Motor Moka was a Portland landmark — a drive-thru coffee joint before that was a popular thing. Before it became Coffee People and then subsequently closed, Motor Moka had a dozen locations. Earlier this year, it made a comeback — but not in Portland. This time it opened in Vancouver, at 7800 E. Mill Plain Blvd. Some of the menu is the same as the old Motor Moka. The building’s design is slightly different. And Motor Moka’s original owners have a new partner, Paul Ceserani. “Our goal is to indeed start with that history and legacy but put a modern twist on it,” said Ceserani. There are several examples of businesses moving from Portland to Clark County or choosing Clark County instead of Portland, so it is a trend. But despite Portland’s heavily publicized problems, there hardly appears to be an enormous migration. Still, Portland is facing its trials. According to a report from the University of Toronto, downtown Portland’s post-pandemic recovery was ranked 60th out of 62 North American cities.

Struggles with crime, homelessness and the city’s high cost of living have taken the bloom off the Rose City. Looking northward Vancouver’s commercial landlords have seen a fair amount of new lessees coming directly from Portland, particularly from downtown Portland, said Tamara Fuller, senior vice president at the Capacity Commercial real estate company. Fuller looked through her recent deals. In one building with nine lease transactions, one tenant had relocated from Portland. A building with two recent leases had one tenant from Portland. And a final building with 10 transactions included two relocations from Portland. “It depends on the building and property,” said Fuller. Fuller said she’s also spoken with four companies who want to open a regional office and are choosing Vancouver over Portland. And other Portland companies are expanding and setting up offices in Vancouver in addition to their Oregon operations. Fuller said her clients are telling her the primary reason to come to Vancouver is lower taxes. One client also mentioned public safety and the environment.

Taxing questions While Washington doesn’t have a personal income tax, it does have a business and occupation tax on gross receipts, a retail sales tax and a new capital gains tax. Oregon taxes corporate income, personal income and gross receipts, according to the Tax Foundation. The foundation, which analyzes taxes across the country, ranked Oregon 24th in its business tax climate index this year. Washington ranked 28th. With the recent Washington Supreme Court ruling allowing the state’s capital gains tax to go ahead, the state isn’t as much of a tax haven as it was before. Money management company Fisher Investments announced it will move its headquarters from Camas to Texas after the court decision was announced. Although Portland’s loss may look like Vancouver’s gain, it doesn’t necessarily work that way. Despite the tremendous growth of Vancouver, it’s still a suburb of Portland. And some businesses will always want to be in the downtown core. Fuller’s own firm is one example. Although she works in Vancouver, her company’s headquarters is in Portland, as are 40 of her peers.

“I want Portland to be healthy,” she said. “To me, there’s no example of a regional economy like ours where the city center is not doing well that doesn’t impact the rest of the region,” said Andrew Hoan, president and chief executive at the Portland Business Alliance. Moving is difficult Moving a business from Portland to Vancouver isn’t necessarily common. Despite the tax differential, Portland is still home to nearly 43,000 small businesses, according to the city of Portland. It’s not easy, either. Not only do entrepreneurs have to find a new space and deal with the cost of changing addresses, they have to deal with the paperwork and bureaucracy. And for larger businesses, it’s even more costly and logistically challenging. “And reshuffling a company’s employee base is challenging except for a small subset of businesses that are capable of making those sorts of investments and relocation,” Hoan said. “I don’t think that’s a practical matter.” Hoan doesn’t see a mass exodus of businesses from Portland to Vancouver, or any of Portland’s Oregon suburbs.

Expatriates A number of companies have made the leap, though. Banfield Pet Hospital moved its headquarters from a Northeast Portland location to a new campus at Columbia Tech Center in 2016. At the time, the company’s President and CEO Tony Ueber said the company looked at properties on both sides of the river. “We found the Washington location best met our needs for the future,” Ueber said. The move relocated all the company’s corporate headquarter jobs, including marketing, corporate affairs, medicine, information technology, facilities, human resources, payroll, hospital operations, commercial and legal departments and a call center. The new site was only 10 miles from the old one, which Ueber said would minimize disruption for associates. He said that was “at the heart of our decision-making process.” The company also received $200,000 in strategic economic development funding from the state, according to Columbian archives. Northwest Pipe Co., one of Vancouver’s few publicly traded companies, moved its headquarters to Vancouver in 2008.

Cement company CalPortland relocated its Oregon/Southwest Washington materials division from Portland to downtown Vancouver in 2021. Most recently, Elmer’s Restaurants moved its offices to downtown Vancouver in 2022. Elmer’s move was made to give the company’s employees a better quality of life, President Jerry Scott said at the time. Many of the business’s employees in the Portland office lived in Clark County. The relocation allowed them to avoid paying Oregon income taxes and reduce their commute. While Motor Moka reopened in Vancouver instead of Portland, Manager Andrew Baez-Alicea said they expect it to expand there. The coffee shop, Assistant Manager Blayke Hansen said, isn’t like a Starbucks or Dutch Bros, nor is it like the small cafes in Portland, where Baez-Alicea and Hansen both live. “It’s the best of both,” said Hansen.