Fifteen years after the dot-com and telecom busts nearly obliterated Clark County, Wash.'s technology industry, Southwest Washington's tech engine is again revving up.
Schuck is co-founder and chief executive of a market-research company, DiscoverOrg, which just moved downtown to hire 150 employees. Laser manufacturer nLight Corp. said Friday it will hire 100 to staff a new factory. After years of cutbacks Hewlett-Packard Co. says it's expanding again in east Vancouver, and Linear Technology Corp. may be close to building a chip new factory in Camas.
Portland hosts engineering outposts for eBay and Google. Downtown Vancouver has Apple. Yes, Apple.
Clark County's tech revival is driven by many of the same factors propelling Oregon's rebound across the Columbia River. Broader economic strength is boosting sales and exciting investors. And if Oregon has thrived as a low-cost alternative to the Bay Area and Seattle, that goes double for Clark County.
And Vancouver's tech workers – like Portland's – are gradually developing new skills as the region evolves from a hardware-oriented tech economy to one more focused on software and the Internet.
Clark County nonetheless remains culturally distinct from Portland, divided by a tax structure, college-sports loyalties and a philosophical divide over issues including light rail and urban planning. But Schuck said DiscoverOrg doesn't have trouble recruiting from Portland, and he hopes the regional tech economies will grow more integrated over time.
"The river has sort of created this imaginary wall," he said.
As tough as the dot-com bubble and Great Recession were on Oregon, the effects were much, much worse in Vancouver and its suburbs.
Southwest Washington ended the 1990s with two publicly traded telecommunications companies, a massive Hewlett-Packard campus and a brand-new, state-of-the-art chip factory in Camas. Plans called for massive expansion on all fronts.
When the economy turned south, though, one of those big telecom companies went bankrupt and the other one sold. HP laid off many of its Vancouver employees, then sold its campus. And chipmaker WaferTech, which designed its Camas property to accommodate several factories, ultimately settled for just the one.
More recently, the Great Recession made it all much worse. Jobs in electronics manufacturing – the single biggest part of Clark County's tech economy, led by WaferTech, Linear and silicon wafer maker SEH America – fell 22 percent and still haven't come back.
And while the county's suburban feel and comparatively strong schools attracted many Portlanders looking for places to live, tech companies increasingly favored urban excitement. In March, digital graphics company Wacom said it will leave the east Vancouver office it's had since 1989 and expand instead in a brand-new building in Portland's Pearl District.
Clark County's jobless rate hit 12.4 percent in 2011, the highest of any metro area in Washington, with the effects of the Great Recession in the Portland area amplified by the dearth of professional jobs in Vancouver. But if its downturn was worse than other parts of Washington, Clark County's comeback has been faster – unemployment was just 6.7 percent in March, close to the state's 5.7 percent rate.
Southwest Washington has one thing, in abundance, that Portland lacks: Space. And it's had success luring a handful large corporate offices from Portland over the past few years, including Banfield Pet Hospital and Integra, an established telecommunications company that moved roughly 500 employees from the Lloyd District to HP's old campus.
There's been "a bit more of a tilt toward more professional types of jobs coming in," said Scott Bailey, the state's regional labor economist. Clark County has added 600 custom software jobs since 2010, growing 66 percent and mirroring strong growth in the Portland area.
And the county's established tech players are growing, too. Linear Technology Corp. told county leaders last summer it was near a decision to build a second chip factory in Camas. That hasn't materialized, but local officials expect it will.
Mayor Scott Higgins said Camas is pushing a roads package in the state Legislature that could help clear the way for Linear to grow, potentially helping clear the way for the project.
"We have no reason to think expansion isn't something they're still considering for the near future," Higgins said.
HP, whose Vancouver presence dates a printer factory that opened in 1979, maintains a research site in the city despite selling off its main campus.
And while HP will no longer say how many it employs in Vancouver, the company said the site remains a focus of inkjet printer research, and it's adding research and operations jobs as it contributes to the company's push into 3D printing.
Apple's Vancouver office dates to the early 1990s. There's no indication the site is growing, and Apple won't say how many work there on the fifth floor of its leased office above City Hall, but Vancouver employees have long developed office productivity software for the company – a portfolio of apps now known as iWork.
When nLight decided last year to build a second factory north of Vancouver, chief executive Scott Keeney said he didn't bother to look anywhere else. It was important to keep operations close together, he said, and whether it's Portland or Vancouver, he said the region offers a degree of stability the Bay Area does not.
"You couldn't do what we've done in the Bay Area," he said. "It's more volatile. People are jumping around, doing different things."
Clark County has the opportunity to become a bigger component of the Portland area's tech ecosystem, said Mike Bomar, president of the Columbia River Economic Development Council in Vancouver. The region has a mix of technological strengths, from hardware to a handful of software and gaming companies downtown.
Washington's lack of a personal income tax fills a niche for companies whose owners are contemplating a sale, he said, and lower real estate costs make downtown Vancouver an appealing alternative to Portland's skyrocketing prices.
"It gives you a lot of the amenities of walkable space, the food carts, the same urban attraction but it doesn't have the same cost as downtown Portland," Bomar said. "I think you'll see, within the metro region, a more visible tech community than you've seen before."
©2015 The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
