There’s an argument that headquarters define the viability of a business community. And Portland has done okay in that regard. But I always felt that we could adjust the conversation. To promote the viability of a community by the regional offices it hosted. I mean, one of our largest employers is a regional office. So it what if we focused on that? Playing to our strengthens, as it were.
And with players like Acorns (through acquisition), Adidas, Airbnb, Amazon (through acquisition), Autodesk (through acquisition), Daimler, eBay (through acquisition), Expensify, Google (through acquisition), HP, the aforementioned Intel, Kiva, New Relic, Under Armour… even Walmart (through acquisition), it only makes sense that others would look to Portland as an interesting outpost for their companies.
That’s why hearing that Apple was building out their Portland footprint (although we all know that they’ve had that top secret office in the ‘Couv’ for years) was sort of surprising. But hearing that Square was taking out a significant amount of square footage? That was really interesting. Especially with the growing number of fintech companies in town.
Kudos to Jonathan Bach at the Portland Business Journal for breaking both of these stories.
