Although his official title is coastal natural hazards extension specialist with a resilience initiative called Oregon Sea Grant, you could call Corcoran the Cassandra of the Coast. He warns businesses and governments about the big one, the “one-two punch,” the magnitude 9.0 Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and subsequent tsunami that is overdue. Most of the time, he says, nobody listens.

Many business and government leaders know that preparations can’t wait. They’ve floated a host of policy proposals. But it’s an ethical juggling game. Ban fire departments in floodplains and how will they get to fires in the many buildings already standing there? Reinforced towers sound like easy evacuation points, but do they promote more development in danger zones?

Most people seem to agree on education, but whose job is that — local businesses or government? And who’s going to pay for lifesaving retrofitted bridges when the federal government won’t — hotels, tourists, citizens?  

All the while, the geologic clock is ticking.

Tom Horning, a geologist turned city councilor in Seaside, thinks midnight will strike in less than 20 years. It could happen in the next day, hour or minute. In his office, buried beneath the obligatory geologic maps, sparkling rock collection and mountain range of paperwork, he lays out the scenario. Out the window, one can almost see the floodwaters rushing up Neawanna Creek, taking the aging stone bridge that Horning says will surely collapse.

The worst-case scenario is an “XXL” Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, aka “the big one.” A severe quake of magnitude 9.0 or higher would rattle the coastline for between two and four minutes. Fifteen minutes later, a 25- to 90-foot tsunami wave would appear. It would flood 908 structures in Astoria, 760 in Newport and 1,804 in Cannon Beach.

An air raid-style siren will sound in Seaside, and 20 minutes later, up to 94% of its buildings will flood, including the fire department and City Hall. Seven bridges will crumble. If the wave hits the small tourist town during the peak summer season, around 23,500 people could die. Says Althea Rizzo, geologic hazards program coordinator at Oregon Emergency Management, “They have almost all infrastructure within the inundation zone. There will not be much of a community left.”

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Old, young and poor people will face a literal uphill battle. Elders and people with disabilities will not sustain the 22-minute-per-mile brisk walk needed to reach the hills in time. Cannon Beach Elementary School, Astoria High School and half of Warrenton’s federally designated low-income housing all sit in the floodplain. Low-lying police and fire departments in Astoria, Cannon Beach and Seaside will be flooded and unable to help.

In Astoria, Fort George Brewery would go down, just like the hundreds of other unreinforced masonry buildings in Oregon. Evacuation would need to happen in minutes. The brewery’s co-founder Jack Harris says, “It would be really hard to get 2,000 people out of the buildings.”

Back in Seaside, Horning will grab his “go-bag” with camping equipment, water purification, and dried food for two weeks and flee to the hills. Those who trained for this moment will do the same.  

Tourists on the promenade will drop their waffle cones and follow the blue evacuation signs. If they try the bridge over Necanicum Creek on Broadway, they might fare better hopping in one of the duck-boat rentals below. One street north, the bridge over First Avenue will stand, allowing the crush of people to flee. They’ll pass the visitor center and the skate park, before crossing the retrofitted Neawanna Creek bridge to safety. Twenty minutes after the siren’s wail, they’ll reach the assembly area in Sunset Hills.

That is, if they were inquisitive enough to talk to the bright-eyed visitor center employee who handed them an evacuation map and explained the siren. If they stayed at the Rivertide Suites on the evacuation route, they didn’t get a map unless they asked, because the staff didn’t want to “scare the crap” out of them, as a woman at the front desk told me. The Inn at Seaside doesn’t hand out maps or go-bags either. The staff are not trained in tsunami response.

Perhaps the least informed will be the City Center Motel patrons, where the woman at the front desk threw up her hands and told me, “Well, if you’re gonna go, you’re gonna go.”

The cheapest tsunami prevention is education: plastering maps and signs everywhere, and teaching the more than 35,000 employees working within the inundation zone what to do. Unfortunately, many tourist-facing businesses do not want to aid in this effort.

Corcoran says many of the businesses he tries to educate adopt a “defensive posture.” Small businesses fear he will scare their customers. The big chains, with their corporate training manuals, “just know better.”

“We’re all walking around with our Keens and Subarus, and we don’t even know about the most formative geological event in our region,” Corcoran says. “Business owners are humans, and humans don’t change their behavior for something they haven’t experienced.”

Unsurprisingly, most businesses I contacted for this story did not respond, and those that did had a plan in place. Tillamook Creamery teaches tourists about preparedness at its visitor center. The company maintains an uphill emergency shelter stocked with tents and other supplies. Management can send an alert to all employees in an emergency, and the volunteer firefighters at the plant form an emergency response team.

Fort George Brewery does not run a formal tsunami training or promote the risks to visitors. But the company does offer general emergency training and is submitting plans to architects for building retrofits. Harris, the co-founder, is interested in ramping up preparedness efforts. He keeps two weeks of food and water in his basement.

“I am constantly aware of it,” Harris says. “Where are the exits? How will we get out of the building? Its share of our minds is really high.”

Risk fatigue, the idea that people in hazard areas face mental exhaustion from being in a constant state of alertness, registers with many businesses and employees along the Coast. There are community lectures, constant chatter about the risks, events to stock supplies. In Astoria, Harris says, “you can’t turn around without somebody preaching tsunami awareness.”

 RELATED STORY: Shaking in Our Shoes

Few people know more than the scientists at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. Spokesman Mark Farley has even seen two job candidates bail on their plans to work there, citing tsunami risk. Others, he says, “need to walk the ground and understand how everyone else is dealing with it.”

Tourism ranks as one of the top industries on the Coast, but many hotels and motels seem unwilling to provide their guests or employees with basic tsunami preparations. Oregon Emergency Management offers a free online tsunami training course for hospitality professionals. Only about 100 people have taken it so far.

Local businesses in Seaside put the onus on government to solve the problem. One motel owner told Horning the business community shouldn’t have to pay for any tsunami supplies. The hotel staff I spoke to all pointed to the siren or other local government programs when asked what they were doing about tsunami education.

Horning ran for council on a one-plank platform: tsunami preparedness. He has prepared countless documents, maps and field trips for his fellow councilors and area business leaders. He’s disappointed that businesses do not seem willing to partner with the city on the effort. They are ignoring the needs of their customers, the tourists who visit Seaside with little knowledge of the impending disaster.

“Their people are the ones who are going to die if we don’t fix the bridges,” he says. “It pays for them to change their attitude.”

There are, of course, exceptions. The Ocean Inn in Manzanita provides go-bags in every room. The city of Seaside furnished hotels including Hi-Tide Ocean Beach Resort, the Rivertide Suites, the Ebb Tide Resort and the Sand & Sea Condominium with free keycard sleeves displaying tsunami-preparedness instructions.

