“Spaulding Commerce Park is the property that was where the last sawmill closed in 1999. We decided to convert it into an industrial park. It was a public-private partnership. We got grants for infrastructure and have had private industry step forward with new buildings.” Charlie Mitchell was taking me thru Grants Pass’ new 140 acre industrial park, which had almost a dozen new buildings. In less than 5 years time, there are already more people employed in this park than there ever were at the sawmill.
Encore Ceramics moved here in 2001 from Santa Rosa, CA in the Sonoma Valley wine country. Debbie and Barry Russell had started their production of decorative tiles in their two car garage and as Barry told me, “We had to get our baby of a manufacturing business out of the garage. At that time they called the Sonoma Valley Telecom Valley and no one wanted to talk with us about our hand produced tile business.”
They had friends in southern Oregon who suggested they might find a more receptive welcome in Grants Pass. They have and grown the business to 50 employees in only four years. The company has made the top 100 list of fastest growing companies in Oregon for the past two years. They sell thru 90 high end decorative design firms throughout the USA.
They’ve already talked another CA company, Marzi Sinks, which makes hand crafted ceramic sinks, to town. Another CA transplant is Oregon Swiss Precision, a high tech machining shop.
Three San Francisco glass blowers, Lee Sassink, Nathan Sheafor and Butch Kreuzer moved to Grants Pass and started The Glass Forge Gallery and Studio in the downtown historical area.
It seemed that everywhere I looked someone was from CA. In fact during my talk I took an informal poll and found that about ½ of the audience was originally from the state to the south.
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