announced today that Wesley Clark, a retired general of the U.S. Army, has joined its board of directors.

In addition to 38 years of Army service, where he was a NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, Clark has had a diverse career with an interest in alternative energy. He has worked as an investment banker, chaired several companies and was a Democratic presidential candidate in 2003.

SoloPower, a Calif.-based manufacturer of solar cells and thin-film modules, is building a $340 million manufacturing plant in North Portland, slated to begin commercial production later this year.

The company initially sought to renovate a former Nike distribution center in Wilsonville but backed off last year after some citizens raised concerns about the city using urban renewal money as an incentive. Operations in Portland are expected to bring more than 400 jobs to the community at an average yearly salary of $51,000.

Clark has written and spoken extensively about the importance of renewable energy not only for the U.S. economy, but for American security.

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The ink is barely dry on ‘s lease at the Marine Drive distribution facility in the Rivergate industrial district in North Portland. But the thin-film solar manufacturer says it isn’t done looking for space in the Portland-metro area.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company last week signed a lease for 225,000 square feet in the Marine Drive building, where the company will open a manufacturing plant in early 2012. But SoloPower says that space is only a portion of the 400,000 total square feet it needs to expand its operations into Portland.

“The plan, the capital investment and the amount of people it will put to work, hasn’t changed since we were proposing the facility in Wilsonville,” said Tim Harris, CEO of SoloPower. “We just envision doing it in two buildings instead of one, but using the same amount of square footage as originally intended.”

The company hasn’t signed a second lease yet, but local brokers are playing the speculation game. One possible location suggested is at Rivergate Logistics Center on North Ramsey Boulevard, down the street from the space SoloPower leased last week.

Jerry Matson, an industrial broker with Colliers International that’s listing the space, said no lease agreement exists yet. But Mark Hush, vice president of the industrial services group at the Portland office of Grubb & Ellis, said he thinks that’s the space the company will settle on.

“They’ve been focusing in on that space for a while now,” Hush said. “It makes sense with how close it is to their other space.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if something comes out in the next week because it’s been in the works for a while.”

The inventory of possible sites that offer the right combination of features for SoloPower is thin. But local brokers say there are some choices available within Portland’s city limits, which is a requirement for the company to take advantage of Portland’s enterprise zone and the nearly $17 million in property tax abatement that the company would receive for locating within it.

Don Ossey, a principal with Capacity Commercial Group, pointed to the 175,000-square-foot facility at the 158th Commerce Park as a possible location. Subaru is preparing to vacate the space in favor of a new, 413,700-square-foot, built-to-suit facility in the Rivergate industrial district. He also suggested the 152,435-square-foot Cascade Distribution Center in the East Columbia Corridor submarket as a space that might fit SoloPower’s needs.

Ossey also mentioned the availability of a 175,000-square-foot space formerly occupied by Qwest on 122nd Avenue. But considering that he is listing it, Ossey said he would know if the company was interested.

“After that, it gets a little slim unless you’re willing to head to the suburbs like Wilsonville,” he said.

The company had originally planned on leasing a 400,000-square-foot distribution center formerly occupied by Nike in Wilsonville. But then a group of local activists took issue with the city’s incentives package for the company – most notably the creation of an urban renewal area that would provide SoloPower with $13 million in diverted property tax dollars.

Armed now with an incentives package that includes money from federal, state and city governments, SoloPower is looking in Portland exclusively.

While nothing is finalized yet for the second lease, Tom Talbot, senior vice president at Kidder Mathews and the broker that represented the building owners for the Marine Drive distribution facility lease, expects SoloPower to get to work immediately on its first facility.

“SoloPower will take responsibility for the facility at the beginning of September,” he said. “They have an aggressive timeline and will get to work right away.”

Between the two facilities in Portland, and expanding production at the company’s original manufacturing facility in San Jose, SoloPower will spend nearly $340 million. The projects will create nearly 500 full-time jobs and more than 250 construction jobs. The company expects the facility to be in production by early 2012.

“Stay tuned with this company,” Talbot said. “I’m not involved with their plans at all, but they’re good people and seem like they have a good plan.”

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A group of Wilsonville citizens concerned about a plan by the city to entice a solar manufacturer with urban renewal money last week discovered that SoloPower opted for a deal in Portland instead.

But John Ludlow, a former Wilsonville mayor and a member of the group, said a threat still exists.

“I’ve heard rumors that there is someone else out there looking and it will be interesting to see what the council has to say about it,” Ludlow said. “They say the URA is SoloPower specific, but just like any URA they can make amendments to it once it’s in place.”

SoloPower, based in San Jose, Calif., on Friday announced definitive plans to spend $340 million to establish manufacturing operations at a site in Portland rather than in Wilsonville. But the citizens group, Stop Urban Renewal Giveaways, wants to know what the city plans to do with the one-property urban renewal area it created to attract SoloPower.

The group filed paperwork with the city of Wilsonville last month to place a referendum on an upcoming ballot that would ask voters whether to overturn City Council’s decision to create the URA.

