Manufacturing’s booming in the Northwest, as demand grows worldwide for the region’s products. “What we’ve seen is a massive investment in manufacturing—whether in food products, semiconductors, lumber, or tissue paper,” says Alex LaBeau, president of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry. That’s true at Sun Valley Bronze, an expanding maker of high-end, handmade hardware. “We’ve added 10,000 new square feet to our location in Bellevue, Idaho,” says Aimee Commons, creative director.
It signals a big change from five years ago. “From 2011 to 2012 we had a downturn, but in 2012 we started an upturn,” says Del Stevens, president and CEO of Dura Industries in Portland. “That’s when we started doing samples for the Smithsonian.” As in painted aluminum samples for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., now clad in 3,600 Dura Industries panels. “We got national attention and a lot of architects called us,” he says. “So we now have several new finishes—one’s on a 42-story tower in Portland, and another’s on a 10-story in Portland.”
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