(Left) The Wellness Center more than doubles La Pine Community Health Center’s current space (Right) CEO Marie Manes, described as “a real executive,” has been very involved with the Wellness Center project | Photos by Andrea Hine)
“I was absolutely floored when first touring the Wellness Center at La Pine Community Health Center (LCHC),” said Adam Bledsoe, principal broker at Compass Commercial Real Estate. “Not only is it the nicest and tallest building in La Pine, but it’s one of the nicest buildings in our area — so first class and first rate.”
Compass is collaborating with LCHC to manage leasing of a portion of the three-story, 27,000-square-foot building: a fully furnished, turnkey five-chair dental setup, and a 5,562-square foot office suite featuring flexible configurations and elevator access.
Bledsoe, whose notable projects include The Quad at Skyline Ridge (former home of the Bend Bulletin), which has been transformed into a 10-acre, six-building Class A office park featuring ponderosa pines and central plazas, described LCHC’s Wellness Center as “the first real Class A building in La Pine. It’s simply amazing what they built.”
He characterized his primary LCHC liaison, CEO Marie Manes, as “a real executive. She is very involved with the project, visiting the new building every day, and talking with the contractors.” In Manes’s words, “I’m looking for issues, and making sure that everything is as it should be.”
“Compass has been great to work with,” she said. “We were going to do the leasing ourselves, but recognized that we didn’t know what we didn’t know (including leasing legalities). Adam and his team have been great — very honest and informative — and talk in a way we can understand. They are really helping to guide us along the way.”
Manes, who has been in the health care field for 30+ years (on the administrative versus clinical side), explained that “This is where my heart is; I really like helping people.”
After starting as a receptionist when hired by LCHC in 2005 — her first job with a nonprofit — Manes steadily advanced to COO before being selected by the organization’s board of directors as CEO in January 2026, having developed (as stated in the official press release) “deep knowledge of the health center’s mission, operations, and the needs of the community.”
“Becoming CEO was a natural next step,” Manes said. She described her new role as “challenging. I’m learning a lot” — starting with regulatory reporting to the federal agency HRSA, which provides “a significant share of our funding” as a nonprofit Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC).
Her responsibilities also include “helping determine policies, making financial decisions, and ensuring proper staffing.” Manes directly oversees the billing and IT departments, and “watches out for all 50 employees and some 6,200 patients (extending beyond La Pine to Lake and north Klamath counties — basically everything south of Sunriver.”
Manes acquired expertise in physical and operational security — which includes managing physical site safety, digital patient privacy, and secure online portals — “just by doing and learning.” She is now overseeing modern building safety and security designs for the Wellness Center — down to the badges that will be worn by every employee to gain external and internal access.
In addition to providing dental services and expanded behavioral health capabilities, the Wellness Center will (when equipment can be secured) offer mammograms, ultrasounds, and CT scans — none of which had previously been available in La Pine. “It’s really important to bring these imaging services to the communities served by LCHC,” Manes said, “especially those communities located farther away from Bend.”
Compass Commercial’s Bledsoe praised the 2,125-square-foot dental suite — which includes a therapy room for those needing privacy, a break room, and an office — as being “built out to the highest standards, and ready to be occupied immediately. Normally, it would take a year to go through the permitting and construction process for a new space,” he said. In this case, however, “everything is there but the instruments.”
And referring to the other space that is available for leasing, “a suite that occupies half of the entire second floor,” Bledsoe noted that “we’ve had interest already.”
According to Manes, the Wellness Center more than doubles LCHC’s current space, and will house all the administrative functions now located in its original building.
In addition, it will include rooms for staff training; community gatherings and instructional classes such as cooking; an employee lounge designed to be “a relaxing space for all LCHC employees,” Manes said; and a coffee kiosk, located in the reception area.
In managing the completion of Wellness Center, among her other responsibilities, Manes commented that “things have changed along the way” — most dramatically the timeline, when construction was temporarily postponed.
However, Manes emphasized, “movement has resumed, with efforts focused on the building’s interior and securing additional funding to support Wellness Center services.” “We’ve received the official Certificate of Occupancy (which proves that a structure complies with building codes, zoning laws, and safety regulations, and is legally fit for use), and project that we’ll move into the new space later this year.”
She emphasized that “LCHC Property Manager Soffia Skeens, Skanska, and project management company Cumming Group have played integral roles in helping us achieve this milestone.”
“La Pine Community Health Center has built a very user-friendly and leasable building,” said Adam Bledsoe, “which should appeal to companies in Bend, among others, that have outgrown their facilities. It’s of the quality that can level-up a bedroom community, and could well have a transformative effect on La Pine.”
