â Rosen said. Paramedics who were already at the hotel because of a Grammy party â on the eve of the awards show â tried to resuscitate the singer, he said. Houstonâs publicist, Kristen Foster, said the cause of death was unknown. See Houston / A8
The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper
Vol. 109, No. 43, 44 pages, 7 sections
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Milestones Obituaries Opinion
By Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert Gebeloff New York Times News Service
LINDSTROM, Minn. â Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know he does not need any help from the federal government. But still, he gets it â in fact, heâs counting on it this year. The government safety net was created to keep Ameri-
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Caught in the safety net, middle class joins the poor
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cans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to an official analysis published last year. See Safety net / A7
TOP NEWS CPAC: Republicans bash Obama, A3 Syria: Protests take violent turn, A3