Recently-formed committee hopes to identify properties ripe for regional job growth
In the wake of recently-announced agreements involving Farwest Steel and mining giant BHP Billiton at the Port of Vancouver, members of the region's economic development community met last month to identify other under-utilized Clark County properties – all in the hopes of spurring employment growth.
Called the "Land For Employment" committee, this latest initiative is part of a conversation spanning more than a decade about how to best utilize undeveloped properties to create jobs, according to Bart Phillips, president of the Columbia River Economic Development Council and a member of the newly-formed group.
"We wanted to review the properties again in a different light … and what better time to do that than at the bottom of the economic cycle," Phillips said.
One of the properties that might be under consideration by the committee, composed of a diverse group of 22 professionals including area developers, engineers and attorneys, is Centennial Industrial Park in Vancouver, according to committee chair Helen Devery of Berger/Abam Engineers, Inc.
"The land has permits, been graded and is ready for development," Devery said of the property, formerly known as Parcel 8 at the Port of Vancouver. "It's ready to go."
According to Devery, one of the goals of the committee is to identify "shovel ready" projects to ensure Clark County has the industrial land base to attract new businesses and create jobs.
And with a surplus of undeveloped properties, the region's ports are an obvious target for the committee's activities. Devery pointed to the recently-completed sale of port-owned property to Farwest Steel earlier this month as an example of the job-creating potential of the area's undeveloped industrial land.
"Without that property, the Farwest deal would not have happened," she said. "Also, the port can get those kinds of projects off the ground, even in a tough economy."
For Phillips, the committee's work was about pushing a reset button on land use issues in a county struggling to recover the thousands of manufacturing sector jobs lost since the beginning of the recession.
"We said, ‘Listen, we aren't going to do what we've always done,'" he said.
According to Phillips, the committee hopes to release its recommendations to the public by the end of the year.
