The company is currently located in 28,000-sf of flex space onStone Mill Drive near Mill Plain Boulevard and 136th. SONICbluepresident Jim Cady tells GlobeSt. he's moving the rapidly-growingdivision "because we need to attract more talent, more marketingand engineering talent, and the biggest pool of people is inWashington County."

The company checked into space at the new Fox Tower in downtownPortland, says Cady, but didn't like the rent and really wanted tolease 100% of a smaller building in order to have more control.They looked at a couple of dozen buildings all over the tri-countyregion before honing in on the project by Pacific NorthwestProperties LP. "Most of the buildings were either fairly small,like 20,000 sf, or in the 75,000-80,000-sf range," says Cady. DaveBrown from Columbia Commercial Properties of Vancouver assisted thecompany in its search.

SONICblue changed its name in October from S3 Inc. The localdivision, which has grown from 65 employees to 125 in under twoyears, makes a small, portable audio player called Rio that storesand plays digital music downloaded from computers or the Internet.Some models are sold under the Nike brand. The company says itssales doubled in the third quarter of the year, and is planning a$10 million advertising campaign to boost sales further.