April 7, 2021 by David Ochoa, KPIC
ROSEBURG, Ore. – Two brothers are looking to put Douglas County on the map. They’re working on a project that could possibly get even the attention of the Olympics. Right off of Interstate 5 near Metz Hill Road lies almost 3,000 acres of land.
Drew and Quinn Millegan are working on turning it into “Pegasus Equestrian,” an equestrian competition venue and resort.
“It would be the largest on the West Coast, and one of the largest in North America,” Drew said. “It’s going to fill a really big hole in the equestrian industry on the West Coast.”
It will be large enough that they think the venue could hold the equestrian portion of the Olympics if the games were again held in Los Angeles, for example.
As envisioned, the facility would be able to host multiple equestrian and non-equestrian events and will have a hotel on site.
The brothers’ search for a perfect site brought them to Douglas County.
“This is the perfect topography and microclimate in order to have every discipline and do it year round,” Quinn said.
The Millegans sid it’ll do wonders for Douglas County’s economic growth since people travel hours to attend equestrian events.
“People truck their horses from Canada, Seattle, all the way to southern California across I-5 anyways,” Quinn said. “People are coming from way out of state who would never come here otherwise and staying for sometimes weeks or months at a time.”
They estimate it’ll be the third largest property taxpayer in Douglas County once complete, with up to 500 jobs on site – half of them full-time.
They don’t plan on holding smaller events or boarding horses because they want people to make use of surrounding community businesses.
“We want small barns around us to grow,” Quinn said. “We don’t want to shut down the community. We want the community to grow.”