(Tribute Golf Club | Rendering courtesy of Thornburgh Resort)
Thornburgh Resort, the more than 2,000 acre property north of Bend and adjacent to the Cline Buttes, has made significant progress in their early stages of development. The luxury community expects to begin construction of the first cabins around the first of April, the Tribute Golf Course has been fully shaped and molded, and Lake Thornburgh is expected to be lined and filled early this summer.
The golf course, routed by Coore & Crenshaw, and built by Whitman, Axland, & Cutten, will emphasize native landscaping and will feature 1,000 year old juniper trees lining the edges. The paths providing access to the course are made with sand and crushed gravel that was already present on the property. The course is set to be seeded this summer, and is expected to be play-ready by the summer of 2024.
The developer, Kameron Delashmutt, said that Thornburgh is in negotiations with “the nation’s leading 5-star hoteliers” about the management of the resort’s lodging and resort operations. “We’re on our way to becoming the first 5-star property here in Oregon,” Delashmutt said.
With development underway, news of the resort has spread. The Thornburgh website received 95,000 visitors in the first two months, and Delashmutt said that the resort has begun to accept reservations on cabins and homesites; cabins which will be built as net-zero structures, utilizing a solar panel roofing system from Tesla.
While Delashmutt was approved to build 2,100 homes, he has recently been approved for a request to reduce that number to 950 and to decrease the number of houses required per hotel room. This request also decreased the number of hotel rooms from 475, down to 380.
In an effort to preserve the landscape and the views that come with it, each house will be built onto a natural slope and single-loaded streets. Not only does this preserve mountain views and property value, it also allows for significantly more space to be dedicated to preserving the natural landscape.
On March 29, another application from the resort to forgo the building of an entire golf course and to reduce the amount of area for lakes, parks and green space was approved. This will not only reduce water use, but also increase space for natural landscaping and resource-sensitive landscaping.
However, not everyone is excited with this news. Since 2005, the resort development has become one of the litigious land use projects in Oregon’s history, with more than 50 appeals at various levels, up to the Oregon Supreme Court, in some cases. Central Oregon LandWatch, an environmental and land-use focused nonprofit organization, has cited a variety of environmental concerns; a major one being the resort’s proposed water use, in conjunction with Central Oregon’s worsening drought conditions.
The resort was recently approved for a request to decrease their allotted water usage from 2,129 AF to 1,460 AF, and said in a statement that, “The reduction in water usage reflects an ongoing commitment to resource efficiency. We have chosen to forego building one golf course, and reduced the amount and size of lakes and irrigated areas.”
Additionally, the resort announced a $400,000 pledge with the mission to protect and help restore the Crooked River Watershed. Further, Delashmutt claims that the resort is actually helping save water, “We purchased certificated water rights already in use and stopped pumping the water allowed under those rights. That water is presently left in the aquifer and river, reducing water usage in the Basin and increasing flows in the river.”
The amount of water any resort ultimately applies for is based on the total water usage at build out. According to Delashmutt, the resort is using less water than the amount being saved by purchasing and not using pre-existing water rights. In a statement from the resort, this excess mitigation will actually increase the amount of water in the Deschutes Basin by an estimate of 24,000 acre feet until build out, at which point the resort will have a net-zero water use, due to mitigating an acre foot of water for every acre foot that the resort actually consumes.
However, opponents to the development have remained vocal. A statement from LandWatch reads, “in recent years, it has become clear the resort lacks a permanent, long-term water supply for resort use, as required by the County Code. The resort did meet the requirement to demonstrate it had water available in 2008, but no longer does.”
According to Delashmutt, “We have many different water rights permits and certificates. Another one, the Tree farm, is a fully certificated water right that has approval for use on the Thornburgh property right now.”
LandWatch states that, “the expiration of permit G-17036 (Thornburgh’s 2008 water permit) is a substantial change affecting the legal requirement that the resort must demonstrate it has a permanent water supply available.”
However, Thornburgh rejects this notion. In a public hearing held in October of 2022, an attorney representing the resort, Kenneth Katzaroff said, “this idea that Thornburgh has somehow lost its water right or that it is expired is simply not correct, by the facts or by the law. The law says you have to develop a water use or apply for an extension, and that is what Thornburgh has done. Under Oregon water law and the facts of this case, that water right is not expired. This issue has been addressed for years now, and what is being asserted otherwise is simply not true.”
