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Sunlight Supply proposes new facility

Site at Vancouver port would include manufacturing space

By Gordon Oliver, Columbian Business Editor
Published: February 2, 2015, 4:00pm
2 Photos
Vancouver-based Sunlight Supply is proposing a manfacturing facility and office on this site in the Port of Vancouver's Centennial Industrial Park.
Vancouver-based Sunlight Supply is proposing a manfacturing facility and office on this site in the Port of Vancouver's Centennial Industrial Park. Photo Gallery

Sunlight Supply Inc., a Vancouver-based manufacturer and distributor of specialty gardening supplies nationwide, is proposing a huge manufacturing facility and new offices at the Port of Vancouver’s Centennial Industrial Park. The project would require approval from the city and from the Port of Vancouver.

The company, now based at 5408 N.E. 88th St., has submitted a preliminary application to the city to build a 285,700-square-foot warehouse and 51,000-square-foot office near Northwest 32nd Avenue and Northwest Laframbois Road in the Fruit Valley area. The 18.9-acre property is owned by the Port of Vancouver and is part of the 108-acre Centennial Industrial Park.

Sunlight, founded in 1995, now offers more than 5,000 different products used for indoor, hydroponic, organic and greenhouse gardening. The privately held company has 450 employees, a light-fixture manufacturing facility in Woodland and nine warehouses across the nation, including its main distribution warehouse at the Port of Vancouver, according to its website. The company bills itself as America’s premier manufacturer and distributor of year-round gardening supplies.

The company did not return calls to comment on its proposed development.

Primary access to the site would be on a cul-de-sac, Northwest 38th Circle. The site plan calls for 400 parking spaces, which is 100 more than required, to accommodate current employment and projected growth.

Infrastructure built

The Port of Vancouver invested $5.3 million in infrastructure work in 2013 on about half of the 108-acre Centennial Industrial Park, which is zoned light industrial.

The port’s hope was that the installation of utilities, sidewalks, landscaping and streets would attract companies to the site.

A pre-application conference that is open to the public is scheduled for 9 a.m. Feb. 26 in the Alder Room at Vancouver City Hall, 415 W. Sixth St.

A lease or purchase agreement involving Sunlight’s proposed manufacturing facility would have to go before the port’s Board of Commissioners, said Abbi Russell, a spokeswoman for the port. The company is “one of several businesses that have expressed interest in either purchasing or leasing property” at the Centennial site, Russell said in an email.

Commissioners have already prepared to sell lots at the industrial park by revising the port’s comprehensive plan. In December, they voted 2-1 to declare five lots at the Centennial parcel as surplus land and no longer needed for the port’s purposes. All five lots are at the 58-acre, shovel-ready section of the Centennial site.

The port has agreed to sell one of the five lots, 9.6 acres, to Maruichi Northwest, which seeks to build a tubing mill employing up to 50 people. Excluding the lot being sold to Maruichi, the other four Centennial lots total about 21 acres.


Columbian reporter Aaron Corvin contributed to this story.

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Columbian Business Editor