SHERWOOD, OREGON — Development is multi-faceted. A successful growth strategy involves jobs, workforce, housing, services, and local character.
Knox County, and Mount Vernon as the county hub, faces increased growth pressure as Central Ohio develops. Intel adds additional pressure in the county’s southwestern portion.
The newly released draft of Together Knox, the updated county comprehensive plan, notes that “Ensuring robust local services for residents hinges on maintaining a strong tax base, bolstered by non-residential development that generates real estate and income tax revenue.”
As it seeks to ensure those robust local services, the city must decide what level of growth it wants to achieve — moderate, strong, or aggressive — and how it will balance all of the facets of development.
Knox County Area Development Foundation President Jeff Gottke has said Mount Vernon is not a bedroom community, having an independent and diversified economic base. However, Mount Vernon is running out of industrial space and housing.
Sherwood is a bedroom community. In 2019, the population was roughly 19,879.
According to the city’s 2023 Economic Opportunities Analysis, Sherwood’s workforce was just over 10,000. However, it had less than 6,500 estimated local jobs.
The same report estimates that while 5,661 workers commuted into the city, 9,202 commuted out.
Sherwood City Council opted for an aggressive growth strategy to change that workforce imbalance.
“Five or six years ago, council gave a marching order different than what was in the past of a residential community,” Sherwood City Manager Craig Sheldon said. “They wanted to move more toward industrial.
“The council made it a priority to hire an economic development manager.”
Sherwood officials shared their insights about implementing their growth strategy.
A clear message
Community Development Director Eric Rutledge does not recall strong community opposition when Sherwood decided to aggressively recruit new manufacturing plants.
He said the best way to categorize the decision is Sherwood has been a bedroom community with a strong residential land-use base.
“We’re trying to transition to a more complete community, and that includes all types of land uses, including manufacturing and retail,” he said.
“I think most of the public understands what the goal is: to bring jobs closer to where people work and make things more walkable and bikeable so that people can do their shopping or go to a coffee shop without getting in the car.
“When you talk about it that way, I think there’s a lot less concern.”
Rutledge credits good communication as one reason why the city faced little opposition.
“When roads get widened, trees get removed, I think there inevitably is some concern about change, but we haven’t had packed city council meetings,” he said. “I think that’s been partly because of the clear message that the city has sent about what we’re doing and why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
Additionally, Rutledge noted the city is known for high-quality public services. Bringing jobs and diversifying the city’s tax base allows Sherwood to continue providing those high-quality services.
“I think that’s why there hasn’t been the opposition, because we’ve articulated the benefits of growth well, and that has alleviated a lot of the concern,” he said.
However, Rutledge said Sherwood has not had the dramatic change that Mount Vernon and Knox County might face, noting the city experienced its population growth well after Intel arrived.
“It’s fine for you guys to talk to us and gain our insight, but I don’t think the scale and amount of change (in Sherwood) is quite as stark as you guys might be looking at,” he said.
Build on your strengths
Rutledge said the council is interested in bringing high-paying jobs to the city.
“High-paying jobs can be in different industries, but we have a microchip industry in Oregon,” he said. “So that’s a great place to start in terms of what companies can we actually attract here?
“I think that’s sort of the 101 of economic development: What are your natural advantages already, and how do you build on those?”
Eric Rutledge, Sherwood community development director
“If we didn’t have Intel here, if we didn’t have a semiconductor advanced manufacturing cluster here already, it wouldn’t have been as smart for us to try to attract businesses within that industry.”
Retired Economic Development Director Bruce Coleman noted that Sherwood has seen regional business retention and expansion because of the lack of industrial land and buildings in the area.
“Developers will build a lot of the infrastructure because land is so difficult to come by in Sherwood,” he said. “That is different from what you [Mount Vernon] will have, which will be more recruitment.”
Rutledge said Sherwood has been fortunate that it has not had to offer financial or other incentives to attract the businesses it wants.
“When you start to get into downturns, or when you’re in an area where you don’t have this sort of natural advantage for what you’re trying to attract, then you really need to get into incentives,” he said.
“When it’s really competitive or you’re at a disadvantage, you have to offer something up.”
A business-friendly place
Coleman learned on a Friday afternoon that Lam Research wanted 50,000 square feet in Sherwood. He arranged a Monday morning meeting with Sherwood’s development team.
Lam wanted to move in by the end of December.
Coleman said, “We put all of our efforts into getting that to happen,” bringing on consultants and solving parking issues to allow manufacturing in the industrial park.
The semiconductor company moved in on Dec. 1, creating 300 new jobs.
The willingness to do what it takes to make things happen is what Coleman and Rutledge call the Red Carpet Team.
“There are a few companies that we were able to attract to Sherwood that have continued to expand in Sherwood, in part because we have the space, but in part because we have the customer service that businesses are looking for,” Rutledge said.
He credits Coleman’s effectiveness in letting developers know that Sherwood was “open for business.” However, “Once they come in the door, you also can’t drop the ball as a jurisdiction.
“After you make that initial connection, they’re poking around at this space, but they’re also feeling out the city,” he said. “Is this a business friendly environment? What are the permit timelines going to be? What are the permit fees?
“I think we’ve not dropped the ball as a jurisdiction.”
Partnerships
For Coleman, the red carpet philosophy is “What little things can we do that day that can help overcome the challenge that we heard?”
He cited helping developers and businesses with applications, working with the county on roads, setting up financing meetings, and working with a utility on a gas line as examples.
“Just having that open door and saying this is what we want, how can we help you to do this?” Coleman said. “We will try to figure out how we can help you to see if this can be an opportunity for you.
“The greatest incentive we can provide is speed to market, and that’s not easy,” he added. “So you have to figure out how to overcome [rules], and sometimes that’s all these companies want.”
