Press Release

On July 23, the business community joined the Vancouver Business Journal in celebrating the accomplishments of local contractors, architects, engineers and other building industry professionals during the 2014 Top Projects & Building Excellence Awards, held at Block 56 in downtown Vancouver (210 E. 13th Street). The area’s top projects – commercial, public and residential – were then highlighted in the July 25 print edition of the VBJ.

Construction cost: $5 million

A new multi-tenant development, MAJ Place HD is located on the former Steakburger site between Interstate 5 and Highway 99. Construction of the project kicked off in May and is nearing its completion date. When finished, it will offer 15,000 square feet of retail/office space. The anchor tenant is a 4,400-square-foot Panera Bread Café with drive-thru.

General Contractor: TEAM Construction

Project Owner: Michael A. Jenkins

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Bakery cafe to open this year; 2 other buildings are going up, with room for one more

Steakburger is gone, but the beloved fast-food joint won’t be forgotten at its former home in Hazel Dell.

Panera Bread, nearing completion on its new restaurant on Northeast Highway 99 at 72nd Street, has reconditioned three letters from the red neon “Steakburger” sign to create the word “eat.” That new sign will be displayed in the dining room of the new Panera, said Sherri Kennedy, project manager for MAJ Development, the Vancouver-based developer of the approximately two-acre site.

“We worked with the Panera folks and told them that people were very fond of Steakburger,” said Kennedy, adding that reconditioning a portion of the old sign was a challenging task.

While the 4,371-square-foot Panera Bread restaurant looks far from finished, Kennedy said the company hopes to open it this year. It will be the second Clark County outlet for the St. Louis-based company, which operates 1,845 bakery cafes in the United States and Ontario, Canada, under the Panera Bread, Saint Louis Bread Co., and Paradise Bakery & Cafe names.

The cafe’s dining area will seat 116 patrons, and it will be the first in the county with a drive-through window. Panera’s other Clark County cafe is at 915 S.E. 164th Ave., and the company also has a cafe at Portland’s Jantzen Beach.

Two other commercial buildings are in the works at the former Steakburger site, which also contained a miniature golf course.

Pacific Dental Group will open a 3,000-square-foot clinic with seven new jobs, Kennedy said. Taco Bell is building a new restaurant to replace an existing restaurant at 7006 N.E. Highway 99, she said. Both are scheduled for spring openings.

One pad, zoned for office retail, remains available for development, Kennedy said. MAJ Development is in negotiations with a possible tenant for that site, which has room for a 3,600-square-foot building, she said.

“We are excited about the improvements on this site and in the whole Highway 99 corridor,” she said.

By Gordon Oliver

The Columbian

Malia Spencer

Staff Reporter- Portland Business Journal

July 8, 2014

ZoomCare, the Hillsboro-based company that runs neighborhood health clinics across the Portland and Seattle metro areas, is taking on its first outside investor with a long-term deal with Portland-based Endeavour Capital.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, though Endeavor describes its typical equity investment as being between $25 million and $100 million. The deal gives Endeavour a minority stake in the company.

Since its founding in 2006, ZoomCare has grown organically into a profitable business with more than 250,000 customers, said co-founder and President Dave Sanders.

With this investment the company will be able to further fulfill its goal of offering a complete range of care for consumers, he said. The company a year ago began offering specialists on demand, in addition to its on-demand primary care. Now with Endeavour’s partnership, the company can continue down that path with plans to beef up the level of service consumers can find within a ZoomCare clinic.

So rather than expanding into new geographies, it will invest in infrastructure, technology and people.

“We could have kept to primary care services, but we want to go deep and vertical as opposed to expanding geography in a thin layer,” Sanders said. “To do that we decided to really build out a complete solution.”

Because ZoomCare has an established, profitable business Sanders said any number of large private equity firms or large venture capital firms were interested in investing. The company’s goals, he said, aligned with Endeavor.

According to Endeavour’s website, the firm is investing out of a $675 million fund, its sixth equity fund. It invests as a “long-term” partner in companies based in the Western United States and targets companies with earnings — before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — between $5 million to $50 million and larger.

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By Gordon Oliver, Columbian business editor

Published: June 17, 2014

Photo: Zachary Kaufman/The Columbian

Steakburger took its last food order May 29, ending a final burst of popularity that’s common when a long-loved but faded institution approaches its demise. This week, with the Golf-O-Rama miniature golf course and outbuildings already gone, the big machines got to the heart of the matter and leveled the restaurant that called 7120 N.E. Highway 99 its address for more than half a century.

Steakburger, which served generations of Vancouverites, was removed to make room for a $5 million redevelopment featuring four buildings, including two drive-through restaurants. The county issued permits for the project on Monday, said Mike Jenkins, of Vancouver-based MAJ Development Corp., the project developer.

“We’re in full construction mode,” Jenkins said.

Construction will begin in August on a Panera Bread location, which should be ready for a November opening, Jenkins said. The St. Louis, Mo.-based chain, which has more than 1,700 bakery cafes in the U.S. and Canada, will build a prototype drive-through restaurant. Jenkins said. The company has one location in Vancouver, at 915 S.E. 164th Ave., and a nearby Portland location at Jantzen Beach.

Jenkins wouldn’t disclose the name of the second restaurant. Two other buildings, with 4,000 and 5,000 feet, will house medical providers, and the fourth building is likely to be a bank, he said. The project should be completed in next year’s first quarter, Jenkins said.

As part of the site’s transformation, the adjacent McDonald’s restaurant will be replaced with a new restaurant on an expanded site that will include some of the former Steakburger property. And Fred Meyer is planning to open a fueling station on the site of what is now a Salvation Army thrift store at 7400 N.E. Highway 99.

There is some good news for those who feel a need for nostalgia in the face of the latest change to their community. Tina Condon, daughter of longtime Steakburger owners Bob and Merilyn Condon, is making plans to open a mobile food trailer called Steakburger On the Go.

Condon, the restaurant’s manager for 20 years, has said she hopes to have the cart out on the street in August.

Original Article Here