Oregon Business

Because Portlanders are happy with their city, why change?

I’ve been asking tech industry execs about the issue for the past six months and have heard a consistent refrain: Whatever their opinions about these individual measures, they’d like to see broad reform in Oregon’s fiscal policy, taxes and education system.

"We’re doing a lot more hiring! In just the last month, we have added 11 new Jivers with 10 more starting in the next two weeks."

Web-based risk-management software for companies that operate truck fleets.

The company, the brainchild of Eugene resident Ocean Yuan, is moving so fast that it caught state economic development officials — and potential competitor SolarWorld — by surprise.

"Our city is better than your city."

The hardware cluster is just one piece of Apple’s Oregon connection.

Now the Bend area’s unemployment rate, at almost 16 percent, is one of the highest of any metropolitan area in the nation. “For sale” signs dot desert-toned, unfinished subdivisions. Luxury furniture stores downtown are going out of business. San Francisco chefs have fled.

Bend-based PV Powered Inc., which makes key components for solar panels, has received a multimillion dollar investment from a Vancouver investment group that could help triple the company’s size in two years.

“We cannot wait for businesses to come,” Allen said. “We know we have to do something not only to aid the current businesses we have in town but to draw more business into town that makes sense for Prineville.”