Risk must be accepted as a part of everyday life, the tsunami educators say. The U.N. reports that 62% of all urban residents are at high risk of exposure to at least one kind of natural disaster. Basic education on this facet of daily life won’t scare away employees and customers.

In fact, it could do the opposite. The Hatfield Center changed its interview process to incorporate tsunami education right from the start. Most applicants accept the risk and take the job. Around 400 people work and study at the research facility.

As Farley puts it, “It’s stupid to think these people are stupid. You educate them and they’ll still come here.”

When the wave hits Newport, the sea lions will be rudely awoken from their naps, but across Yaquina Bay, 500 scientists, students and beer lovers will stand safe and dry atop a concrete island.

This is thanks to a $62 million “vertical evacuation structure” that Oregon State University recently completed at the Hatfield Center. Some see these engineering feats as the best defense against the wave. Others say they promote bad behavior by legitimizing development in the inundation zone.

The tower of classrooms and laboratories will bristle with defenses during the Cascadia earthquake. A dirt berm will slow the wave. Japanese-inspired concrete pilings and walls drilled 100 feet into the sand will thwart liquefaction. Anyone in the area — at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, OMSI science camp or Rogue Brewery — will sprint up an exterior ramp to the roof. People who are injured or disabled will take the elevator, with its secondary power source.  

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“It needs to survive an earthquake, have the first wave hit it, have retreating debris hit it again, then the next shockwave, and keep 500 people on the roof,” Farley says.

Some business and political leaders, like Rep. David Gomberg (D-Central Coast), champion erecting these towers all along the coastline. Gomberg owns a kite-manufacturing business on the Coast. He thinks the state should invest in more of this infrastructure to protect residents who can’t move out of the flood zone. Another funding avenue, Rizzo says, could be to follow Hawaii’s lead and allow hotels to build taller structures if they reinforce them for evacuation.

Still, Rizzo remains split on the value of the vertical evacuation towers. It depends on geography and demographics. “If you’re an elderly person visiting for the day, you may not be able to get up the hill,” she says. “But OSU could have been a leader in building out of the bad zone.”

Less equivocal, Corcoran describes the tower as “bargaining with the devil.” He says it sends a misguided message that development in the inundation zone can continue safely. He says the college could have built new classrooms and labs upland, near the community’s “safe-haven hill” evacuation point. Instead, the school chose to settle into familiar land-use patterns. The tower sends the message that building and living around it is safe, potentially inspiring more structures in the path of the floodwaters, he says.

“The more people in the inundation zone, the more dead people,” Corcoran says. “That’s the simple formula. It’s being touted as a demonstration of something smart. It’s absolutely going to kill people.”

Moving is not an option, Farley says, as the scientists are inextricably linked to the ocean. The 52-acre campus relies on pipes delivering fresh seawater to 23 labs. “To move away from the ocean would be to give up a critical aspect of the work, so we adapt.”

Along those lines, state agencies are working on controversial plans to ban new critical infrastructure in the tsunami’s path. Unlike Washington’s coastal communities, those in Oregon often have buildable land on nearby hills and mountains. But getting developers there means overcoming a primal tug toward the shorefront, and the inertia of well-developed neighborhoods already in the flatlands.

Through two federal grants totaling $530,000 and the help of coastal hazards specialist Meg Reed, a handful of staffers from the Department of Land Conservation and Development are working with 11 coastal cities to keep essential services out of harm’s way. In one example, Seaside recently decided to move its new elementary school to an upland site.

Gomberg is critical of these moves, claiming they will cripple economic development in coastal communities, besides being patently unsafe. “Most of our lower-income population is in the inundation zone,” Gomberg says. “So what happens when you have a policy that says we’re not going to build schools and fire departments in the neighborhood?”

Horning concurs that a development ban poses a sort of philosophical problem. If you put your fire department uphill, it will stand to respond to tsunami distress. But it might be too far from many of the fires in the community that flare up before then. Either way there are casualties.

Reed says there’s enough flexibility in the new plans to keep communities safe and business thriving. The guidelines make exceptions for police and fire stations, as well as “water-dependent” businesses, like marinas. Cities can choose their tsunami scenario — small, medium or large quake — and plan where they put their buildings accordingly. “You can’t put everything on the hills because that’s not realistic,” says Reed.

Proposed regulations could allow hotels and other businesses that benefit from beach access to stay, as long as they do their part, says Reed. Hotels could be required to provide guests with go-bags and tsunami maps (only a rare breed do so). Horning proposes a room tax of between $2 and $3 on seaside hoteliers to contribute to the $35 million needed for retrofitting bridges. Just a 2% tax, he says, could raise more than $1 million a year.

Until then, hotels and realtors who make their living from selling shorefront views have no reason to change. Corcoran harbors a special disdain for realtors who sell property in tsunami-inundation zones, and for the lobbyists who defend their practices in the state Legislature. If second-home buyers lose their property, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will just bail them out with taxpayer-subsidized flood insurance.

Still thinking about buying a second home on the beach? Corcoran has a better pitch for you in the foothills of the Coast Range. “You can still see the water, but you’re not dead.”

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Through all the fear, Corcoran sees hope.

For one, he sees an “entrepreneurial wild west” of business opportunities. Contractors can make millions on seismic retrofits for “the OPB crowd.” Outdoor companies could sell prepackaged go-bags. Tourists might even come just to ogle at the Hatfield Center’s engineering marvel.

“There are worse things in the world than to have your waterfront etch-a-sketch shaken every 200 years,” Corcoran says. His point is not to take disaster lightly but to realize it is a solvable problem. It takes a modicum of effort to save thousands of lives. In less time than you might think, a resilient population can settle into a new normal.

A business community that embraces tsunami preparedness, instead of shrinking from the responsibility, will develop myriad strategies to survive and recover. When the wave hits Seaside, guests will grab their go-bags from their rooms. They’ll follow directions from hotel staff across retrofitted bridges to safety. Others might simply walk upstairs, if the hotel owner turned the building into a vertical evacuation structure. Elementary school students will just stay put.

Directed by a knowledgeable cashier, a customer will stand high and dry in the evacuation assembly area atop Sunset Hills, holding a half-eaten Mega Tsunami Pastrami.

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Ninety percent of the data generated in the world to date was created in the past two years.

As tech giants like Facebook, Google, Uber and Lyft collect and monetize more data every day from our phones, laptops and even our homes, it’s clear that businesses need to do more to quell consumer privacy concerns.

It is Design Week Portland and at a panel on technology and liveability in cities, business leaders and public officials approached our data-driven future with cautious optimism. The event was billed as an exploration of the technology driving smart cities, but the conversation turned mostly to the ethics of collecting and storing large volumes of consumer data, one of the thorniest issues of the digital age.