“I told (City Council) in January, again in February and again in March that we always vote on urban renewal in Wilsonville; it’s always how we’ve done it,” Ludlow said. “I told them if they didn’t listen to me they were going to get a lesson in civics, and I think they did.

“Hopefully they now understand that they should ask us our opinion more often.”

The single-property URA was created around the property boundaries of a vacant, 400,000-square-foot distribution center in Wilsonville. The city didn’t qualify for the state’s enterprise zone program, which offers five-year property tax abatement when improvements are made to a property, so it created a URA that emulated one. SoloPower would have netted between $11 million and $13 million.

Mark Ottenad, a spokesman for the city of Wilsonville, said officials are obviously disappointed to lose the SoloPower opportunity and the 500 jobs it potentially could have created at the manufacturing facility. But the city’s next step concerning the URA isn’t clear because officials haven’t had a chance to discuss the situation yet.

“All I can say is that we would have liked the opportunity to work with SoloPower in Wilsonville, but we are glad they decided on a location in the Portland region,” Ottenad said. “The city could start to discuss what to do with the URA (this) week, but even if they do it will likely be discussions in work session, and not during the actual council meeting.”

But Ludlow said the discussions will have a big impact on how his group moves forward. The group has in hand the 915 petition signatures required to proceed with the referendum, he said, but it doesn’t want to waste taxpayer resources if the council chooses to sunset the URA before it absorbs any more resources.

“Our concern with the timing is that we have to file our referendum by this Wednesday, so we need to know how the council plans to move forward,” Ludlow said. “I think it’s going to be an interesting next few days.”

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Solar manufacturer SoloPower, based in San Jose Calif., is planning to expand … to Portland.

Mayor Sam Adams and a handful of city and state officials announced today that SoloPower would establish its new manufacturing facility in Portland, and not Wilsonville, as considered previously. The company could end up in North Portland’s Rivergate industrial park, and will definitely be within the city’s enterprise zone, which yields a $17.9 million property tax break.

“This isn’t your grandmother or grandfather’s solar film manufacturer,” Adams said with a smile.

SoloPower had planned to invest approximately $340 million in Wilsonville, where it sought to renovate a former Nike distribution center. But the company backed off because some citizens raised concerns about the city using urban renewal money as an incentive.

SoloPower’s CEO, Tim Harris, said Portland was chosen because of its enterprise zone; companies that make improvements to facilities within the zone are granted property tax abatement for five years. Wilsonville didn’t qualify for the state program.

“The shift to Portland has nothing to do with Wilsonville’s or Clackamas County’s leadership; they worked really hard on this,” Harris said. “The (URA) ran afoul with the citizenry and put enough uncertainty and delay to the project that we couldn’t afford to move forward.”

SoloPower expects to employ 481 people, at an average annual wage of $51,000, plus benefits, at the facility. A site has not been determined yet; however, the company expects to break ground by early July and have its first phase of production up and running by the beginning of 2012.

Portland City Council will discuss the SoloPower plan at its Wednesday meeting, at 2:30 p.m.

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The city of Wilsonville is eager to lure San Jose, Calif.-based solar manufacturer – and as many as 500 jobs and investments worth as much as $340 million – to a vacant distribution warehouse. Creation of an enterprise zone, a typical incentive, is not an option, so Wilsonville is looking to create Oregon’s first one-building, single-property urban renewal area.

“We know the company likes the space, the area and the state incentives, but we need to have something to offer … in order to compete with Oregon towns that have enterprise zones and out-of-state towns with other incentives,” said Mark Ottenad, a spokesman for the city of Wilsonville. “So the council directed staff to get to ‘yes,’ and the urban renewal area is what they came up with.”

SoloPower announced earlier this year that it intends to add approximately 400,000 square feet to the 508,277-square-foot Wilsonville distribution center formerly occupied by Nike. The company would convert it into a manufacturing plant that produces a number of different products, most notably a thin film used to collect solar energy. But SoloPower has not signed a lease for the property yet, and the city wants to make sure it does before another offer is made elsewhere.

City staffers first looked at the possibility of an enterprise zone, which typically gives businesses five-year property tax abatements on improvements that increase property value. But Oregon presently has 59 enterprise zones – 48 rural and 11 urban – the maximum allowed under state law. According to Marc Zolton, a spokesman for the state’s economic development agency, only re-designations and tribal-based designations would be allowed.

The city staffers then looked into possibly amending the boundaries of one of the city’s two present URAs to include the ex-Nike property. The issue with that, according to Ottenad, is that those two areas already have approved project lists and bonds sold to pay for them. Though the URA plans could be amended, the projects would be added to the bottom of the list, and wouldn’t fit the time frame needed to accommodate the company, he said.

“There was this sudden revelation between a few different people that we could create similar incentives to an enterprise zone by creating a new urban renewal area,” Ottenad said.

The urban renewal area would consist of 26 acres – the parcel that encompasses the distribution center – and last 10 years. Property taxes on the building were assessed at $319,000 in 2010; the city expects that amount to reach $4 million annually if SoloPower were to follow through with its expansion plan.

