Growing Local Businesses

Beaverton’s Community Vision Plan outlines the city’s goal of assisting local businesses. This entails marketing local business advantages and supporting programs, developing job creation strategies, and helping small businesses succeed as downtown Beaverton grows and property values increase.

The seven metrics displayed to the right highlight economic development that has occurred in the Central Beaverton Urban Renewal Area (URA). These metrics highlight the outcomes that BURA and the City of Beaverton aspire to achieve with their investments and private sector partnerships. This includes measuring the average rates of commercial rent prices, the square footage of mixed-use commercial space available to local businesses and the number of small businesses assisted with the Storefront and Tenant Improvement program grants.

Commercial Rental Rates in the urban renewal area averaged $20.17 per square foot compared to $18.81 outside the urban renewal area in FY16-17. This indicates that the Central Beaverton Urban Renewal Area is now out-pacing the rest of The City in commercial rental rates.

BURA seeks to cultivate greater business activity in downtown Beaverton by incentivizing the development of mixed-use buildings that lease commercial space. With limited land, the only method to increase commercial square footage is by building vertically through the development of mixed-use structures. In FY16-17, the urban renewal area had more than 53,000 square feet of mixed-use commercial space. That amount will increase next fiscal year when the La Scala and The Rise mixed-use projects are completed. This allows more businesses the opportunity to make an economic impact in downtown Beaverton.

Private investment increased from $23.7 million in FY15-16 to $35.5 million in FY16-17.