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Keeping information about your daily habits personal has become an impossible proposition. A large number of multi-family housing developers are adding smart-home features to their apartments, said Sce Pike, one of the panelists, and a founder of smart-home company IOTAS. Internet-connected devices in these dwellings know when you’re out of coffee filters, when you’re away from home and when you need milk.

IHS Markit forecast the smart-home industry growing at an impressive compound annual growth rate of 44% between 2016 and 2021.

Along with smart homes, cities are prepping for the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles. These inventions will add to the millions of data points already collected from our web searches and GPS-enabled devices.  

“How much do we want our environment to know about us?”

Smart-city technologies hold promise for a more comfortable and efficient future, the speakers said, but only if companies take greater care with their customers’ personal information.

Two of the panelists said they’ve sworn off Facebook, mostly for data privacy concerns. They gave tips to an audience member who asked how to protect her data stored on devices at work, and repeatedly cited a New York Times investigation about how smartphone location data can be used to track a person’s movements.  

“People are realizing the control that needs to be taken over that data and what it is used for,” says Connie Hotovec, a project architect at Gensler.

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Eliot Rose, a technology strategist at Metro, the Portland area’s regional government, explained how public agencies are drawing upon data to plan more efficient transportation and reduce crashes throughout the region. In East Portland, Current by GE CityIQ sensors attached to light poles collect information about how people travel.

The pilot project demonstrates a cutting-edge technology for smart cities, but also invites data privacy questions from the public. The American Civil Liberties Union decried similar CityIQ sensors in San Diego as “a web of surveillance technology.” In Portland, Rose says, members of the public have also expressed concern about data collection at public meetings.

“They don’t know how to hold Google accountable, so they’re coming to public agencies,” Rose says.

“People are realizing the control that needs to be taken over that data and what it is used for,” says Connie Hotovec, a project architect at Gensler.

Companies can make consumers more comfortable by giving them ownership over their data, says Pike. Our data sits within numerous computers, phones and servers, making it difficult to know who can access it. IOTAS gives its customers a “living profile” — their preferences and personal information are stored in the cloud. When they move apartments, they take their profile with them.

Pike says people who know their data are stored in a single cloud-based repository might feel like they have more control over the information.

As connected Internet of Things devices cater to more of our needs, another speaker, Wilf Pinfold of startup urban.systems, tells the audience the essential question becomes, “How much do we want our environment to know about us?”

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All good times must come to an end. That seemed to be the takeaway of a Deloitte study showing that 84% of CEOs think a downturn or recession will hit by 2020. Another alarming survey from the Wall Street Journal pegged the chance of it happening in 12 months at one in four.

Today’s economic expansion will break records this summer when it turns 10 years old. But that doesn’t mean a recession looms. We’re hard-wired not to expect something we’ve never seen before.

“Since no executive in the United States has experienced an expansion lasting longer than 10 years, they automatically assume a recession is near,” says Tim Duy, an economist at the University of Oregon.

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 Economists say they’re not seeing any signs of a recession yet, but that economic growth will likely slow over the next few years. Several prominent indicators of economic growth, including house, car and retail sales, dipped this month.

“The risks are elevated, but the next recession is not yet seen in the data,” says Josh Lehner, a state economist at the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.

The lackluster statistics are likely temporary, Lehner says. The numbers should pick up in the next few months. Meanwhile, unemployment remains low, and wage growth shows an increase.

Duy, who publishes Fed Watch, a blog tracking the Federal Reserve, says the Fed’s move away from further interest rate hikes should help draw out the expansion. Interest rates are one of the primary tools the Fed uses to influence the economy. Raising interest rates can slow the economy down; slashing them can prolong economic growth.

“Since no executive in the United States has experienced an expansion lasting longer than 10 years, they automatically assume a recession is near,” says Tim Duy, an economist at the University of Oregon.

One thing for certain is that the the economic growth train is hitting the brakes. Job growth in Oregon has been slowing for two years. Combined with a fading fiscal stimulus at the national level, Lehner says, that makes it “no question” that we’ve moved past peak expansion. The effects of tax cuts are fading, and the trade war with China has taken a toll on businesses. The economy will show slower growth in 2019 than 2018, and even slower in 2020.

When that happens, Oregon could take a bigger hit than other states. The region has enjoyed strong growth during the expansion, largely on behalf of the robust tech sector in Portland. The richest economies tend to fall the hardest, says Mark Vitner, an economist at Wells Fargo.

“The guy going 90 on the highway is going to feel like he’s slowing down a lot more than a guy going 70,” Vitner says.

Whether that hints at a full-blown recession depends on whether you’re a glass-half-empty or half-full kind of person. In one of the best case scenarios ever seen, Australia is about to hit 28 years (and counting) of being recession-free.

Recessions only happen if a large event triggers them. If the economy cools off too much by 2020, the growth streak could be broken by a shock to another country’s financial system or a political turnaround.  

“What makes me a little nervous about 2020 is the presidential election,” Vitner says. “There’s a lot of talk about economic policies that are extremely different.”

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For now, cautious optimism seems warranted. A recession call can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if too many people believe it. Households tighten their belts, and firms cut back on investments and hiring, thinking the future will be grim.

Fortunately, the state’s economic experts are standing by their call of a slowdown, not a recession.

“The hard thing to determine is when growth slows somewhat more than was already expected, does that spell impending doom or not?” Lehner says. “For now the broad consensus seems to be it does not.”

Along those lines, Vitner says the Fed should hold off on toying with interest rates. He thinks rates will remain stable throughout the year, so the Fed doesn’t need to cut them yet.

Duy disagrees. The risk of a recession is real enough to justify action from the Fed, he writes on his blog. During two similar risky scenarios in the 1990s rate cuts saved the nation from a recession.  The move would amount to an insurance policy against economic decline.

And insurance is cheaper than a crash.

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We’re in the midst of a particularly busy 2019 legislative session. Here are a few bills that could affect businesses and nonprofits on issues ranging from education, property taxes and gun sales.

Making some nonprofits pay property taxes (SB 210)

Nonprofits are exempt from property taxes. Institutions ranging from museums, to homeless shelters to Goodwill are covered under the exemption.

This bill would require nonprofits to submit paperwork to prove they should receive a property tax break. Some in the nonprofit community oppose the bill, saying it would put unnecessary strain on small-social services organizations. Jim White, executive director of the Nonprofit Association of Oregon, says the proposal is like “looking for coins in the couch.”

This bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Finance and Revenue.

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Keeping education costs under control (HB 3381)

It’s difficult for students to discern the return on investment of college degree programs that are becoming as expensive as a mortgage. This bill aims to tackle the student-loan debt crisis and rising tuition at the state’s public universities.

It would stop the bleeding by putting a hold on any tuition increases until 2021. Universities would also have to make reports to the Legislature that dig beyond the sticker price of their programs. They would have to state the average amount of debt for a student at their school, average spending on food and housing, and the percentage of students who receive loans.