In the city’s URA plan, once the property tax base were frozen at its current level, SoloPower would get back 75 percent of property tax increases associated with improvements it made to the building. These could be facade improvements, mechanical improvements or equipment additions.

The money could go to lease payments or tenant improvements – like adding gas lines or a new HVAC system – but could not be used to purchase equipment or other manufacturing products. SoloPower is planning to spend up to $40 million on tenant improvements, and at least $12 million on tenant improvements to get the first production line up and running.

With most URAs, the service districts funded through property taxes – like school, fire and drainage districts – get only their portion of the frozen property tax base throughout the entire life of the district and then get their full cut once the district expires. But in this case, the remaining portion of property tax increases above the frozen rate – the 25 percent that would not go back to the company – would be split among the service districts.

“The increment that SoloPower is expected to get is between $11 million and $13 million,” Ottenad said. “But what we like about this is that it all depends on what they are willing to invest. If they want to put in more, the bigger the district gets and the more rebate they get back.”

Alec Jensen, executive director of Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue and an advocate for the proper use of urban renewal, said he was appreciative that the city sought concurrence from his district even though it didn’t have to.

“It’s not the poster child for urban renewal, but it fits in with our board policies for supporting urban renewal,” he said.

The small amount of push-back the city has encountered is over a $4 million advance the city would give SoloPower to start tenant improvements. That money would come from the city’s general fund and be given to the company in two installments. The first one would come when the company received final approval on loans from state and federal governments, and the second would come a year later, after the first production line is operating. The money would be repaid with interest from urban renewal dollars.

If the URA were approved by City Council, it would be the first single-property urban renewal area created in Oregon. But they are not uncommon in other parts of the country.

Elaine Howard, an urban renewal consultant in the Portland-metro area, said that at an annual meeting for the Council of Development Finance Agencies last year, several people from the national level talked about such URAs.

“National folks were astounded that Oregon’s URAs were district URAs and not single-building URAs,” she said.

A lot of public testimony was given at the first reading of the proposed new URA, so the council is likely to reopen the topic for discussion before taking a final vote at its meeting on Monday.

SoloPower officials failed to return multiple inquiries before press time.

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News has surfaced recently that , a thin-film photovoltaic manufacturer, is targeting Wilsonville as the home for a $56.1 million manufacturing plant that could provide up to 500 new jobs.

But both the San Jose, Calif.-based company and the city of Wilsonville are keeping mum about where a facility would be located. The city has nearly 2 million square feet of empty industrial space, and more than 350 acres of buildable land zoned for industrial use.

“I don’t know what property they are looking at or if they even have one picked out,” said Steve Gilmore, CEO of the Wilsonville Chamber of Commerce. “They are being somewhat secretive about the project until they make an official announcement, which is expected late (this) week.”

SoloPower last week applied for a $20 million loan from the Oregon Department of Energy for a $56.1 million plant at an undisclosed Wilsonville location. The state’s Energy Loan Program provides money to companies that conserve energy, produce energy from renewable sources or produce alternative fuels.

Ross Connor, an NAI Norris, Beggs & Simpson industrial broker who focuses on Wilsonville, said he hasn’t heard anything about where the company would build the plant.

“Lots of times the story will break before they have a spot picked out to drum up some interest, so it might not even be decided yet,” Connor said. “I would most likely know about it.”

While there is a lot of available industrial land around Wilsonville, Connor said the amount of available vacant industrial space would likely deter the company from building new. But the company would need a large space.

He said a likely candidate is the former Hollywood Video/Movie Gallery distribution space at 25600 S.W. Parkway Center Drive. The 177,588-square-foot shell, according to Connor, could easily be converted into a manufacturing plant and would most likely provide enough space for SoloPower.

The space was vacated by Hollywood Video in 2009, when the company moved its distribution facility to Tennessee. The movie rental company has since folded.

Gilmore said another possible space is the former Nike distribution center at 27255 S.W. 95th Ave., where 399,000 square feet of space is available. Nike moved out entirely in 2009, after the company decided to consolidate its distribution services in Tennessee.

“I don’t know everything about the process to produce these solar panels, but I do know they are built on a conveyor belt, which is going to require a lot of room,” Gilmore said.

Connor said the only other vacant spaces that could accommodate the project are the former Joe’s distribution facility (about 300,000 square feet), or the Wilsonville Distribution Center (250,000 square feet).

The Oregon Department of Energy is expected to make a decision on the loan, which would be paid back over 10 years at 8.5 percent interest, at a meeting on Thursday. In addition to the loan, the company has applied for the , and Gilmore said the city would most likely put together a package of incentives.

Mark Ottenad, spokesman for the city of Wilsonville, said the city wouldn’t say anything until Thursday, but would share details thereafter.

Sev Williams, a spokesman for SoloPower, said the company hopes to have good news to share after the loan application is processed.

“We are talking about the possibility of 500 people here,” Gilmore said. “Plus, this is the type of company that needs other companies around it to operate.

“This could be the start of a sustainable manufacturing cluster here in Wilsonville.”

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