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 Photo by Bill Wagner Mike Perrigo, in the red coat, and other NorthStar Yachts employees work last week on a 74-foot luxury boat at the company's Port of Kalama plant. With orders strong, NorthStar Yachts says its work force is expanding rapidly. |
Work Returning: Some Cowlitz County manufacturers are putting out 'Help Wanted' signs once again
Sunday, September 26, 2004 12:16 AM PDT
By Courtney Sherwood
Printable version
E-mail this articleEfforts to revive the region's economy by creating high-paying manufacturing jobs are starting to pay off.
Now industries -- some already here and growing, others moving into the area for the first time -- have added nearly 300 manufacturing jobs this year, and the businesses hope to add 800 more jobs in the next half decade.
"We're seeing the most activity since I've been here, and I've been here since 2000," said Ted Sprague, president of the Cowlitz Economic Development Council.
"The Cowlitz economy through the '90s was a race to see whether new investment would match the loss of older manufacturing jobs," said Scott Bailey, regional economist for the state's Employment Security Department. "For a while the county was ahead, but the recession knocked that out of whack. If no new disasters happen, it could catch up."
Cowlitz and surrounding counties lost more than 2,500 jobs in 2001 and 2002, most of them in manufacturing, said Bailey.
Longview Aluminum laid off more than 925 workers during that period. Weyerhaeuser Co. shut down both its fine paper machines between 2001 and 2003, eliminating about 200 jobs. In February 2002, Prudential Steel closed its doors, putting 120 people out of work.
Nevertheless, through the recession and the no-job-growth recovery that followed, ports, cities and Lower Columbia College held out hope that manufacturing would rebound.
While job losses came in the hundreds, the gains are mostly trickling in a few at a time.
After moving to a new facility in Kalama this spring, training manual printer ViaTech Publishing grew from 26 to 32 workers, and the company expects to add another four jobs in the upcoming years.
Florida-based Mile Marker, which makes hydraulic winches for recreational and military vehicles, plans to establish its West Coast distribution center in Cowlitz County, bringing six new jobs later this year.
Although Flexible Foam Products expects to grow to 100 workers over its first year in operation, the company will open its doors this winter with 25 people on staff.
Bigger employers also loom on the horizon.
Lime importer Nootka Holdings, which wants to import lime at the former Reynolds Metals site, could bring 200 jobs to the community, according to early reports, but company officials did not return phone calls to confirm that figure.
A plate glass maker will bring 220 jobs to Winlock if it wins Lewis County permit approval.
These gains come after years of double-digit unemployment, during which ports, cities and Lower Columbia College have been developing what they hope will be the winning trifecta to lure more industry: a trained work force, industry-ready land, and a streamlined permitting process.
Economic development officials say a fourth factor also weighs in the region's favor: the surge of growth from the Portland metropolitan area, where land is scarce and expensive.
Trained work force
"Longview has an educated and skilled work force, so the availability of workers we would have was something we were looking for," said Steve Johnson, director of business for Equapac.
Equapac will build a Longview plant on 12 acres leased from Weyerhaeuser Co., where it will make industrial water purification products, including chlorine, caustic soda and bleach. When the plant opens in early 2006, Johnson expects to hire about 50 permanent workers.
"We did have a lot of highly skilled people laid off looking for work," said Brendan Glaser, dean for work force and continuing education at LCC. "A lot of those people, in the time they've had without work, have been taking advantage of our training and developing more skills."
Hundreds of displaced workers have taken courses at LCC, some opting to stay in the manufacturing industry, others branching out or beginning a college degree, Glaser said.
Even without taking LCC classes, many people in the area have the manufacturing work skills that employers like Equapac want, he acknowledged.
Infrastructure
The Port of Kalama opened its Kalama River Industrial Park a month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in the midst of local layoffs and a national recession.
"The timing wasn't the greatest, but it's paying off now," said Lyndsie Winter, the port's marketing and communications manager.
Port businesses have brought 49 new jobs to Kalama this year, with another 60 jobs expected in the near future, according to Winter and business owners.
The Port of Longview has improved its rail access this year as part of its development of a new industrial park. The Port will dedicate a new rail spur in the first week of October.