The bill is currently in the Joint Committee on Ways and Means.

Out-of-state marijuana sales (SB 582)

An excess of marijuana in Oregon has pushed growers to sell their product illegally out of state. This bill lays the groundwork for legal exports of Oregon-grown cannabis. It could allow the governor’s office to enter agreements with officials in other states where marijuana is legal.

The bill would only apply to agreements with neighboring states where recreational cannabis is legal. At this point, that’s Washington and California. It would still prohibit flying cannabis to other states or any other method of transportation not allowed under federal law.

In a letter to legislators, members of the City of Portland’s Office of Community & Civic Life argued that the proposal will pay dividends to the regional economy. They wrote that the change would make the state’s cannabis businesses more resilient to economic downturns, give them a head start on federal legalization, and build a nationwide brand similar to that of the local wine and craft-beer industries.

The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Judiciary.

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Protecting people who request public records (HB 3399)

Oregon’s public records are not all that public. Someone requesting a record can be forced to wait around for months or be denied with little reason. They can file an appeal to get a judge to order the record released. But then a recalcitrant agency can sue the requester.

This bill makes it impossible to sue people for requesting records from their government. Instead, the public entity would have to sue the district attorney or attorney general who ordered the records released.

Some argue the bill would put attorneys in an uncomfortable position of being advocates instead of impartial arbiters. Others say it protects journalists and others who request records.

Les Zaitz, publisher of the Malheur Enterprise, testified about state lawyers threatening to sue his small rural paper. “I have the benefits of decades of experience facing the range of government responses to records requests, from cheerful openness to defiant secrecy,” he wrote. “Nothing is as stunning to me as a government agency fighting a lawful order that it disclose public records by using taxpayer money to sue.”

This bill is currently in the House Committee on Judiciary.

Regulating guns (SB 978)

An omnibus gun bill packs a dozen earlier bills into one that could lead to big changes for businesses and their customers. The most important provisions for businesses include allowing retailers to set higher age floors for gun buyers to as high as 21, and requiring hospitals to provide firearm-injury stats to the state.

Family of victims of the 2012 Clackamas Town Center shooting testified in support of the stricter guidelines. Edward Stack, the CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods, submitted testimony supporting the legislation. When the retailer decided to raise age limits for gun buyers in response to mass shootings, it faced lawsuits alleging age discrimination. He wrote that the bill would allow retailers to take steps to safeguard their communities without fear of retaliation.

Some gun manufacturers have pushed back. Joshua Underwood, CEO of the firearms manufacturer Radian Weapons, argued regulations won’t keep weapons away from potential shooters, and that firearms can be used to stop mass shootings.

The bill is in the Senate Committee on Judiciary. 

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As more tech companies brand themselves as sustainable, they need to confront a green elephant in the room: data centers. Every Google search, Facebook photo or Youtube video creates information that must be stored. Much of it travels to vast banks of servers tucked away in the deserts of Prineville or Umatilla County.

These data warehouses cycle through vast quantities of water and electricity, which produces greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental group Greenpeace dubbed them the factories of the digital age. Most occupy inefficient sites in hot desert or temperate climates. The information technology sector generates about 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, roughly as much as the aviation industry.

As the amount of data we generate increases exponentially over the coming years, so will the energy consumption of data centers. Intel estimates that autonomous cars, with hundreds of on-vehicle sensors, will generate 40 terabytes of data for every eight hours of driving. Facebook, LinkedIn and Google note in their latest SEC filings that they plan to significantly expand the footprint of their data centers.

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An Oregon startup is tackling this problem by peddling 25,000-square-foot shiny aluminum domes that resemble flying saucers. The company, Server Dome, licensed the design from Oregon Health and Science University. The school has operated a $22 million “Data Dome” on its Marquam Hill campus for four years.

A server dome white paper states that terawatt-hours demanded by data centers will triple within the next 10 years. CEO Bruce Brady says the company is working with angel investors and “large name-brand banks like Goldman Sachs.”

“We’ve never been at this place in society where the demand for data has been increasing year over year,” Brady says. “It’s only just begun.”

“We’ve never been at this place in society where the demand for data has been increasing year over year,” Brady says. “It’s only just begun.”

The startup has yet to generate revenue, but Brady says he’s secured “tentative commitments” from international customers for domes priced between $20 million and $40 million.

In the world of data storage, that’s a steal. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce notes that a typical data center for a company like Facebook requires initial capital expenditures of $215 million, with additional maintenance and staffing costs running into the millions. Server Dome says maintenance for all four years of the OHSU dome’s operation cost just $5,000.

The geodesic dome design funnels heat toward the top of the structure and circulates cool air more efficiently.  It doesn’t rely on expensive fans that force air through the large facilities to cool the servers.

Emily Findley, a spokesperson for Energy Trust of Oregon, says the energy conservation nonprofit hasn’t seen another data center incorporating the dome-shaped design.

The industry-standard measure of energy efficiency is Power Use Effectiveness (PUE). A PUE of 1 indicates 100% efficiency, with all the energy consumed by the center going to running the processors themselves. Conventional data centers record a PUE of 1.64.

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In 2012 concerns began to mount that Oregon’s data centers would devour too much of the region’s power supply. Prineville struggled to provide power to new businesses after meeting the demands of data centers.

Richard Devlin, a member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, says those fears have largely subsided as the facilities make technological improvements and draw more of their energy from wind and solar. Devlin feels confident that advances in computing and market incentives will keep the power consumption in check. Google notes in its 10-K annual report that advances in machine learning could better regulate energy usage in its large data centers.

“The projection of unchecked growth has not proved to be the case,” Devlin says. “Usage has grown, but not at the rate anticipated.”

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The data dome drives down PUE to around 1.13. Some “hyperscale” data centers, like those built by Facebook and Apple in Prineville, can achieve that level, but they require massive inputs of water and vast tracts of land to do so.

The smaller structure also demands less staff, potentially eliminating some data center jobs. However, large data centers offer few jobs compared to other facilities of similar size.

Oregon has made itself a hub for these enterprise-scale data centers. The state’s absence of a sales tax saves companies thousands on outfitting the facilities with hardware, and its enterprise zones confer large tax breaks. Oregon data centers are generally more energy efficient, drawing on a ready supply of hydropower.

Inventions like the dome could change Oregon’s data center landscape. Companies might not need to rely as much on the state’s cheap power and land, and could push their facilities into more extreme climates. Besides a desert like sub-Saharan Africa, Brady says, the dome works pretty much anywhere else.

Devlin says the power council will continue to monitor the growth and power consumption of data centers, but that it has become “fairly predictable.”

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Business leaders testified yesterday in support of a bill that would fill a gap in funding for outdoor industry startups.

