As Gov. John Kitzhaber was finishing out his two previous terms as the state’s governor from 1994 to 2002, he helped recruit the relocation from Palm Springs, Calif., to Portland of the North American headquarters for wind energy giant Vestas, bringing 75 jobs to the state. Today it’s encore time for both: He’s beginning a new term in office after nearly a decade away, and Vestas, with the help of Portland-based sustainable design firm Gerding Edlen, has announced plans to transform a warehouse in Portland’s coveted Pearl District into a new HQ worthy of LEED-Platinum certification.
Officials with Vestas – American Wind Technology, Inc. expect the renovated Meier & Frank Depot building, vacant for the past decade, to be move-in ready by spring 2012. When redeveloped, the historic building, originally built in 1928, will be 172,000 sq. ft. (15,979 sq. m.) that will include an addition on the fifth floor complete with an “eco-roof terrace” and gardens, and what is believed to be the largest roof-mounted solar energy array in Portland’s central business district.
“We are making a long-term commitment to Portland,” said Martha Wyrsch, president of Vestas-American Wind Technology, Inc., when the project was announced last year. “As a company devoted to wind power, it makes sense for us to be part of a community that so strongly supports clean energy.”
The headquarters will be efficient with people as well as energy. Vestas, which employs nearly 400 people in Portland, will consolidate staff currently working in four different buildings, including an IT center. However, a 14-person training center near Portland International Airport will stay put. Wyrshch said the new headquarters will be able to accommodate up to 600 employees. But a novel option will enable even more capacity: The second floor will be convertible from parking space to office space — enough room to accommodate another 250 people.
Vestas, which employs about 2,400 people in the United States and Canada, also has 30 full-time employees in central and eastern Oregon who maintain and service wind turbines.
Renewable Parcels, Exportable Expertise
Among several legislative measures championed by Gov. Kitzhaber this spring is SB 766, a bill to protect regionally significant industrial areas from conversion and speed permitting when capital projects are performed on those lands. It passed out of the Joint Ways and Means committee in early June. In an interview, Kitzhaber says it’s not dissimilar from his support for certain goals in the state’s comprehensive land use program: “If timberland is converted to condominiums, you lose that opportunity,” he says. When it comes to brownfield sites, the same principle applies.
“We want to redevelop industrial sites and not have them going to condos and other development,” he says, citing successful redevelopment in several Portland-area districts. He thinks advanced manufacturing might be one of the most attractive reuses of that land. “One key of our economic development strategy is to create jobs that actually create a living wage, and manufacturing is clearly very central to that.”
When Kitzhaber first served in elected office in 1978, it was high times for timber in Oregon. But his rural district was hit hard by the recession in the early 1980s, and he played a role in laying the groundwork for a more diversified economy.
“We focused on a long-term strategy to bring in the silicon industry,” he says, noting the switch to single-sales-factor and unitary tax formulas, among other measures, as part of the successful attraction of multiple projects from that sector, including facilities from Intel, which recently announced another mega-expansion at its complex in Hillsboro. Steady improvement in lowering worker’s comp premiums helped too — today the state has the seventh lowest in the nation.
Fast forward to the end of his first two terms as governor, and he says it was evident that two things needed to happen. The first was to move from a wood products exportation mindset to one oriented toward forest health, commercial thinning and biomass industry development. The second was to maximize opportunities in energy efficiency, clean energy generation and advanced manufacturing, developing a new technology-based cluster of goods and services that reflect “the expertise that I think a lot of the rest of the world is going to need.”
He says the focus on a new energy economy will be part of his trade mission in September to China, Japan and Korea, the state’s top three trading partners historically. Among the corporate projects announced since Kitzhaber’s inauguration is a 50-job expansion in Canby from Japanese firm Shimadzu U.S.A. Manufacturing, which makes analytical instrumentation for the pharmaceutical and other high-tech industries. The company, which currently employs 100 at the site, was originally recruited to the state by Kitzhaber in the 1990s.