Mike Bomar will leave the Columbia River Economic Development Council for a similar deal-making position at the Port of Vancouver.
Bomar confirmed Thursday morning he would resign as president of the public-private partnership and become the port’s new director of economic development.
Bomar officially starts at the Port of Vancouver May 1, earning a salary of $137,000 per year.
“It was tough. I certainly could have been extremely happy,” Bomar said of the partnership he has led since November 2013. “I haven’t had a bad day in the last 4½ years of coming here for work.”
The mandates of the new gig will be a lot like the old one: increase the number of jobs, whether by helping businesses expand or convincing new ones to do business with his client. That client is no longer Clark County at large however, but instead the port and its growing list of projects.
Representatives for the Columbia River Economic Development Council could not be reached for comment. Bomar was its fifth president since its founding in 1982 and its second since 2011. Executive Vice President Max Ault was named interim president for up to 12 months.
“I feel like the team here is extremely strong and won’t miss a beat in terms of transition,” Bomar said.
With a broad charter to help develop the local economy, Bomar, 38, helped bring a few growing companies to Clark County: Banfield Pet Hospital and protein manufacturer AbSci, both out of Portland; and Silicon Valley hardware company RealWear.
The organization also lobbied for state dollars to tackle transportation issues such as congestion and to expand school programs in order to create the “livability” and talent pipeline that he said businesses demand.
“I feel like we did a good job of making those connections and telling the story of what employers are seeing, and what challenges they are seeing,” Bomar said.
Port spokeswoman Abbi Russell said those strong relationships and an eye on the future were integral for whomever they hired as director of economic development.
Katy Brooks last held the position, which reports directly to CEO Julianna Marler. She left in September 2016 to take a job leading the chamber of commerce in Bend, Ore.
But the position was left unfilled while the port cleared a rash of changes, Russell said. The port spent eight months hiring a CEO between May 2016 and January 2017, then Commissioner Brian Wolfe announced April 2017 he would not seek reelection.
“With the changes in organization we were waiting to see where things would shake out,” she said.
Now that he’s hired, Bomar said his initial focus will be to learn as much as he can about the port. Then he will have several large projects from the Port of Vancouver to work on.
For one, there has been no public movement on Terminal 5, the 100-acre chunk of port property that was considered for the now-defunct oil terminal Vancouver Energy.
The Port of Vancouver spent $48.25 million to buy that property in 2009, and then spent $275 million to reshape it, build new access and add 40 miles of train tracks to improve shipping in and out of the port.
There is also Terminal 1, along the Columbia River waterfront. A hotel will break ground there later this year, but long-term plans call for a public market, residences, restaurants and office space.
And there is the Centennial Industrial Building, a 125,000-square-foot facility near the Port of Vancouver headquarters that had its ribbon cutting last month. The property does not yet have a tenant.
