The PDC's Quality Jobs Program is open primarily to manufacturing firms paying an average wage that is 200% of Oregon's minimum wage and employ no less than one person for every 800 sf of space they will operate in. Companies who agree to meet the standards can receive up to a $300,000 loan for permanent improvements to its facilities. Moreover, if the company meets or beats the standards, it will see the loan converted to a grant.

Under the agreement announced this morning, the PDC will purchase the property for no more than $7.21 million and make various improvements, including widening of 185th Avenue, building a cul-de-sac and installing a water quality stormwater facility. The PDC would then sell off pieces of the land to Panattoni--at a pace of no less than five acres every 18 months--which would in turn develop, lease or sell the land only to companies who meet Quality Jobs Program standards.

Between late January and late February, Panattoni's local partner Mike Wells tied up a total of 60 acres that Spada owns at the northeastern edge of the city between the Columbia River and Airport Way. Wells tells GlobeSt he tied up the first 45 acres in late January after receiving a commitment for a 250,000-sf build-to-suit for an unnamed assembly-manufacturing company. The remaining 15 acres of riverfront property were tied up in mid-February.

The 38.85-acre deal with the PDC came about after Panattoni contacted the PDC about utilizing the Quality Jobs Program for the unnamed assembly-manufacturing company. In announcing the news, Wells called the agreement with the PDC a mutually beneficial combination of private enterprise and public goals. "Our company is able to purchase and develop the property on a parcel-by-parcel basis as opposed to buying the entire acreage at once," says Wells, "and the PDC is assured that quality jobs will be recruited there."

"Preliminary market response to manufacturing and assembly development on the site has been quite positive," adds Ossey Patterson Co. president Don Ossey, who is representing Spada in the transaction. Ossey credited the emergence of the Airport Way-area market to Catellus Development Co's transformation of 230 acres adjacent Spada's property into Southshore Corporate Park.

All told, about 850,000 sf has been built and occupied at Southshore since Catellus closed on the property in July 1998. About 450,000 sf of that is owned by Catellus. Another 300,000 sf in user-committed deals will break ground this summer. Shortly thereafter, Catellus plans to break ground on as much as 215,000 sf of speculative product.

Catellus' leasing agent for the project, Tom Talbot of Grubb & Ellis, tells GlobeSt the new product is in response to an estimated 1.5 million sf worth of active users looking for space in the market coupled with a dwindling supply of newer inventory and no speculative industrial product in the pipeline.