Providing red carpet treatment and overcoming obstacles means working with a variety of partners.
“It’s been a really exciting opportunity to help this bedroom community grow with so many partners in this process,” Coleman said, “more than I could possibly name.”
Partners include the West Side Economic Alliance, a public-private partnership on Portland’s west side, neighboring cities, developers, industrial brokers, and the city’s planning staff.
“You’ve got to be a connector.”
Bruce Coleman, retired economic development director for Sherwood
Challenges
Coleman said a major challenge to Sherwood’s growth strategy was fighting the attitude that the city was a difficult place to do business.
“Well, that’s an old memory of the city, and when you have that memory of a city, it is very hard to overcome. We overcame that,” he said.
An environmental challenge is that developers have to dynamite scab land before they can grade the land for the industrial parks.
Another challenge Sherwood overcame was zoning. Sherwood’s past zoning allowed manufacturing only, which Coleman said kept big investors from coming to the city. The city created what it calls flex zoning.
“When we changed our zoning, based on guidance from the brokerage community and industrial developers, to allow logistics also, that opened up the market for big investment to come here,” he explained.
As it is everywhere, building infrastructure is an ongoing challenge. Coleman said the city’s Urban Renewal Funding, what Ohio calls Tax Increment Financing, helps with that.
“The market is here; we just have to create the sites for these companies to grow into and help build the infrastructure through our tax increment financing,” he said.
‘Plan accordingly’
From a planning standpoint, Rutledge noted municipalities deal with other jurisdictions that have their own goals and priorities.
“You have control over your own jurisdiction, whether it’s city or county, but you can’t necessarily control a neighboring city or county,” he said. “But you have to think about what they are doing and ideally partner with them.
“If you’re not going to have the same goals, which is OK, then I think you at least have to be aware of what your neighbors are doing and plan accordingly, however you see fit.”
Rutledge said Sherwood is about local control, with the duly elected city council setting the goals and policies for the city.
“But when we’re doing that, we’re also responding to what our neighboring jurisdictions are doing, what the county is doing, what Metro is doing. We can’t have blinders on; we can’t live in a silo, because inevitably there are going to be outside forces that impact your community.
“So you have to understand what those are and develop a plan for your community that takes that into account and tries to guide your own ship the way your elected officials want to guide that ship.”
Economic development: The No. 1 pillar
Coleman joined the city as economic development manager in 2019. He retired on Oct. 4, 2024, but spoke with Knox Pages before he left.
“Six years ago, Sherwood City Council recognized we can’t just be a bedroom community, that we had to have a more diverse economic base,” he said. “They recognized you can’t put all the tax burden on your homeowners.
“They recognized economic development needed to be their number one pillar in terms of the future of the community.”
Oregon is a property-tax state; it has no sales tax. Retail businesses therefore are not a meaningful economic base in Oregon.
“Our focus is really on what’s called the traded sector, advanced manufacturing and that type of thing,” Coleman explained.
In 2002 and 2004, Oregon Metro expanded Sherwood’s urban growth boundary to include what is now known as the Tonquin Employment Area (TEA). Initially part of rural reserves, the city designated the TEA for industrial development.
According to Coleman, it never really developed, partly because it is 5 miles from Interstate 5. Additionally, he said the city had trouble figuring out how it was going to develop the infrastructure.
That changed recently due to partnerships between the city’s planning and development staffs, industrial brokers, and developers.
“It’s the planning staff that is integral to economic development.”
Bruce Coleman, retired economic development manager
“We all work together to try to figure out how we’re going to get companies to move to Sherwood,” Coleman explained.
According to Rutledge, the city has been successful so far.
Aggressive growth strategy
It started with California-based Phelen Development building a 240,000-square-foot, three-building spec development in 2019. It was Sherwood’s first new industrial space in numerous years.
The space enabled Coleman to market Phelen and Sherwood, helping change the city’s image from a “nice bedroom community” to a place that welcomes industry and advanced manufacturing.
“When Phelen came here with their industrial park, it meant that we could attract a company like Lam Research to come here,” Coleman said.
Sherwood then worked with Dallas-based developer Travel Crow on a 500,000-square-foot spec industrial park. The T-S Corporate Park opened in 2022.
Coleman said the projects were fully leased before they were completed.
Two weeks after Coleman started his job, Schnitzer Properties asked him if Sherwood wanted the company to build a 30-acre industrial park in Sherwood.
Coleman said yes, even though the city did not have infrastructure plans ready.
“We worked very closely with Schnitzer to figure out how access was going to work,” he said. “That required working closely with the county because the county had most of the roads.
“We got it to happen, and they built their first 500,000-square-foot of speculative industrial space.”
Schnitzer’s Sherwood Commerce Center is in the TEA. In 2022, Sherwood annexed 20 acres in Phase II for an additional 500,000 square feet of spec development and held a public hearing on Phase III in October 2024.
“So we are building well in the way of 2.5 million square feet in Sherwood between now and the next few years, and then we’re going to start running out of land again. But it’s an exciting venture and it’s all really because Intel came here,” Coleman said.
Benefits of Sherwood’s growth strategy
Coleman could not estimate the number of jobs Sherwood’s proactive growth stance will generate as it is based on which companies move into the space.
“These are not incentivized projects, so [businesses] don’t always tell us,” he explained.
However, Sherwood’s 2023 Economic Opportunities Analysis estimates development will create 1,200 new manufacturing jobs in the Tonquin Employment Area through 2025.
Between 2021 and 2023, the city added about 700 new manufacturing jobs in the Cipole Industrial Park and Tualatin-Sherwood Corporate Park. That exceeds the 173 jobs estimated by the regional forecast.
