Columbia Basin Herald Online Newspaper
Local News - Moses Lake, WA - Grant County
The state of the Columbia Basin
New Job Growth in Grant County, Washington
2007 was an amazing year for Grant County, with more than a dozen manufacturing and high-tech companies busy constructing new or expanded facilities representing more than $1.8 billion of new capital investment. With this investment comes about 2,050 new jobs. Approximately 1,000 of those jobs are with businesses building new or expanded facilities and the other 1,050 jobs are "spin off" jobs elsewhere in the economy. The "spin off" jobs estimate comes from Economic Modeling Specialists Inc.
These new jobs have put tremendous downward pressure on the local unemployment rate. The Washington State Employment Security Department reports the preliminary 2007 annual unemployment rate to be 5.8 percent, down from an annual rate of 6.6 percent in 2006. This is the lowest recorded unemployment in Grant County.
The following table lists the major projects that are driving the new job growth and the capital investment in Grant County:
Completed Projects, City, Description, Total Jobs,
Columbia Colstor, Quincy, Cold Storage, 35
Katana, Ephrata, Windmill Tower Manufacturing, 180
Microsoft, Quincy, Data Center, 50
ML Fab Co LLC, Moses Lake, Glazing, 30
Yahoo!, Quincy, Data Center, 50
Under Construction/Expansion, City, Description, Total Jobs
Ask.com , Moses Lake, Data Center, 30
Genie Industries, Moses Lake, Manlift Manufacturing, 800
Guardian Industries, Moses Lake, Fiberglass Manufacturing, 128
Intuit, Quincy, Data Center, 50
REC Silicon, Moses Lake, Polysilicon Manufacturing, 280
Specialty Chemical, Moses Lake, Silica Manufacturing, 50
Announced Projects, City, Description, Total Jobs
Norco , Moses Lake, Air Separation Facility, 15
Washington Biodiesel, Moses Lake, Ethanol Manufacturing, 65
Washington Ethanol, Moses Lake, Biodiesel Manufacturing, 44
Housing and Commercial Growth Issued Building Permits
Grant County issued a large number of building permits in 2007, a total of 1,006 as of Dec. 21, 2007. The demand for permits was so strong this year that the county had a difficult time keeping up with it and indicated they have never before experienced this kind of growth.
Moses Lake issued 228 permits as of Dec. 21, 2007. Ephrata issued 122, Soap Lake 34 and Quincy came in strong with 267. Much of the permitting in Quincy is related to new housing for the workers at the three new data centers in town.
I was unable to get the permits separated into the categories of single family or commercial, but it is estimated that 90 percent to 95 percent of all the permits were single family residential.
New Home Construction
Home construction in Grant County has increased dramatically over the past few years. While the nationwide mortgage crisis slowed things down a bit, there is still a lot of new construction under way and planned. The reason for this is the tremendous amount of job growth (2,050 new jobs in 2007) that is occurring in the area and the need to house workers.
Below is a report of new home growth built or planned in Moses Lake obtained by visiting the Web sites of building companies:
Schneider Homes - Polo Ridge: 43 parcels with 5 types of homes to chose from. Schneider has recently finished developing two other sites and each has one home remaining to be sold.
Hayden Homes - Sage Vista: An additional 42 parcels were built on in this 81-parcel project with five remaining to be sold.
Hayden Homes - Crossroads: 27 parcels
Aho Construction - Polo Ridge: 22 parcels available, three spec houses, and four sold.
Aho Construction - Leanne Terrace: one spec house, and 36 sold.
Aho Construction - Lakeland: 4 parcels available, seven spec houses, and 35 sold.
Sun Country Homes - Glenmoore Reach: 45 parcels
Moses Pointe: Approximately 800 units will be built out as demanded.
This comes to a total of 1,065 homes planned or built.
Major Projects Year in Review
A lot has happened this past year in new construction.
In February Katana Industries in Ephrata completed its 85,000-square-foot facility. This allowed it to hire an additional 70 employees, bringing the total employee count up to 180. Katana is seeking about 60 additional workers.
In February ML Fab Co LLC purchased an existing building in Moses Lake and hired 30 employees in a month. The employees assemble glass panels that are shipped via truck to Seattle and hung on several of the new skyscrapers under construction.