The legislation allows the state’s economic development agency, Business Oregon, to make matching loans and grants to outdoor-gear and apparel startups. The program requires half a million dollars from the general fund. It is sponsored by four senators and six members of the House of Representatives.

Outdoor industry leaders say the bill would allow outdoor startups to overcome a harsh business climate. Most angel investors and venture capital funds target companies in the medical and technology sectors. Startups in consumer products, and especially outdoor gear, get less attention.

“There are hundreds of small struggling companies out there,” says Gary Bracelin, founder of Bend Outdoor Worx, an outdoor products accelerator. The year-long program has graduated six cohorts of outdoor startups, including Cairn, a subscription-based outdoor products retailer.  “Traditional institutions don’t quite understand the complexity of the business.”

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Mike Wallenfels, vice president of global sales at Hydro Flask, also supports the bill, partly because of his experience in startup funding with the Cascade Angel Fund. When he first joined the fund, he saw its leaders, mostly from the healthcare and tech industries, allocating most of the money to companies in that vein.

“There were some outdoor-related companies,” he says, “but it became evident to me that all the activity seemed to be funneling toward tech companies.”

A tech startup offers a shorter life cycle from founding to exit compared to an outdoor products enterprise. Wallenfels was involved in founding Mountain Hardware, a now household-name manufacturer that took 10 years to make an exit. He says that’s too long for most angel investors.

The new bill takes a slice of the precious general fund pie for which everyone from the judicial branch to state universities hungers.

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But Wallenfels says the investment will bring countless returns. Portland-headquartered Keen Footwear, for example, estimates it has returned about $770,000 to the state in trails programs and outdoor recreation initiatives. He says the bill will give graduates of the nascent programs in outdoor product management, like the one at Oregon State University Cascades, the confidence to start the next Keen.

The outdoor industry contributes more than $16 billion to the state economy, according to the national trade group Outdoor Industry Association. Various state initiatives, such as the appointment of a director of outdoor recreation, have shored up the industry cluster. It is one of Business Oregon’s target industries.

The legislation keeps Oregon in the competition with other outdoor-oriented states like Utah, Alaska and Colorado. With generous economic development incentives, Utah has succeeded in luring companies, such as ski manufacturer Salomon, from Oregon.

Rather than handing out tax breaks to large out-of-state corporations, however, Oregon is taking a different approach to growing its outdoor industry cluster. The matching funds would allow Business Oregon and outdoor industry accelerators or more established companies to nurture new gear startups from the ground up. These upstarts, the backers of the bill hope, will grow into the Keens, Columbias and Hydroflasks of the future. Ultimately, the supporters say, this strategy offers the best return on investment.

“The big companies like Nike and Columbia are doing fine on their own,” Bracelin says. “This is about the next generation.”

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In March U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said he hoped to send “a great big warning light to the basketball world” when he sentenced former Adidas executive Jim Gatto to a nine-month prison sentence for his role in funneling payments to entice high school basketball stars to attend the University of Louisville and other flagship colleges sponsored by the footwear company.

Gatto’s sentencing illustrates the financial corruption that taints college sports. With millions of dollars at stake in corporate sponsorship deals between sportswear companies and universities, the Gatto case shows how students can easily become embroiled in the collegiate sports arms race.

In Oregon the tight-knit commercial relationship between sports-apparel makers and universities is a defining characteristic of public-sector higher education. Nike dominates collegiate sports sponsorship deals, so much so that the University of Oregon proudly dubs itself “the University of Nike.”

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The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), a nonprofit that regulates college sports in the U.S., oversees a $13 billion college sports industry powered mostly by its premier league, Division I. The University of Oregon and Oregon State make millions off lucrative TV contracts, ticket sales and apparel deals. The 2018 budget for the University of Oregon athletic department, fueled almost entirely by men’s football and basketball, was $113.2 million.

The large amounts of revenue generated by college athletics stand in contrast to the frugality of academic departments at Oregon’s public universities, which decry the continual decline in state funding for tuition. In an era of record student loan debt and escalating tuition fees, academic departments are trimming costs wherever they can. But athletic departments continue to spend freely and even accept money from academia that could fund academic programs. Oregon Business examined their budgets and contracts, received through public-records requests.

Athletic directors and coaches profit from a system ostensibly created for students. The NCAA refuses to pay athletes, upholding a system where students are not financially rewarded for their efforts. The rampant spending in college athletics has prompted calls for paying athletes, banning corporate sponsorships or even dispensing with sports entirely.

 
Image: Joan McGuire

While students compete on the field, the nation’s three largest sports-apparel manufacturers vie for the chance to turn the athletes into nationally televised billboards. These agreements benefit not only companies, but coaches and administrators. A full $19.2 million of the University of Oregon’s athletic budget comes from royalties, licensing, advertisements and sponsorships.

This all makes perfect sense in professional leagues, where the athletes are paid for their efforts. But although their sports have become semi-professionalized, student athletes generate these profits while working for free.

Nike holds exclusive agreements with seven of the conference teams in the Pac-12. The league includes Oregon State and the University of Oregon. The contracts state repeatedly that their goal is “broad and prominent” brand exposure for Nike.

The 11-year, $88 million “multi-sport apparel agreement” Nike holds with the University of Oregon entitles the Beaverton manufacturer to free full-page ads in game-day publications, “prominent” signage, use of athletic facilities for company events, and three full days of the head football and basketball coaches’ time for Nike publicity events.

The college has to ask Nike if it wants to jump in on any advertising opportunities in any media, and make its best effort to get Nike products in campus stores. But the most important provision stipulates that the university must ensure coaches, players and staff use Nike products with clearly displayed logos in all practices, games, photo sessions and interviews. A player can only wear another brand if they get hurt in Nike shoes, and they must cover the competitor’s logo.

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Nike pays well for these perks. This year alone, the university gets up to $5.2 million worth of free football and basketball gear, plus $2 million in cash. These amounts increase each year of the contract. Nike holds a nearly identical agreement with Oregon State, offering the school $2.3 million of product last year. The teams get the chance to test innovative gear that hasn’t hit the market. If they get banned from television appearances or cover up Nike logos, however, the company can dock their pay.

A Nike spokesman declined to comment on the value of its relationships with colleges and universities.

“College endorsement deals bring in some income for brands, but these deals are primarily a marketing play,” says Matt Powell, a retail analyst who covers Nike and other large footwear manufacturers. “Endorsement deals are primarily revenue drivers for the schools.”

Yet despite these multimillion dollar sponsorship deals, the athletic departments’ expenses are so large that they often rely on nonathlete students to prop up sports. In 2017 the $82.7 million budget for Oregon State University was subsidized by a $4 million check from the academic budget and $2.67 million in fees charged to students, athletes or not. Most went to the football program.

The University of Oregon athletics department reports to the NCAA that it doesn’t get any funding from student fees. But in fact, the department’s critics say students pay athletics a combined $5 million a year at the very least.

