Business Park’s Growth Continues

By Dave Brumbaugh

(Reprinted from Whatcom County Business Pulse, now Northwest Business Monthly)

If you were to look for the Grandview Business Center on an Internet map and zoom in, you wouldn’t be impressed.  It’s about four miles north of Ferndale, a small city, and two mile south of Custer, which could define “hamlet.”  As the joke goes, that may not be in the middle of nowhere, but you can see it from there.

However, a broader look reveals its appeal to small businesses.  The business park has easy access to Interstate 5 via Portal Way.  It’s also just 15 minutes away from both Bellingham and the Canadian border.

Founded in 1993 with just one building, the Grandview Business Center is expanding again.  When construction of a 10,000-square-foot building and a 4,500-square-foot addition is completed in July, the business park will have 21 buildings and 250,000 square feet.

Joel Douglas is the founder of the 21-building facility and Mark Douglas is a co-owner and general manager.  The Grandview Business Center, zoned for light industrial and manufacturing uses, is faring much better than they envisioned.

“We planned originally to build five buildings but we were doing so well, we bought the land next to us (in 1995),” Mark Douglas says.

Besides adding buildings, the center installed high-speed T-1 and DSL lines in the last two years.

“We’ve got bandwidth.  That’s a good selling point for the park,” Douglas states.

Most of the center’s building offer 10,000 square feet, which can be divided into four sections.  They are rented by 64 businesses that use the space for retail, wholesale, manufacturing, and warehouse purposes.

Examples include:

• A clothing distributor that grew beyond its space in Blaine.

• Sundance Beef has been attracting more people there lately by offering retail and wholesale custom-cut beef.

“We had a slump a few years back and now it’s starting to pick up,” Douglas remarks.

Canadian-based companies comprise about 60 percent of its tenant, he estimates.  The site appeals to them because it’s not far from the border but offers better rates than similar space in Blaine.