MAY 2007: DISPATCHES
PORTLAND
The city’s northwest industrial neighborhood will be home
to a $13 million crumb rubber facility owned by Dash Mult-Corp,
parent company of McMinnville-based RB Rubber Products. The new
facility will be capable of grinding old tires into rubber
crumbs 24 hours a day, five days a week, quite a jump from the
current production rate at Dash’s RB Recycling plant in
north Portland. All 30 workers from the recycling plant will
join about 20 new employees at the new plant when it opens in
January. The McMinnville plant currently handles the refining
process, turning the large crumbs from Portland into smaller
pieces that can be remolded into matting for playgrounds and
athletic facilities. “We will go from the whole tire all
the way down to the crumb in the new facility,” says Greg
Divis, RB Rubber president.
Knowledge Learning Corporation acquired Children’s
Creative Learning Center in early April. Knowledge Learning is
the private provider of early childhood education and care that
moved its headquarters to Portland following the acquisition of
KinderCare in 2005. San Francisco-based Children’s
Creative is an employer-sponsored program. Financial details of
the acquisition were not disclosed.
Portland’s downtown condo market has been flooded with
new buildings in recent years. Now some developers, including
Opus Carroll of the 21-story Ladd Tower, are taking a new
approach: luxury apartments. Ladd Tower was originally planned
as condos but Opus Carroll, a partnership between Opus
Northwest and Carroll Investments, announced their decision to
market the building’s units as apartments. John Bartell,
vice president and general manager for Opus Northwest, says the
supply of condos left a demand for high-end urban apartments
unmet. Construction will begin in June after the historic Ladd
Carriage house is moved off site.
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