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Portland-based SERA Architects is gearing up to open an office in the San Francisco Bay Area to keep up with a surge of work in California.

SERA principal Clark Brockman is planning to move this month to Menlo Park, Calif., to establish the new office. He will lead an effort to find office space for the firm to occupy in Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco, said Kip Richardson, SERA’s marketing director. The office is expected to open with three to six employees by the end the year, he said.

Silicon Valley is appealing to SERA because that is where many of its projects in the Bay Area have been located, Richardson said. The area is home to many tech companies, and SERA’s work there has been for Mountain View-based Google and Stanford University in Palo Alto, he said.

鈥淲e just got to the point where there were opportunities we couldn’t pursue because we didn’t have people down there,鈥� he said.

Firm leaders for a while have considered opening SERA’s first office outside Portland in Silicon Valley, Richardson said. Unlike San Francisco, which has a wealth of established architecture firms, Silicon Valley provides an opportunity for SERA to fill a niche, he said.

鈥淲e just see a lot of opportunity down there,鈥� he said. 鈥淪ERA brings something unique down there. There’s not as many innovative design firms in the Silicon Valley.鈥�

SERA is hiring for positions at the planned Silicon Valley office and will post more openings at in the coming weeks, Richardson said.