3rd Quarter: A time of new beginnings

JULY

• Subaru hits milestone of 1 million vehicle imports through Port of Vancouver.

• Main Street Marijuana becomes the county’s first recreational marijuana retailer.

• Uber quietly launches ride-sharing service in Vancouver, raising city concerns.

AUGUST

• Tesoro-Savage release economic impact study for proposed oil terminal.

• The state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council extends study of Tesoro-Savage proposal.

• Longshore union approves new contract with grain terminal operators.

SEPTEMBER

• County’s jobs expansion continues to top state, regional growth trends.

• Vancouver’s RS Medical parts ways with CEO, announces at least 28 layoffs.

• Portland’s Menashe Properties buys downtown’s Main Place office building .

This year’s third quarter was a time of beginnings, with marijuana offered for legal sale to recreational users for the first time, and endings, with the drawn-out labor dispute at the United Grain terminal finally coming to an end.

The July-through-September quarter also was a time of delay and deliberation regarding the proposed oil terminal at the Port of Vancouver, which inched forward in a review process that now will extend into next year, and probably beyond. While struggling RS Medical announced another 28 layoffs, on balance the quarter was a time of steady but cautious economic recovery for most businesses and residents.

The county’s strong job growth and shrinking unemployment provided solid reasons for optimism. In the past 12 months, the county has added an estimated 6,400 jobs, a 4.2 percent one-year increase. The job growth rate far exceed that of the nation, the states of Washington and Oregon, and the overall Portland metropolitan area. Every major employment category added jobs.

Longer term, an analysis by Employment Security Department regional economist Scott Bailey found that the number of high-wage jobs — $26 per hour and above — was on the rise since the economic downturn, but the median hourly wage for the county has been more or less stuck at $20 for more than a decade.

Grain impasse ends

Easily the most welcome story during the quarter was the end in August of an 18-month lockout of Longshore union workers at the United Grain terminal at the Port of Vancouver. The tally was 88 percent in favor of an agreement with United Grain, Louis Dreyfus Commodities in Portland and Seattle, and Columbia Grain Inc. in Portland that is in effect through May 2018. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Also on the waterfront, the Port of Vancouver celebrated a milestone when one of its biggest tenants, the Japanese automaker Subaru, imported its 1 millionth car through the port. Subaru has been importing through the Port of Vancouver for 22 years, and last year brought in 69,378 of the vehicles that are highly popular in the Northwest.

Vancouver saw some reshuffling in its downtown, with the engineering and environmental consulting firm Berger- ABAM relocating its offices from Main Place, 1111 Main St., to the former Vancouver City Hall building — now called Block 56 — at 210 E. 13th St. The engineering and environmental consulting company leased about 8,000 square feet of the newly renovated building. That move was followed by a sale of the seven-floor Main Place building in September to Menashe Properties of Portland. In its first major investment in Vancouver, Menashe paid $12.15 million for the 88,000-square-foot building that is noteworthy for its black glass exterior. Also downtown, work continued on turning the former Sparks Furniture building at Evergreen Boulevard and C Street into a retail plaza.

Vancouver’s Uptown district welcomed a new retailer, Main Street Marijuana at 2114 Main St., which made local history as the county’s first legal retailer of recreational marijuana. Mayor Tim Leavitt joined hundreds of customers on the store’s opening day. A second recreational marijuana retailer, New Vansterdam at 6515 E. Mill Plain Blvd., opened three days later. Main Street reported $1.1 million in sales through Oct. 6 while New Amsterdam’s sales topped $1.6 million in the same time period. Their placement as among the state’s highest-grossing marijuana retailers is due in part to their proximity to customers in Portland, where recreational marijuana is not legally available.

In Washougal, small video company Immersive Media said it would move from Vancouver into the Washougal Town Square, a project that owner Lone Wolf Investments has long struggled to fill. The retail and office complex built in 2008 is about 50 percent occupied, according to Adam Taylor, Lone Wolf’s leasing agent.

The housing market, which had been growing at a healthy pace, cooled down with a drop in listings, sales, and sales prices from the previous quarter. Still, the market remained tight with an inventory of 3.7 months, meaning that it would take that long to sell all the homes currently available. Median sale prices — half sold for more, half for less — showed modest growth for the year, from $235,500 in September 2013 to $245,500 this September.

And Vancouver got a surprise in July when the San Francisco-based ride-sharing company Uber quietly launched its service in the city. Uber, known for its aggressive challenges to the highly regulated taxi industry in cities worldwide, did not seek Vancouver’s approval. The city says Uber is operating illegally and this month the Vancouver City Council said the city needs to update its taxi code to deal with Uber and other technology-based ride-sharing companies.

Oil terminal boil

The ongoing community debate over a proposed oil transfer terminal at the Port of Vancouver, which would be the Northwest’s largest such terminal, showed no signs of abating. In August, the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council extended its scheduled review period by six months to a new completion deadline of March 2, 2015. But many expect the review to take even longer than that. Tesoro and Savage filed their application in August 2013.

Also in August, a consultant report commissioned by Vancouver Energy — the name for the Tesoro-Savage joint venture — estimated that the terminal would provide $2 billion in “economic value” to the region and create 176 permanent on-site jobs once the facility is fully operational. Those estimates were significantly higher than earlier numbers from the two companies.

A new round of sparring between Tesoro-Savage’s Vancouver Energy and developers of a planned $1.3 billion residential/commercial development on Vancouver’s waterfront took place in September. The Columbian reported in September that a market analysis commissioned by Vancouver Energy asserted that, using “reasonable market input assumptions,” the waterfront project “is not viable as conceived.” Based on that conclusion, the waterfront developers’ arguments that the terminal would have a negative economic impact on the waterfront project were “irrelevant,” asserted Heartland LLC, a Seattle-based real estate advisory firm that wrote the report.

Waterfront developer Barry Cain, president of Tualatin, Ore.-based Gramor Development, called the analysis “trash.” His project’s economic viability has to be weighed against demand for riverfront housing and office space in the region, not just Clark County, Cain said.

“Vancouver isn’t an island all by itself,” he said.