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About The Bulletin. (Bend, OR) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 13, 2021)
A11 B USINESS THE BULLETIN • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 p DOW 31,068.69 +60.00 BRIEFING Portland’s Vacasa hires new CFO Portland vacation rental home management com- pany Vacasa named a new chief financial officer Tues- day, Jamie Cohen. She was previously CFO of ANGI Homeservices, a publicly traded company created by the merger of home improvement businesses Angie’s List and HomeAd- visor. Vacasa lists vacation rentals online and pro- vides cleaning, mainte- nance and other repair services for the properties’ owners. It has raised $630 million in funding, includ- ing a $108 million round in June, and Vacasa has said it hopes to take the company public. Vacasa acquired two Central Ore- gon vacation rental com- panies over the last five or six years. The company cut an unspecified number jobs in March, at the outset of the pandemic, when it ap- peared COVID-19 might seriously reduce vacation travel. But while air travel is down sharply, many people have continued to travel to vacation destina- tions in their own regions. Vacasa serves markets in every part of the country. p NASDAQ 13,072.43 +36.00 bendbulletin.com/business p S&P 500 3,801.19 +1.58 n 30-YR T-BOND 1.88% ... p CRUDE OIL $53.21 +.96 q GOLD $1,842.90 -6.70 Groups threaten suit over oil depot Two environmental groups are threatening to file suit against Zenith Energy over construction work at its oil terminal in Portland. On Monday, Willamette Riverkeeper and Colum- bia Riverkeeper filed a notice of intent to sue the company if it doesn’t get a stormwater permit within 60 days, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. The Zenith Energy oil terminal in northwest Portland receives crude oil from trains, stores it in tanks and sends it via pipes to outgoing ships. The company recently proposed upgrading its facility to handle biofuel, but it hasn’t gotten all the required permits to start the work. Travis Williams, execu- tive director of Willamette Riverkeeper, said the two Riverkeeper groups have documented land-clearing and grading at the pro- posed construction site that is not allowed under the Clean Water Act with- out a construction storm- water permit. Zenith declined to com- ment. — Bulletin wire reports p SILVER $25.38 +.14 EURO $1.2201 +.0038 BEND REAL ESTATE Limited inventory creates a seller’s market BY SUZANNE ROIG The Bulletin Less than a month’s worth of homes were up for sale in Bend in December, making for a strong sellers market, accord- ing to the monthly Beacon Re- port for Central Oregon. Bend averages about two or three months’ worth of homes for sale, according to the Bea- con Report, which is produced by the Beacon Appraisal Group of Redmond. Now those in- ventory numbers are less than a month. The short supply of houses is not likely to change given low interest rates and the attrac- tiveness of Central Oregon for people, said Donnie Montag- ner, owner of the Beacon Ap- praisal Group of Redmond. “The big picture is that there was a high jump in prices in June and July,” Montagner said. “A jump in the million-dollar priced properties are influenc- ing this median sales price. As the number of sales go down, the prices go down too.” December ended the year with the median sales price at $524,000 in Bend, $84,000 more than the same period the year before, according to the Beacon Report. The market landscape today is different than it was a few months ago, said Jim Birtola, owner of Team Birtola, a Cen- tral Oregon real estate com- pany. Real estate professionals have to prime their buyers to present clean offers without contingencies and to be pre- pared to offer prices higher than the asking price, Birtola said. See Homes / A12 COVID-19 impacts Job openings down in most industries, layoffs spike BY CHRISTOPHER RUGABER The Associated Press $13.2M will expand rural broadband The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded $13.2 million to expand high-speed internet in rural Oregon, part of a federal program aimed at accelerating broadband development nationwide. Casco Communications, a telecommunications company based in Corval- lis that operates as PEAK Internet LLC, received a $6.6 million federal grant and $6.6 million loan to build fiber-optic lines serv- ing 10.2 square miles in ru- ral Linn and Polk counties. Funding comes from the federal ReConnect Program, established in 2018 to generate pri- vate sector investment in broadband infrastructure to rural homes, businesses, schools, libraries, hospitals, farms and ranches. Oregon-Idaho Utili- ties Inc. also previously received a $12.8 million grant to build a fiber net- work serving parts of rural Idaho, Nevada and Ore- gon, including 255 house- holds across 1,284 square miles. p Mark Graves/The Oregonian file Portland Brewing Co. was started by Portland brewing pioneers Fred Bowman and Art Larrance over 30 years ago. The northwest Portland brewery was known for