Steve Hultberg is a Partner with Radler White Parks & Alexander LLP and heads the firm’s Central Oregon office. He is a member of the Land Use and Real Estate practice groups. Steve has been selected by his peers for inclusion in the The Best Lawyers in America every year since 2010. He has also been recognized as an industry leader by Chambers USA every year since 2010. The publication notes that Steve has “rapidly developed a formidable reputation for zoning and land use from the firm’s Bend office” and that his work is held in “high regard.”

With more than 20 years in private practice, Steve has significant land use entitlement experience, including practice before local governments, administrative agencies, and appellate courts. He also has broad real estate transactional knowledge, working on financing documents, purchase and sale agreements, commercial leases, and easements.

Steve’s clients include commercial, residential, industrial, and institutional developers, public agencies, timber and agri-business companies, sand and gravel operators, and telecommunication companies. Steve represents several destination resorts in Oregon and is responsible for a wide range of land use, environmental, real estate, and regulatory matters for his resort clients.

In support of renewable energy clients, he has performed land use due diligence, regulatory analysis, and transactional work for a proposed wind farm and a major natural gas transmission line. Steve represents Oregon State University (OSU) in connection with its Cascades Campus long-range planning efforts in Bend. He recently secured approval of OSU-Cascades’ 128-acre campus master plan from the City of Bend, which will allow the university to expand to 5,000 students over the next 15 years.

Before joining RWPA, Steve was Of Counsel to Ball Janik LLP in its highly regarded real estate and land use practice groups. He also practiced land use and real estate law for ten years at Perkins Coie in Portland. While in law school, Steve clerked at the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA).

Steve has served on a number of local government advisory panels assisting local governments with their infrastructure planning needs, including the City of Bend’s Urban Growth Boundary Technical Advisory Committee and Sewer Infrastructure Advisory Committee. He is currently Chair of Bend’s Citywide Transportation Advisory Committee (CTAC), which provides recommendations related to the updates of the Transportation System Plan (TSP) and Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP). The CTAC is also responsible for providing policy recommendations to Bend City Council on a variety of transportation-related policies and funding strategies.

Steve previously served on the executive board of directors of Economic Development for Central Oregon, a private non-profit organization dedicated to diversifying the Central Oregon economy by recruiting new companies and helping existing firms expand.

Steve secured approval of Oregon State University-Cascades’ 128-acre campus master plan from the City of Bend, which will allow the university to expand to 5,000 students over the next 15 years. The campus expansion encompasses a 46-acre former pumice mine property and a 72-acre former Deschutes County landfill. The combined properties allow the university to reclaim unusable land for sustainable development and create a long-term community and regional asset.

Steve represented the largest destination resort in Central Oregon in connection with Deschutes County’s destination resort map amendments. He secured approval to add a 600 acre tract to the County’s inventory and successfully defended the County’s decision to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals. Steve is currently securing land use approvals to expand the Caldera Springs Destination Resort in Deschutes County.

Steve helped a large destination resort complete a complex and contentious land exchange with the governing homeowners’ association that allowed the resort to consolidate its core resort holdings. Steve also represented a timber company with the disposition of its Central Oregon holdings totaling over 100,000 acres of timberland.

Steve assisted a national hotel developer to obtain land use and variance approvals for a new hotel in Bend’s Old Mill District.

Steve represented a lifestyle center developer through a contentious approval process to build a 300,000 square foot re-developed center and successfully defended the entitlements on appeal to the Land Use Board of Appeals.

Steve represents a large national homebuilder in connection with the City of Bend’s Urban Growth Boundary expansion.

Steve successfully defended the City of Bend’s land use approvals for Oregon State University’s Bend campus before the Oregon Court of Appeals and Oregon Supreme Court. He currently represents the university in connection with its long-term planning efforts in Bend and Corvallis.

  • Chambers USA, Industry Leader, Land Use and Zoning Law, 2010-present
  • The Best Lawyers in America, Real Estate Law, 2010-present
  • The Best Lawyers in America, Land Use and Zoning Law, 2010-present