This statement was followed up by the attorney sharing the news of how Thornburgh transferred 200 acre feet of water to farmers in the North Unit Irrigation District.
Developer Delashmutt later added in an email that, “LandWatch has made this argument some 25 times in the last few years and have had the argument rejected at the hearings officer level, at the BOCC, the Land Use Board of Appeals, the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Oregon Supreme Court. It is a falsehood, and one that the courts have totally rejected.”
To further this point, Thornburgh provided a copy of permit G-17036 from an Oregon Water Resources Department Water Rights Information Query from March 20 of this year. As of that date, the permit’s status reads, “Non-Cancelled.”
It is actually this “Non-Cancelled” status that is causing contention between groups for and against the development. Those in support of the development argue that the “Non-Cancelled” status of the permit suffices to demonstrate water available for the resort.
It is the position of LandWatch that, “the status of ‘Non-Canceled’ only means the permit is not canceled yet, but that OWRD will cancel it in the future in a contested case hearing.”
In addition to water use, concerns over public land access have surfaced over the years, as many mountain bikers and hikers are concerned they will lose access to miles of trails.
To address that concern, Delashmutt is working with Paul Thomasberg, co-founder of COTA, as well as the BLM, to design and build a trail system connecting the Maston trail system with the Cascade View trails. According to the developers, “this partnership is building a trailhead and parking lot at the Rock Pit on the north side of the Clines Buttes to allow the public easy access to the trail system. The initial planning was conducted in the early 2000s as a part of the long-range trail plan for the region, and active trail construction has been underway since last year.”
Amid controversy over the environmental costs of the resort, another major concern held by the resort’s opponents is the resort’s 2022 Fish and Wildlife Mitigation Plan, an update from the original 2008 plan.
LandWatch, along with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs argue that the 2022 FWMP falls flat, and does not adequately protect fish and wildlife to meet the legal standard of “no net loss or net degradation of the resource.”
The ODFW stated in a letter that the organization, “cannot concur that the 2022 plan will result in reliable, legally protected wet water that results in no net loss or no net degradation of the resource.”
Similarly, the CTWS stated in a letter their disapproval, saying, “fishery resources at issue are both treaty-protected and vital to the Tribe’s cultural identity and existence,” and, ““The Tribe does not currently have enough information to evaluate whether the applicant can rely on this strategy to demonstrate that its water use and mitigation plan completely mitigates negative impacts on the fishery resource so that there is no net loss or net degradation of the resource.”
LandWatch believes that the proposal should be struck down, stating, “The County should consider the issue of water availability for the resort holistically, not in a piecemeal fashion. The County should consider the implications of the 1,200-year drought; OWRD’s July 2022 denials; the effects on fish and wildlife; ODFW’s lack of agreement with the 2022 FWMP; the effects on neighboring wells; the effects on the Tribe’s treaty-protected resources; and the lack of capacity of the groundwater resource, all together, in a new resort application.”
At a hearing held on the morning of March 29 with the Board of County Commissioners, a vote was held that will determine the future of the 2022 FWMP. An initial voice vote approved the plan 2-1; a potentially significant victory for the developers. However, while the plan has essentially been approved, LandWatch states that there is potential for appeal.
In response, a statement from LandWatch reads, “LandWatch strongly disagrees with the BOCC’s initial vote to approve the Fish and Wildlife Plan Modification. We are awaiting a final written decision from the County before deciding whether to appeal to the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA). Because the applicant failed to prove they can provide adequate mitigation water to protect fish and wildlife, an appeal to LUBA is likely.”
While disagreement still mounts on both sides of this historically litigious development, Delashmutt remains optimistic about Thornburgh and the methods put forward to mitigate the development’s environmental impact. He asserts that Thornburgh can become one of the most eco-friendly resorts in the country, and, if everything goes to plan, the resort could be a “nation-first achievement.”
“We are pursuing other community wide energy initiatives which could make Thornburgh the model of sustainability,” Delashmutt said. “It’s a crazy beautiful property and we are dedicated to preserving that beauty and enhancing it.”