In April the first of three data centers in Quincy went live. The Microsoft data center will be used to house information that is essential to Microsoft's Windows Live Internet service. Employment at Microsoft was around 50 employees in April and will continue to increase as more servers are added to the facility.
In mid June, Intuit, the makers of TurboTax and Quickbooks, broke ground for a data center in Quincy across the street from the Yahoo! data center. The facility is expected to be complete by fall of 2008 and will employ around 50 people.
On Oct. 1, 2007, Specialty Chemical purchased an existing facility in Moses Lake and began the process of preparing it for the manufacturing of high-purity silica. Thirty-five hourly workers and 15 salaried workers will run the plant when it is completed in fall of 2008.
Two weeks later on Oct. 15, Guardian Industries broke ground on a fiberglass insulation manufacturing plant. The plant will employ 128 people and will run around the clock. The plant is projected to be operational in mid-2009.
In December Yahoo! officially declared its data center in Quincy operational as it held a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The data center will employ around 50 people and will house information for the Yahoo! search engine and other properties.
Construction continued strong all year long on REC Silicon's expansion. Estimates now reach more than $1 billion in investment into the project that will double the amount of polysilicon produced at the facility.
Genie Industries continued to add employees and is now up to 800 total employees. This represents an addition of about 150-200 employees during 2007.
Transportation Improvements
In June the Port of Ephrata opened a new road to allow easy access from the port's industrial park to State Route 17. Rolled into the same project was the rehabilitation of the rail spur serving the port. The rail and road will both be utilized by Katana Industries and encourage further growth at the port.
In October, work on the State Route 17 widening project in Moses Lake was completed. The completion of the project created a four-lane transportation route from both the Port of Moses Lake Industrial Park and the Wheeler Corridor industrial area to Interstate 90. The project improves shipping times, safety and encourages additional growth in Moses Lake.
Population Forecast
Population for Grant County is currently estimated at 82,060. By 2012 it is anticipated to grow 8 percent to 88,264 - an increase of 6,204 people. It is expected that 4,208 of those people will locate in the zip code areas of the three largest cities, Moses Lake, Ephrata, and Quincy. 2,542 of the new people in the county will live in the Moses Lake zip code area.
This forecast does not include the new construction that is occurring in the county and the resulting job growth and population growth occurring as the construction projects are completed and the facilities come online. While there is no direct translation from the number of new jobs to the number of new people in the population, the Grant County EDC's best estimate is that there will be an additional population increase of around 5,000 people for a total increase of 13 percent. This number should hold true if the projects proceed as scheduled. (Forecasts come from Economic Modeling Specialists Inc.)
Agriculture
Grant County has an agriculture-based economy. There are 9,249 Grant County residents, or 21 percent of the population, employed in agricultural work. Add to that number the 2,210 people employed by local food processors, and you have 11,459 jobs, or 26 percent of all the jobs in Grant County, tied to agriculture production and processing.
According to the most recent Agricultural Census, conducted in 2002, Grant County brought in $882 million in agricultural products (up 6 percent from the 1997 census). It is important to note that the acreage devoted to farmland decreased by 15 percent between the two censuses. This indicates an increase in efficiency, meaning more money was made producing additional crops on less land. The top ranking harvests were potatoes, onions, cattle, fruit and hay.
The Columbia Basin, which includes Grant County, is one of the three growing regions for the 165,000 acres of potatoes harvested each year in Washington. According to the North American Potato Market News, in 2007 Washington potato production was 102.3 million cwt. (hundredweight) up from 89.9 million cwt. in 2006.
Washington has a higher yield per acre of potatoes than any other state, and Grant County leads the state and the world in yield per acre.
Other unique highlights for agricultural production include the county's harvest of 73 percent of the nation's 1.6 million pounds of spearmint oil. There were 22,500 acres of mint harvested in Washington and more than 9,550 acres planted every year in Grant County alone. Grant County is also Washington's largest producer of dry edible beans (13,000 tons), green peas (43,500 tons), onions (143,000 tons), and sweet corn (320,000 tons).
The Agricultural Census for 2007 will be collected in early winter of 2008 and the results will be available in early 2009.
The board thanks Jonathan Smith for his assistance with this report. We took great strides to include all information, and if anything was left out please let us know.
This report is available online at www.columbiabasin.com
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Uh Huh... wrote on Jan 14, 2008 10:39 AM:
One must wonder where the priorities are at. Safety and security, or something else. "