The university does not publicly acknowledge these subsidies, leading to what Kenny Jacoby, an alum who covered athletics spending for the online student news site, Daily Emerald, calls “the greater myth of self-sufficiency.” The department shows a balanced budget, he says, but “a lot of this stuff at UO is spelled out in building contracts, memoranda of understanding, ASUO [student and faculty government] financial arrangements.”

One of these financial arrangements governs revenue from ticket sales. All students chip in to watch sports, whether they’re fans or not. In 2017 the student government paid $1.7 million for tickets to games. The amount is specified each year in a contract between athletics and the school senate, a governing body representing the interests of students and faculty. The money comes out of the student government budget, funded by part of a mandatory $250 student fee.

The academic budget also pays around $2.2 million (as of 2014-15) for student-athlete tutoring. This service comes at a much higher cost than tutoring for nonathletes. Athletes get their tutoring inside a $41.7 million modernist cube called the John E. Jaqua Center. The university drops $4,000 a year on academic support for each athlete, according to a 2014 University of Oregon senate estimate. Nonathletes get $225 each.

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The academic side also remains on the hook for athletics subsidies it agreed to in a 2009 memorandum of understanding that then-president Dave Frohnmayer signed with the athletic department. Nike founder Phil Knight donated a portion of the funds for the Matthew Knight Arena, a new basketball stadium, but the university paid $22.2 million using tax-exempt general obligation bonds for the land.

The athletic department couldn’t pay all of the debt service on the land and facility, so they turned to academics. Consequently, roughly half a million dollars comes out of the academic budget each year for a quarter of the debt service on the bonds. Another $375,000 a year pays for luxury box seats for the university president, and more goes to debt on an underground parking garage.

“That was a sneaky deal,” says Bill Harbaugh, a University of Oregon economics professor and longtime critic of its athletic department. “They were trying to scrape up enough money to match Phil Knight’s donation.”

Other costs prove difficult or impossible to quantify. For example, the academic budget helps subsidize legal costs. Sometimes those result from breaking NCAA rules, such as when the association this year accused the University of Oregon of violations, including a professor changing a grade for a track and field athlete.

Other legal issues have a darker side. The Gatto case shows how the competitive nature of college sports sponsorship deals can lead to criminal activity. There are other examples of how money can get in the way of ethics. In 2017 a University of Oregon men’s basketball player, Kavell Bigby-Williams, played the entire season while under investigation for sexual assault (the case was later closed with no charges filed). Three years before that, a woman accused three basketball players of raping her. The university’s general counsel settled for $800,000, plus four years of full tuition, fees and housing costs for the alleged victim.

The lawsuit alleged that basketball coach Dana Altman knew that Brandon Austin, one of the students accused of rape, had been suspended for sexual misconduct at another school. He allegedly recruited Austin to play for the university anyway. Two of the students accused of rape played in the Pac-12 Conference Tournament and March Madness, the NCAA basketball championship tournament, while the university was investigating them, the lawsuit states. Altman, who makes $2.5 million a year, earned large bonuses for winning the games.

“When they get accused of that, they hire an outside law firm that specializes in that area,” Harbaugh says. “You would think the athletic department would have to pay for that, but they don’t.”

Fed up with the situation, every year from 2012 to 2015, the University of Oregon student and faculty senate adopted resolutions sponsored by Harbaugh and other professors. They proposed that athletics make payments to academics.

When the school senate presented the last resolution to administrators, they ignored it.

Oregon State by the Numbers

Oregon State sports budget (2017): $82.7 million
Income from student fees: $2.67 million
Subsidy from academic budget (funded with tuition): $4 million
$ spent on coaching salaries, bonuses, benefits: $15.2 million
Head football coach salary: $1.9 million
Debt service on facilities: $7.5 million

Nike holds more college deals than its rivals, Under Armour and Adidas, but they are nipping at its heels. Last April the University of Washington’s football team ditched Nike after the company refused to pay them more than the University of Oregon. Adidas quickly welcomed the Huskies with a 10-year, $119 million contract, one of the most lucrative in all of college sports.

None of these business deals would be possible without student athletes. Once they step onto the field or court, however, they’re making $0. The department is prohibited from paying them by a longstanding NCAA rule that defines student athletes as “amateurs.”

That’s an increasingly indefensible position not only because everyone around those athletes is swimming in cash, but because football is a hazardous line of work. Concussions account for 7.4% of all NCAA football injuries. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a debilitating brain condition that can have lifelong repercussions, is on the rise. Future job prospects are also grim — out of 16,236 draft-eligible NCAA football players last year, only 253 went pro.

As some sports pundits have noted, the financial structure of college sports also gives rise to a racial imbalance of power. In the PAC-12, black student athletes make up 37.5% of college football players and 49.2% of basketball players (as of 2014-15). Nationally, black players are the largest racial demographic in both sports. For money-losing sports like lacrosse and rowing, however, nearly everyone is white (86% and 75%, respectively). Most people in lucrative positions of power — 86% of athletic directors and 87% of football coaches — are white.

“It’s all subsidized by black inner-city kids getting concussions and not getting paid anything,” says Harbaugh. “The revenue-losing sports are a lot of rich white kids. They get three years of fantastic coaching and experiences. It’s really outrageous in terms of its racial impact.”

University of Oregon by the Numbers

University of Oregon sports budget (2018): $113 million
Income from broadcast rights, sponsorships, royalties: $18 million
Value of Nike contract with University of Oregon: $88 million over 11 years
Payments from academics for sports: At least $5 million
Salary for head football coach: $2.5 million
Cost of Football Performance Center: $68 million
Cost of John E. Jaqua Center: $41.7 million
% of budget spent on salaries: 35
% of budget spent on debt: 17
Economic activity generated (2012): $140.5 million
Household earnings (2012): $48.9 million
Jobs (2012): 1,169

Some of the money from NCAA Division I sponsorship deals does go back to supporting the universities’ missions to educate young people by providing scholarships. Sports also bond students and create affinity for universities in ways that other activities cannot. They allow students to exercise another form of mental discipline, “kinesthetic” intelligence. Sports build the teamwork skills, leadership, time management and strategic thinking valued highly at companies today.

But a large amount of money from the corporate sponsorship deals goes to luxury items. The extravagant spending is on display at the University of Oregon’s $68 million football performance center, described by a local architect as a “Darth Vader-ish Death Star,” featuring hand-woven Nepalese rugs, a high-tech “war room” and stone imported from China.

Coaches are also paid handsomely. Oregon State spent $15.2 million in 2017 on coaching salaries, bonuses and benefits. Head football coach Jonathan Smith made $1.9 million in total compensation. Baseball coach Pat Casey, who retired in 2018, saw exponential salary increases each year until he reached $1.1 million in total compensation with bonuses.

