CEDS & Regional Strategy

The region’s infrastructure: our roads, bridges, other transportation assets, sewer systems, water supply, power supply and communication lines are all outdated, failing or under capacity. Much of the region’s infrastructure is thirty to fifty years old and was built for different communities and economies. As infrastructure is the physical foundation of a local economy, these fixed assets are fundamental to the day-to-day functioning of economic and community activity.

Aging and inadequate infrastructure is not just a NW Oregon issue: infrastructure investment in the U.S. has fallen from 4.2% of GDP in the 1930s to 1.5% of GDP in the last decade. The region’s failing roads, aged and under-capacity water and wastewater systems and general lack of modern infrastructure are a reflection of this underinvestment and are making it more expensive and more difficult for the production and transportation of the goods and services that underpin the health and well-being of thriving communities. While Business Oregon is working to compile an inventory of infrastructure needs, ColPac is working to identify, assess and challenge the dynamics that are impacting the region’s ability to develop and fund adequate and modernized infrastructure.

The intention for our research and analysis of the region’s infrastructure is to provide leaders of community, businesses, jurisdictions and state and federal partners with tools to better understand where we’ve been, how we got where we are and potential viable options to solve some our ongoing challenges. 

As a rural district with most cities housing fewer than 10,000 residents, regional collaboration for economic development is critical. We aim to ensure a high level of proactive economic development coordination, cooperation, and communication among NW Oregon organizations and leaders. Our SWOT analysis workshop indicated an existing culture of collaboration as a regional strength. This foundation is an opportunity to build out our networks in an effort to maintain services, advocacy, and support for all individuals in an accessible, inclusive manner.

Active collaboration can help the region meet the three prior goals noted in the CEDS: a strong and diverse business environment, a robust workforce, and modernized infrastructure. To be successful, it’s foundational that preconceptions are acknowledged and set aside as we embark on work to benefit all the residents of NW Oregon. Despite a largely homogenous, largely white population, ColPac recognizes the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our region.

Across the region there is a range of political ideologies and recently, social upheaval has affected small business operations due to protests on sidewalks and harassment, for example. After 25 years of successful collaboration with economic development partners, municipalities, ports, and the public, each organization is facing a new reality of social dynamics.

To be effective, we must continue to draw on these institutional relationships and welcome new perspectives. Communities that cannot integrate newcomers cannot thrive, and institutions and individuals must recognize the validity of lived-experiences, differing outcomes, and a diversity of cultures and lifestyles. Underlying the need to be inclusive is the requirement to be respectful. As communities large and small have grappled with the pandemic, racism, violence, and growing inequality folks have turned their anger towards institutions like local governments, schools, and community organizations. The outcome of growing distrust is shown through incivility and aggression during public processes.

Unfortunately, the consequence of these actions has not improved conditions and sunk costs into irrelevant sidequests, caused employee turnover from legacy staff to new hires, and even reaches into recruiting for sports coaches effectively affecting every level of governance and community. To regain a sense of camaraderie, common goals, and mutual respect our communities must share open, courteous dialogue, offer meaningful public processes, and work together to bring about positive outcomes.

With effective collaboration we can succeed in advocating NW Oregon’s interests to state, federal and other entities having an impact on the region’s economic development. To be effective in a highly competitive funding environment, the region must garner consensus on regionally impactful projects. NW Oregon has been successful in acquiring funding for large-scale projects when stakeholders and elected officials rally together to provide significant investment in the area. It is our goal to continue a culture of collaboration and region-wide consensus building. 

Northwest Oregon’s existing businesses face challenges on many fronts including: the global pandemic and worldwide repercussions of conflict, local natural disasters on small and large scales, changing technologies, a resulting volatile labor force landscape, and the challenges of increased costs and regulations. The same factors challenging businesses across the country are acutely felt in more remote areas, where delays in the supply chain are heightened and recruitment efforts more strained than in cities where economic resources as more readily at hand.

However, during the last few tumultuous years an existing housing shortage became a full-blown crisis. Currently, the key to unlocking the growth and diversification of our regional economy is the lack of housing at every income level. Interviews with the private sector revealed that even individuals earning two to the three times AMI cannot find housing due to lack of inventory. Unsurprisingly, as hospitality workers responded to months of uncertain/non-existent wage prospects, they shifted away from the region and their housing stock was filled with remote workers.

