OregonBusiness.com

• Nike's great leap
  The story of Nike’s multi-billion-dollar bet on China and the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games begins, appropriately enough, with Phil Knight.  MORE >
  
  
• Smoking ban pressures bars and restaurants With the statewide smoke-free workplace law looming, some businesses have decided to ditch their ashtrays early.
• The $4.2 billion question Answers are few and the clock is ticking as the project to replace the I-5 bridge over the Columbia starts looking for billions of dollars in funding.
• Public companies vanish while profits rise Publicly traded companies are becoming an endangered species in Oregon. Some have opted to move headquarters. Others have been acquired by out-of-state companies.
• State economist thinks economy will sour less in Oregon Let’s say you hit a stretch of bad luck a year ago. You lost your job. Your spouse took the kids and left.

Around the State

State senator Atkinson on Iraqi Kurdistan exchange program
IN 2005, OREGON SEN. JASON ATKINSON created the nation’s first state-to-state business exchange program with Iraqi Kurdistan — the semi-autonomous state in the northern part of Iraq.

Oregon shoplifting rates increase
Shoplifting is an enduring nuisance but in tough economic times the problem goes from bad to worse.

Cuts wound rural air service
Turbulence hit the state’s rural airline service this summer, as flight service was reduced or canceled in several communities, leaving in its wake concern that businesses and economic development will be harmed.

With timber payments gone, counties struggle
Josephine County already has lost almost half its county employees and all its libraries, and county commission chairman Dave Toler is worried that public safety could be next.

PacifiCorp loses solar battle
PORTLAND Oregon’s burgeoning solar industry is back in business after a regulatory scuffle with PacifiCorp that jeopardized the future of $40 million worth of new solar installations statewide.

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Biz Life

Tactics: New Seasons Market claims victory for organic food
THIRTY YEARS AGO, Brian Rohter and his colleagues in the organic food business were widely considered a fringe group.

CEO Strategies: Work the system before it works you
IN 2000, AT THE NADIR of his career — and possibly his life — Sam Carpenter found himself depressed, medicated, logging 100-hour workweeks and just days away from missing a payroll for his Bend telephone answering service, Centratel.

Next: a workout wheelchair
Twenty years ago Jerry Schaeffer, an engineer from Beaverton, fashioned the idea for a different kind of wheelchair built on the concept that wheelchairs should help, not harm, the user.

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Lists

Public companies vanish while profits rise

Deal Watch: Industrial real estate is climbing, barely

Residential real estate firms ranked by licensed agents

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From The Editor

The rural stomp
THE LOSS OF TIMBER MONEY. The loss of rural programs. The loss of the Office of Rural Policy. Even air service to rural communities is getting sliced.

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Feedback

Economic woes reduce travel plans

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