University of Oregon athletics spent 35% of its 2018 budget on salaries and benefits. Altman makes $2.5 million a year. So does head football coach Mario Cristobal, whose perks include two courtesy cars and memberships at the Eugene Country Club and the Downtown Athletic Club, an upscale gym.

The coaches rank among the highest-paid public employees in the state of Oregon, earning three and a half times that of university president Michael Schill. Governor Kate Brown would have to work for 25 years to earn what Cristobal makes in one year.

The University of Oregon’s Autzen Stadium. Photo: Wikimedia Commons 

Other sports fall in the red, but their coaches still earn a high salary. An analysis from the Daily Emerald showed that in 2017 the university’s baseball team lost $40,000 for every game it played. The program incurs an expense of $2.6 million and brings in only $275,000 in ticket revenue. Nevertheless, head coach George Horton earns half a million dollars per year, along with a company car and bonuses for championship appearances.

The athletic departments’ multimillion-dollar sports facilities eat into not only the athletics budget but the universities’ overall liability. The University of Oregon athletics department spends 17% of its budget on debt service. The interest on payments scheduled for the next 24 years exceeds $144 million. And that’s for just three projects.

Likewise, the Oregon State University athletic department is gnawing away at $7.5 million of annual debt service on its facilities, about a fifth of the university’s entire debt service obligation.

Those numbers spook lenders, hurting the college’s ability to secure loans at favorable interest rates, says Harbaugh.

Neither of the athletic departments at the two state universities responded to emailed requests for comment by the deadline for this article.

The University of Oregon attempted to quantify the economic impact of college sports when it commissioned a study in 2012 from one of the university’s economists, Tim Duy. The study kicked off with eye-popping stats, showing that visitors flocking to football games generated $140.5 million of economic activity in Oregon, $48.9 million of household earnings and 1,169 jobs, a significant boost to the state economy. Yet buried at the end is a lukewarm verdict: “Identifying quantifiable outcomes of college athletics has remained elusive.”

Tim Duy, an economist at the University of Oregon

The athletics department staff told The New York Times in an article published in August 2013 that they wear the “University of Nike” label as a badge of honor. All this spending, they say, pays dividends to the state economy, tourism dollars, student quality of life and university prestige.

In other interviews with the Daily Emerald and The Register-Guard, University of Oregon administrators say athletics contributes to the university’s academic mission by paying out-of-state tuition for student athletes and enhancing the visibility of the university. The national Ducks sports brand entices students from across the country and lands coveted out-of-state tuition dollars.

It is hard to tell if sports victories actually boost enrollment. Applications do spike after championship games, but that doesn’t mean those prospects show up for class. Between 2001 and 2017, the University of Oregon appeared in two title games. Oregon State came up empty-handed. Yet application growth between the two schools over this period has been comparable, and undergraduate enrollment grew much faster at Oregon State.

Duy concludes in his report that “college athletics clearly serve as a marketing tool for universities,” but it’s unclear just how effective of a tool they are. The most optimistic studies on the academic value of college sports, he writes, show “short-lived” gains of between 2% and 8% in applications from students with a range of SAT scores. The pessimistic studies find no impact. Spending those sports-marketing dollars on other sources, Duy notes, could produce the same effect for less money.

Instead of academics subsidizing sports spending, what if the relationship was reversed? In an era of declining public funding, Oregon’s universities could benefit from sports sponsorship revenue. With the extra money, colleges could devote more to promoting their research and enhancing the image of their professors. Universities could boost professor salaries, which, at the University of Oregon, are lower than those of peers at other public institutions. Some of the athletic bounty could stave off tuition hikes, attracting more students who would see their education as a better investment.

Of course, this is hard to achieve when athletic departments funnel all of their money to high salaries and costly facilities, instead of to the academic mission to which they ostensibly contribute.

College sports were originally intended as a complement to education, a way to discipline the mind through physical exercise. In fact, the 1950s version of the NCAA rule book explicitly said student athletes shouldn’t be exploited by corporations.

A European-style model of separating sports from education would drain less from school, Harbaugh says, but it is hard for Oregon’s public universities to escape. “I don’t see a world where universities can get out of the football business,” he says. “It’s too profitable.”

Profitable, certainly. Just not for students.

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This week local leaders in Eugene are meeting to discuss the concept of building an innovation district, and in late spring or summer the plan will start to come together in a more formal way. The discussions build on several years of conversation about adopting the trendy, but loosely defined, economic development strategy.

Innovation districts have cropped up in entrepreneurial cities across the world, and are becoming a hot economic development trend. Portland recently designated an “innovation quadrant.” The public-private partnership advocates for infrastructure improvements like transit lines, and economic incentives like startup funding, to promote business development in the city’s urban core.

Researchers are still defining innovation districts, but their key ingredients include proximity to a major research university, public gathering spaces, tax incentives to promote business growth and lots of free wi-fi. Innovation districts qualify for federal funding. This financing rewards commercial real estate development and entrepreneurial activity in a designated zone.

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However, the concept remains nebulous. Buzzwords like “center of gravity” and “innovation capacity” dominate the conversation. No checklist of features exists to help business leaders envision their ideal district.   

“That’s one of the challenges,” says Sabrina Parsons, CEO of Palo Alto Software, one of Eugene’s large employers. “There’s a lot in what it means, but there’s not a lot of prescription in exactly what to do with it.”

A Brookings Institute report identifies three types of innovation districts. In the “anchor plus” model, development clusters around a central institution. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, business growth erupted around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The “reimagined urban areas model” relies on the transformation of historic waterfronts or industrial areas, such as Seattle’s South Lake Union district.

In the third type, an “urbanized science park,” a mixed-use hub of retail, restaurants and housing, develops in a suburban area.

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RAIN Eugene, an organization that assists local startups, has spearheaded much of the innovation district discussion. The group hosted a talk from a Brookings researcher, and blogs about the idea on its website. Interim Director of RAIN Dana Seibert could not be reached for comment.

In Eugene, the University of Oregon could anchor the district’s growth, aided by a wealth of nearby technology startups. The second-largest city in Oregon benefits from easy access through I-5 and a nearby airport.

The advisory board meeting this week will convene representatives from Lane Community College, RAIN, the cities of Eugene and Springfield, and others.

Parsons says that as the district develops, it will be critical to communicate to university graduates that good jobs await them in Eugene, not just the big-name technology cities.

“The biggest hurdle is our biggest asset: location,” Parsons says. “We’re not Silicon Valley and we’re not Seattle.”

That’s just fine, she says. With a well thought-out plan and communications strategy, an innovation district could send a message that Eugene is the place to be.

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This is the time of year when prospective college students are mulling over their admissions offers. Graduate students are repeating the process. I was admitted to all five graduate programs to which I applied, but without funding. The debt at every one of them would exceed my expected starting salary. I called each program to explain I didn’t have the money. They responded, “Neither do we.”  

