From Factories to Server Halls
Hillsboro’s industrial landscape is undergoing a structural shift: buildings that once held hundreds or even thousands of skilled manufacturing jobs are increasingly being converted into data centers—high‑capital, low‑headcount facilities.
Some Examples:
- Komatsu → SolarWorld → SunPower → NTT: In 2007, SolarWorld bought the former Komatsu silicon facility on Evergreen and invested heavily to convert it into North America’s largest solar cell factory. By 2010, employment in Hillsboro reached roughly 1,000 workers; mid‑decade it hovered around ~900. After subsequent ownership changes, the campus is being redeveloped as a multi‑building NTT data center site.
- Rodgers Instruments → OVHcloud: The longtime Rodgers Instruments complex on NE 25th—once a proud local manufacturer—now operates as the OVHcloud HIL1 data center.
- Flexential expansion: Flexential’s Hillsboro 5 and planned Hillsboro 6 add massive power and floor space, but comparatively few permanent jobs. Part of that expansion is happening at the Aloclek Drive site, which previously housed offices and a variety of businesses
Why It Matters
This pattern is reshaping Washington County’s economic DNA. Payroll taxes—a critical revenue stream for Oregon—depend on high headcounts in living‑wage industries. Each time a factory closes and is retrofitted into a server hall, the community loses a chunk of its employment base. And once a facility is rebuilt as a hardened data center, it is rarely reactivated for labor‑intensive manufacturing. In addition, we can not bring jobs back to those places once a data center moves in. Those revenues to the State are going, and once they do they are gone forever.
By the Numbers
- Edwards Vacuum (2025): 128 layoffs; production unit closing by June 2026.
- Intel (2025): 2,392 local layoffs.
- Intel (2024): ~3,000 local layoffs.
- SolarWorld (2010 peak): ~1,000 Hillsboro jobs.
- SolarWorld (2014): ~900 Hillsboro jobs. Now a Massive Data Center for NTT Global.
- Komatsu (mid‑1990s plan): ~300 jobs projected when the Hillsboro wafer plant was announced.
- Rodgers Instruments: major local manufacturer for decades; the former site is now a data center with OHV.
- Flexential Hillsboro 5 & 6: large‑scale capacity additions; dozens—not hundreds—of permanent jobs.
A year ago today, the City of Hillsboro, Washington County, and the State of Oregon were lobbying for a 1,700-acre expansion for Industrial users —the pitch was that if we annexed the land, they would come. But they don’t come, and the land was not annexed. Now, the narrative seems to be that our only way forward is the Data Center, because at least they will pay property taxes after their 5 years of free property taxes expire (Enterprise Zone treatment).
Could Edwards Vacuum be turned into a Data Center? You bet. The photo below makes that abundantly clear. I am not saying that will happen, but it could. The cat is already in the Canary Cage up in North Hillsboro. Time will tell how this goes. But Edwards had great jobs, and the staff there is an integral part of the tech ecosystem. Our hearts go out to all of them tonight – their families too.
It should be noted that, while out of its former home that’s now the OVH data center and since acquired by Vaneweerd in 2016, Rodgers Instruments is still very much with us here in Hillsboro. They’re on NE Croeni Ave.
That said, your point about industrial jobs in that location not being replaced (as was the case with the SolarWorld property) still stands. Edwards Vacuum was initially touted as an example of how the city and county’s tweaked incentive structures were working to bring in something other than data centers and lure jobs to the area. Similar arguments were made for TopGolf and K1Speed. Seeing Edwards, SolarWorld, and SalesForce effectively exit the market—and watching Genentech close a Bay Area facility, only to invest in more lightly regulated terrain in North Carolina (for purposes very similar to what Hillsboro’s recently expanded facility serves—I wouldn’t blame the Pace administration for quietly seeking to diversify the local labor mix.
The ongoing hollowing out of American manufacturing is why some form of protectionism, either in the form of tariffs ala Trump, or a quota system that requires a certain percentage of products to be manufactured in the US, is necessary. With unrestricted free trade, most jobs that can be done outside the US will be, due to lower costs. This trend has led to an unacceptable reliance on foreign countries for far too many essential products.