"Our plan is to be able to locate new industry on that property in the future," said port spokeswoman Marie Wise. "That will bring jobs."
Near Clatskanie, rail, natural gas pipelines and the Columbia River have lured three major industrial developments that hope to break ground by early next year. A fourth developer is just beginning to negotiate to buy land and apply for permits.
Portland General Electric will break ground on a Port Westward natural gas-fired power plant on Oct. 7. Summit Power expects to break ground on a similar power plant by early next year. Cascade Grain hopes to have financing in place this year for a $230 million ethanol plant, and to break ground in the spring.
Port Westward LNG, still in the early phases of planning, would create 50 permanent jobs by importing liquified natural gas.
The four projects would create 175 permanent jobs in Columbia County.
Getting permits
Flexible Foam Products, which is moving into the 177,000-square-foot Mint Farm Industrial Park building formerly owned by Prudential Steel, was originally drawn to Longview because of its links to rail and highways and because industry-ready property is available. But it was help with permitting that sealed the deal, said general manager Erik Kempf.
"We looked all over the place for a building that suited our needs, from Eugene to Longview. We had meetings with the city of Portland. The city of Longview did a better job," Kempf said earlier this summer. "They walked us through the permitting."
"We are fortunate in Cowlitz County, because we do not have to plan under the Growth Management Act," said Sprague, of the Cowlitz Economic Development Council.
The Growth Management Act applies to counties with a population of more than 50,000 and counties that have grown 17 percent over 10 years, and requires them to protect certain kinds of property, such as farm or forest land, from development. As the only Washington county between Portland and Seattle that does not fall under Growth Management Act's regulation, Cowlitz has a quicker and easier permitting process that puts it at an advantage, Sprague said.
"We have one of the most complex, difficult state permitting processes to get through of anywhere in the country," said Bill Lotto, executive director of the Lewis County Economic Development Council, who has been aggressively lobbying to bring a glass factory to land zoned for agriculture.
Because of recent population growth, Lewis County falls under the Growth Management Act, therefore Cardinal Glass has gone through hearings and conducted studies that would not have been required in Cowlitz County.
"Cardinal Glass made the comment publicly that if they knew then what they know now, they would probably have never started the process," Lotto said. "The process is so difficult and so expensive that I do think it's scaring off and will scare off potential customers."
Growth from Portland
When Northwood Cabinets decided to expand its Clark-county based 23-employee business, permitting and property costs became a nightmare, said co-owner Derek Kysar.
The business' owners decided to move out of Yacolt, where the business was founded in 1978. Getting permits was easier and property cost less in Cowlitz County, Kysar said.
"Woodland is a great community," Kysar said.
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Portland Development Commission have issued separate statements in recent years bemoaning the critical shortage of industrial land in the Portland metro area.
"There is a lot of squeeze in Portland. Vancouver is more expensive than it used to be. It's just naturally going to come north," Sprague said.
On the forefront of this development is Woodland, with its proximity to Portland and its relatively low property costs. Of nine businesses that Sprague cited as working with the Cowlitz Economic Development Commission this year, a third have moved to Woodland.
Pointing at the spread of development between Tacoma and Seattle, Sprague predicts similar growth throughout Cowlitz County.
Long-term prospects
August's jobless rate, at 7.9 percent, was the lowest Cowlitz County had seen since 2000 and was close to the 7.6 percent unemployment rate the county averaged during the late 1990s.
But those figures can be deceiving, said economist Bailey.
"I don't think things have gotten any worse... over the last two years," Bailey said, but most of the jobs lost at the start of the decade have not been replaced.
"On the plus side, in terms of manufacturing, we'll see some new jobs coming in over the next couple of years," he said. "On the other hand, there are still some worries about losing some of the older, more traditional manufacturing jobs because of productivity gains."
The Congressional Budget Office issued a report in February predicting that manufacturing jobs will probably never be as numerous as they once were.
But a September survey by the Institute for Supply Management painted a rosier picture.
Orders, production and hiring are rising in manufacturing nationwide, ISM found, and the manufacturing economy is growing faster in western Washington than in the rest of the country.
Lotto, of the Lewis County Economic Development Council, agrees with ISM.
"I think we have hit bottom, and I think there is good news again."
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