This flip in resident employment type has created a particularly acute labor shortage for our tourism-based hospitality industry. Every industry in the region is affected by lack of attainable housing for workers. It is our opinion that if we could unlock housing production across the region, business growth could exceed pre-pandemic levels and continue to expand in a variety of wage categories. Strengthening our existing sectors through local cluster development, expert mentorship during expansions, access to capital, robust talent development pipelines and strong networks will lay the foundation for a prosperous, resilient, and inclusive economy. 

Not a stranger to economic downturns or significant natural disasters, NW Oregon has created networks for disaster response as well as plans to implement at those times. When traditional natural resource-based industries began to decline, local industry invested in new technologies to reach new markets. Major weather events resulting in catastrophic flooding and storm damage have resulted in the development of rapid response emergency protocols and new resiliency in infrastructure.

By necessity, economic resilience is foundational to the NW Oregon’s CEDS, and a basic tenet to the region’s planning and project implementation. Adapting a mindset of planning for adverse events as a course of action is the key to moving the needle on ensuring our region is prepared for the myriad challenges it will surely face. Our investment decisions must address ways to mitigate, adapt and plan for extreme weather, natural and human-caused disasters. NW Oregon has long struggled against the elements in its location at the edge of the continent, communities have met those challenges with ‘sisu’, a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness.

Beginning in 2020, the pandemic health emergency, social movements, and world-wide economic disruptions have fractured relationships and created mistrust in institutions. The foundation of resilient economies is resilient people and we must tie our collaboration goal into our resiliency work. A resilient region is made of up dozens of resilient communities, that know one another, know the plan, and know how to work together to execute the plan.   

Northwest Oregon Works and ColPac foster relationships between the private sector, community colleges, county-based economic developers, training programs, and other stakeholders to build career ladders, support internship programs, facilitate regional community college coordination and more.

NW Oregon Works has four industry focus areas: Maritime, Advanced Manufacturing, Healthcare and Hospitality. County-based economic development agencies each have responsive programs to support their specific needs. ColPac brings together all stakeholders, including the private sector, to work in concert for maximum effectiveness. The long-term effects of investing in workforce development beginning in K-12, NW Oregon is positioned to create a culture of innovation, regenerative business practices, and career ladders that supports business diversification expansions or vertical integration across a number of industries. While workforce development, attraction, recruitment, and retention in rural areas have innate challenges, in NW Oregon the shortage of housing units exacerbates the challenges.

Vacancy rates for long term renters and home buyers is effectively zero in many of our communities and has been for a number of years. Price pressure from technology enabled short term rental markets and second home buyers is making it difficult for businesses of all sizes and types to attract talent. Workforce attraction to our area is heavily influenced by the age, type, and availability of housing stock across the region. This sensitivity to demographic changes is demonstrated in Tillamook County, whose population is aging faster than the rest of the region and will begin to see a greater workforce constriction in next five to ten years. In order to secure the next generation of the county’s labor force , additional attainable housing must be created to address labor needs.

Northwest Oregon must provide a safe, efficient and accessible regional transportation system to support economic vitality, resiliency, and livability of Northwest Oregon. While market access and the mix of transportation modes available for the movement of goods and people are a distinct asset to the region, maintaining that infrastructure, and expanding it to meet growing industry and population needs, is a challenge. Issues include county/city/state road maintenance and funding, limitations to state highways, rail safety, aging bridges, aging dams and dykes, transit funding, and challenges maintaining port infrastructure.

NW Oregon priority transportation issues include:
• Rail safety including crossings, downtown and freight corridor rail improvements
• Highway and business road safety
• Dredging to maintain access to NW Oregon’s ports and waterways
• Transit system upgrades, including enhancement of the Connector regional transit system
• Diking/Levee certification and restoration
• Culverts/Flood gates to allow passage of water during storm events
• Functioning ditches, wetlands and floodplains

When determining priority transportation projects for the STIP and Connect Oregon (Oregon’s Multi-Modal Program), NW Oregon considers the following economic criteria: Transportation access for regionally significant industrial, local industrial and employment areas, projects that retain, leverage or complement the creation of jobs, and contribute to enhancing the region’s overall transportation system.

Addressing transportation safety is also critical as infrastructure ages and/or becomes outdated to meet the modern mobility demands of local communities. Finally, an increasingly important element of the regional transportation system for economic and community development is the ability to prepare for and respond to disasters.