PORTLAND, Ore. — Editor's note: This story is courtesy of KGW's news partner Portland Business Journal. Read more here.
Technology firm Trimble Inc. is leaving Portland's Central Eastside, moving about 400 workers to a suburban office park this summer.
Colorado-based Trimble (Nasdaq: TRMB), which bought Portland-grown construction software maker Viewpoint in 2018, is moving to Lake Oswego, leasing 35,000 square feet at 5665 Meadows Road. Trimble signed the lease Dec. 12 after an extensive search, company officials told the Portland Business Journal.
The relocation is another setback for Portland and the Central Eastside Industrial District, which have been buffeted by public safety concerns the past few years. In a tense town hall in 2022, Eastside business leaders expressed frustration to local leaders over break-ins and other problems, and city officials responded with a so-called 90-day reset in 2023 that saw police make dozens of arrests, recover stolen cars and seize guns.
Lake Oswego, meantime, is notching another win as it rises in prominence as a hub for relocating Portland businesses. Like other companies, Trimble will be at the Kruse Way office park, as real estate firm CBRE noted in a recent report. Hoffman Construction, for example, will relocate to the suburb from downtown Portland. Trimble's lease is for 10 years and represents a roughly 17,000-square-foot space reduction from their current office, said marketing vice president Simmi Singh Corcoran. In the Portland metro, the average lease term for office deals signed at the end of 2023 was just short of six years, CBRE reported.
Most of Trimble's local workers are hybrid, working two-to-four days in the office, while some 15% are fully in-office and 10% are remote, but they'll all be considered part of the Lake Oswego office, according to company officials.
In 2015, the company known as Viewpoint moved into a decked-out office, a two-story former Portland General Electric facility, on Southeast Water Avenue. In 2018, Trimble acquired Viewpoint in a $1.2 billion deal.
In 2021, Trimble officials began to talk on-and-off about moving, as many of the nearby restaurants and other amenities had shut down during the pandemic. Relocation talks became more focused last year, with Trimble's lease at 1515 Southeast Water Avenue expiring in July 2024, Trimble General Counsel Jennifer Allison said in an interview. Trimble has another lease at 1510 Southeast Water Avenue that expires later, and Trimble is seeking to sublease that space.
Trimble looked at Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Vancouver, Lake Oswego — and farther afield. Bend, where the now-former CEO of Viewpoint, Manolis Kotzabasakis (he's now CEO of CentralSquare Technologies), had a house, was on the list, but the extraordinarily high Central Oregon real estate prices deterred the company.
"That was 12 minutes of our life when we thought, What if we all lived in Bend and skied at lunch? But that went away," Allison said.
In Portland, Trimble considered the St. Johns neighborhood and the Montgomery Park office building at 2701 Northwest Vaughn Street, but ultimately decided against them.
Suburban safety 'a big pull'
Trimble landed on Lake Oswego for a variety of reasons, but "safety was a big pull, I think, for us," Allison said.
Employees didn't want a Beaverton or Hillsboro-length commute (even though those places were less expensive), and Lake Oswego seemed a bit closer to their current Eastside location. Lake Oswego has restaurants and shopping.
And "it feels safer," she said. Trimble has private security at its Portland office. The company conducted an assessment for crime rates, and Lake Oswego scored well. The company found a good-sized space and made the decision.
She said, "We love our city. We love this area. We certainly don't want to move far away, but I think that moving just a little bit farther out is going to give us a little bit more of a peace of mind."
The walkability of Trimble's part of Central Eastside used to be a draw for employees, but it's not the same anymore, according to Allison.
When the sun goes down sooner in the winter, "as a woman, you feel a certain level of vulnerability that maybe some of our male colleagues don't feel," Allison said. "It's different if you're 6-foot-2 and 225 and you're a dude. You don't immediately look around and go, 'Do I feel safe in this environment? Would I be OK walking and grabbing dinner after work?' Which is what we always used to do."
Allison has lived in Portland since 1995 and used to wait tables at Kells Irish Pub.
"I would get off work at 2:30 in the morning and walk to my car and never even think about it as a 23-year-old girl," she said. "I just didn't think about it. My association with the city was incredible safety."