its signature copper tanks, as seen in 2019. END OF AN ERA After 34 years, 1 of Portland’s oldest craft brewers to cease production WASHINGTON — Layoffs spiked in No- vember compared with the previous month and the number of job openings slipped, signaling that the job market has stalled as the resurgent coronavirus has brought about another wave of shutdowns of restaurants and bars and hobbled consumer spending. While the layoffs were concentrated among restaurants, bars and hotels, the slowdown in job postings was widespread across most industries, showing a reluctance by businesses to hire more people amid a pandemic fueled recession. The number of open jobs at the end of November slipped 1.6% to 6.5 million, the Labor Department said Tuesday, its first drop since August. Layoffs, however, soared 17.6% to 1.9 million, driven mostly by job cuts at restaurants, bars and hotels, which more than doubled. See Jobs / A12 MICHAEL RUSSELL The Oregonian P ortland Brewing, one of the Port- land craft-beer scene’s founding breweries, will stop production after 34 years in downtown and industrial Northwest Portland next month, according to a post on the brewery’s Facebook page. The brewery will produce its last MacTarna- han’s Amber Ale by Feb. 5. The brewery was founded in 1986 in what is now the Pearl District by three giants of the city’s early brewing scene: Fred Bowman, Jim Goodwin and Art Larrance. Eventually, the brewery was renamed after lead investor Mac MacTarnahan, whose name graced the brew- ery’s flagship amber ale, and relocated from its original home to a sprawling northwest Portland space with a copper kettle brew- house and European-style beer hall up front. Portland Brewing went through a series of mergers and ownership changes in the 2000s, including a sale to Seattle’s Pyramid Brewing, before landing in the portfolio of Costa Ri- can holding company Florida Ice & Farm Co. The Portland Brewing brand was revived in 2013 in a move that sought to revive interest in the company. But the northwest Portland brewpub closed to the public in 2018, citing the “challenging restaurant market,” though the company carried on selling packaged beers on grocery store shelves and through its occasional dock sales. “The history of the Portland brewery and its brands made this a very difficult decision,” Florida Ice & Farm chief executive Rich An- drews wrote in a press release. “It just no lon- ger made sense to sustain the operation given the brand footprint, competitive craft beer landscape, and capital investments needed to update the brewery.” According to Willamette Week, which wrote about Portland Brewing’s demise on Saturday, Florida Ice & Farm Co. has no plans in place for the northwest Portland brewery and its signature copper tanks. As The Oregonian beer writer Andre Meunier noted in a 2019 profile of the brew- ery, Portland Brewing had a role in shaping the world-class beer scene of Portland today. Working alongside the Widmer and Mc- Menamin brothers in 1985, founders Bow- man, Goodwin and Larrance successfully lobbied to change Oregon law and allow breweries to sell beer and food at the same site where they brewed. Portland Brew- ing was the city’s fourth microbrewery, and opened one of its first brewpubs at its orig- inal location at NW 14th Avenue and Flan- ders Street. Salem gym fined record $126,749 for violating virus restrictions BY JAMIE GOLDBERG The Oregonian Oregon has levied a $126,749 fine on a Sa- lem gym that has repeatedly refused to shut down in compliance with coronavirus restric- tions, the largest fine that the state has issued for coronavirus workplace violations thus far. Oregon Occupational Safety and Health announced Tuesday that it had issued the fine to Capitol Racquet Sports for willfully refusing to comply with state health orders at one of its Courthouse Club Fitness loca- tions in Salem. Courthouse Club did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tues- day. The gym will have 30 days to decide whether to appeal the fine. It appealed prior sanctions. See Gym / A12 “It just no longer made sense to sustain the operation given the brand footprint, competitive craft beer landscape, and capital investments needed to update the brewery.” Rich Andrews, Florida Ice & Farm chief executive Oregon allocates $100M to help with commercial rent BY JAMIE GOLDBERG The Oregonian Portland Brewing Co. ‘s black vinyl lager, dubbed ‘In The Groove.’ Oregon business owners who have strug- gled to pay rent during the coronavirus pandemic will soon get some help from the state. The Oregon Legislature’s Emergency Board voted Friday to allocate $100 million toward a new commercial rent relief pro- gram administered by Business Oregon, the state’s economic development agency. But it could be well over a month before business owners have access to those funds. Nathan Buehler, a spokesman for Busi- ness Oregon, said Monday the agency is still working out the details of the program and it will likely be four to six weeks before it be- gins accepting applications. See Relief / A12
