The epicenter of county real estate will soon be in a new building on the north end of Roseburg — near some recent major development with possibly more to come — housing the Douglas County Board of Realtors and the Regional Multiple Listing Service.

On Friday the two real estate agencies stood at the site’s cornerstone, the northeast corner of Edenbower Boulevard and Northeast Stephens Street, and broke ground with gold spray-painted shovels.

“This will better serve the Realtors of Douglas County, Oregon and southwest Washington,” said Gary Taylor, chairman of the RMLS building task force.

The 5,000-square-foot building will be two stories tall, housing the Board of Realtors and RMLS on the top floor and, on the bottom, a meeting room with a kitchen large enough to cater rented-out private functions.

The building will be equipped with wireless Internet and high-tech presentation equipment, such as automated projection screens.

The facility will also host a “data-recovery center” involving emergency backup servers for RMLS that are duplicative of Portland servers and can quickly bring a database for more than 14,000 Realtors back online.

The Portland-based RMLS is the Northwest’s largest Realtor-owned Multiple Listing Service, including more than 950,000 real estate listings in Oregon and Washington.

The groundbreaking of the new building has been two years in the making after the Board of Realtors and RMLS evaluated the needs of their memberships, said Mary Gilbert, chairwoman of the Realtors’ building committee.

“It’s going to be a great kick-off to the economics and real estate of Douglas County,” promoting increased home ownership and investment, Gilbert said.

Joan Parker, executive officer of the Douglas County Board of Realtors, said that building a real-estate headquarters together was something the two agencies first envisioned a few years ago.

“It will be built to not only serve our members better but also the community,” Parker said.

The Douglas County Board of Realtors and RMLS currently operate from leased building spaces on Northwest Ellan Street in Roseburg, off Garden Valley Boulevard.

The new building at Edenbower Boulevard and Northeast Stephens Street could be completed by October, developer Bruce Anderson said.

Earth work was scheduled to begin last week, but adverse weather conditions kept machinery idle, Anderson said.

Roseburg Mayor Larry Rich said the location of the building is next to a highly trafficked intersection and is ideal for drawing the attention of newcomers — often welcomed by real estate agents — to the community.

“We are expanding it seems pretty rapidly in Roseburg,” Rich said, also noting the possible addition of Costco a little farther north on Northeast Stephens Street.



• You can reach reporter Adam Pearson at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@newsreview.info.