News / Business

Banfield Pet Hospital shows Vancouver campus plan

Designer says new corporate headquarters will have open campus feel

By Gordon Oliver, Columbian Business Editor

Published: February 5, 2015, 4:00pm

2 Photos

Banfield Pet Hospital will construct three buildings on a new 17.5-acre headquarters campus near Southeast Mill Plain Road and Southeast 184th Avenue in Vancouver's Columbia Tech Center. The company, which operates about 900 pet hospitals in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, expects to relocate more than 600 employees from Portland by mid-2016. Photo Gallery

Banfield Pet Hospital’s new 17.5-acre corporate campus in east Vancouver will include three office buildings designed by one of the Northwest’s top architects, a half-acre off-leash dog exercise area, and lush landscaping, company officials disclosed Thursday.

The campus, north of Southeast Mill Plain Boulevard at Southeast 184th Avenue, will house some 600 or more employees who will relocate from Banfield’s current headquarters on Northeast 82nd Avenue in Portland, company officials told The Columbian. The buildings have space to accommodate the company’s expected growth, and the campus has room for a fourth building. The designer of the Nike campus near Beaverton, Ore., Robert Thompson of TVA Architects in Portland, is the architect for the Banfield campus.

Banfield’s decision to move its corporate headquarters to Vancouver is a boost for a Southwest Washington economy that has long been light on professional-wage employment. The company operates about 900 pet hospitals in the United States and Puerto Rico and employs more than 2,900 veterinarians as well as support staff. Since 2007 it has been a subsidiary of Mars Inc., the confectionery and chocolate company that has expanded into numerous consumer products and services.

Last year, telecom company Integra relocated its corporate offices from Portland to Vancouver, bringing about 450 jobs to the county. Fisher Investments in Camas has grown to about 900 jobs. Those and other professional employers, including a growing number of small businesses on the city’s downtown and west side, are diversifying the county’s economy, said Scott Bailey, regional economist for the state Employment Security Department.

“It’s a change in the role of Clark County being a place not only of production but managerial jobs as well,” he said.

The Banfield campus — including two three-story buildings — will contain 206,000 square feet of usable space, said James Baxter, Banfield’s senior manager for the development. The city’s building permit lists the cost of the improvements at $23.3 million.

Ground preparation at the site began in January. Construction should be completed by the end of this year and the headquarters will be operational by the second quarter of next year, Baxter said.

Thompson, who designed a Nike campus in Shanghai as well as the Nike headquarters campus, said the buildings will have a warm exterior appearance and will be surrounded by lush landscapes with “many outdoor opportunities.”

“Rather than having a large overpowering single (building), we’re looking to break that scale down to multiple buildings,” he said by phone from Los Angeles.

Baxter said the company’s goal is to “use natural materials and try to give it a Northwest feel.” The site will be improved with more than 100 mature trees, he said.

The project also will generate local jobs. Skansa, the project’s general contractor, is “very keen on using local Vancouver and Washington state subcontractors,” Baxter said.

Baxter said Banfield hopes to achieve a high green building certification and is aiming for high environmental standards.

“We’re using a lot of local architects and engineers to make it as green as we can make it,” he said. “We’re aiming for the highest accreditation we can get.”

The campus will also include a meeting room inside the main entrance that can be used for community meetings and a half-acre dog exercise area that will be open to the public. Banfield is working with Vancouver Parks and Recreation on a design that would be beneficial to the community, he said.

“We see the off-leash area as the jewel of the campus,” he said. A pet exercise area at Banfield’s current headquarters, a former school building in Northeast Portland, is heavily used, he added.

Bailey, the regional economist, said Vancouver’s increasingly healthy downtown, the attractiveness of Camas, the growing impact of Washington State University Vancouver, and proximity to Portland International Airport all are appealing to businesses.

“We’re starting to get this nucleus of smaller companies moving in,” he said. “It seems like that more of that is happening than I’ve seen in the past. “

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