The budgets at each of these state schools, including the University of Oregon, have been slashed year after year. They petitioned me to join their departments, but explained they had no flexibility in their department funding.

Other schools in the Oregon university system are no exception. In response to the proposed 2019-2021 legislative budget released last week, a group of higher education advocates called it woefully inadequate for funding postsecondary schools.

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The cuts to public education mean tuition hikes, loss of extracurricular activities and mounting student loan debt. Last year the University of Oregon board of trustees voted to increase nonresident tuition by 2.8%. Graduate tuition increases range from no change to 5.4%. Without more funding from the Legislature, the board says it might have to raise resident undergraduate tuition by more than 5% along with making budget cuts. 

Oregon’s student debt burden now totals $18 billion. It has become so pronounced that some employers are offering employees student debt relief benefits instead of retirement contributions. 

Related Story: Student loan debt soars, employers pitch in

“Oregon students entering college today have known nothing but cuts to public education,” wrote members of the Higher Education Alliance in a press release. “They were born as the Legislature held a record five special sessions to slash budgets. They have watched class sizes grow, school years shorten, extracurricular activities disappear, and tuition skyrocket.”

The Higher Education Alliance members who signed the press release comprise most of the state’s large community colleges and public universities, including Oregon State University, the University of Oregon and Portland State University.

Governor Kate Brown’s budget for 2019-2021 includes $736.9 million from the general fund in operations support for public universities, an amount unchanged from the last biennium.

Meanwhile the costs of higher education are rising. Universities’ limited budget forces cuts to career and technical education (CTE) graduates and career counseling services, critical for producing a talented workforce for the business community. 

“When you cut funding for higher education you’re cutting faculty and staff, and programs that help students succeed and graduate,” says Lizbeht Marquez Gutierrez, a sophomore studying sociology at Western Oregon University and member of the Oregon Students Association, a nonprofit that represents college students. “Every time they (tuition rates) go up students get priced out.”

Marquez Gutierrez says the Students Association is asking for a $1 billion in public university funding, and $787 million in support for community colleges. This level of funding, the students believe, aligns with what university board members have said can support college programs without hiking up tuition. Students are writing to legislators and holding lobby days to voice their concerns. 

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I reached out to Rep. Dan Rayfield, a member of the budget writing committee, for an explanation of the cuts. He couldn’t be reached in time, but the budget notes some efforts to control costs for students. An investment of $856 million in the public university support fund is designed to keep tuition increases below 5% and balance out some of the cuts to state programs. The budget also includes funding for up to $173 million in capital projects.

Higher education is not the only state function clamoring for funds. The state court system is also chronically underfunded. The Public Employees’ Retirement System crisis and other fiscal issues have led to shortages in a number of areas.

Related Story: Oregon courts face gaping budget gap

The cost of many professional degrees has escalated, often out of proportion to earnings trends. Getting a law degree has become three to five times more expensive than it was 30 years ago, according to Law School Transparency, a consumer advocacy nonprofit.

For the urban planning and landscape architecture schools I was accepted to, I’m contemplating taking out $60,000 in loans for in-state tuition, roughly equal to my expected starting salary in the new field. Like many people in these trades, I will likely be paying off loans for 10 years or more. Unlike academic research degrees, professional programs do not provide much financial support. Students pay close to the full-tuition cost, no matter how much they will make in the field.

For undergraduate students seeking four-year degrees, the numbers can be even more unbalanced, and the payoff less clear. It seems unlikely that the situation will improve, as Oregon voters have year after year struck down bonds for higher education funding.

Marquez Gutierrez said in a Higher Education Alliance press release that “When I look at that budget I think what that means for me and my peers in terms of tuition increases, debt taken on, additional work hours added, or meals skipped because we don’t have enough money for groceries.”

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Carl Coffman is betting that in the near future, people will want to live in shipping containers.

After 35 years as an excavation contractor, Coffman decided he wanted to spark a conversation about climate change and natural resources. The retired contractor set up shop in Oregon City. His company, Relevant Buildings, fabricates finished homes out of recycled containers from nearby ports. He hopes to sell them for between $50,000 and $230,000.

“It’s simple if you just use these how they were designed,” he says.

Coffman demonstrates another way of stacking the containers. 

Coffman’s operation sits in a gravel lot just off I-205, easily recognizable by the pile of 450-foot steel containers. A model home village features containers outfitted with windows, electrical wiring, plumbing, drywall, tiling and all the other accoutrements of a modern home. They range from single-container homes to three-container creations of more than 1,000 square feet.

Coffman’s latest project in the city of St. Helens is an eight-unit shipping container condo complex. The 650-foot, one-bedroom units are stacked together like Legos, four below and four above. Coffman is leasing the land from the city.

He’s also in the early stages of a ten-unit development in Milwaukie and a 20- to 30-unit project in Roseburg.

With affordable housing in crisis across the state, planners and developers are scrambling to accommodate new homebuilding solutions. Some alternatives include encouraging “missing-middle” housing like duplexes and triplexes. Portland recently amended its code to allow accessory dwelling units — small backyard living quarters often offered at an affordable price. And of course there are tiny homes.

A two-story container home at the Oregon City location. 

Coffman insists his containers bring something different to the real estate market. They are not tiny homes, he says. Nor are they affordable housing, exactly. The St. Helens units will rent for around $1,200, and Coffman hopes to offer ownership options at or below that rate.

Coffman does hope to sell future developments to nonprofits. “Once we get to scale, we’ll make a dent in affordable housing,” he says.

The idea has the potential for provide housing at low cost. As with accessory dwelling units, developers can take advantage of modular construction. They can build the entire unit and ship it to the construction site, cutting down construction times and disruption to the neighborhood. The container homes also use only about an eighth of the wood in traditional light-frame U.S. homes.

Each home sits on a foundation and a thick bed of insulation. Various models feature different bumpouts for windows and doors welded to the container. The interiors are games of Tetris, with laundry machines in the bathroom or clever storage nooks. Some units even boast small porches. 

Though relatively new to the United States, container architecture has become a worldwide fad. In an era of increasing urbanization, the structures can provide quick and flexible housing. Coffman was inspired by student housing in the Netherlands—an entire dorm built of stacked shipping containers. 

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With disaster resilience a frequent topic of conversation these days, Coffman says his containers are just the thing, water resistant and earthquake proof. “If you put a traditional house on a ship, stacked it seven high and sent it across the ocean, I don’t think it would do so well,” he says.

Before Coffman can scale up, however, he needs to get approved for state permits. That will require expensive testing of the homes’ structural integrity.

The entreprenueur doesn’t seem to have much of an idea of where this project will take him. So far he’s only sold two units.

He just knows he wants to shake up the traditional home building industry. “We’re trying to push back on the common way of doing things,” he says.  

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