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The Oregonian

Sep. 8--VANCOUVER -- Based in Vancouver since its creation in 1986, fitness equipment maker Nautilus Inc. has helped customers to more lithe and athletic bodies over the years while becoming bloated itself well beyond its original size.

By the summer of 2003, chief executive Gregg Hammann had decided the company was too big for its headquarters, in a nondescript industrial area near the geographical center of the city. So he initiated a multistate search for a new base of operations, where the company could create the fitness-oriented business campus it wanted.

Ultimately, Hammann and his company stayed put. In the wake of a full-court press by Vancouver officials determined to keep the only publicly traded company with a headquarters in their city, Nautilus plans to throw open the doors just across town on Friday to its new, 485,000-sqare-foot headquarters complex -- adorned liberally with the company's distinctive, swirling logo and surrounded by athletic facilities.

Vancouver's efforts stand in contrast, business backers say, to an ongoing and increasingly public feud between Nike and the city of Beaverton. And in a metropolitan area rightly or wrongly tagged as being unfriendly to business, the city did it without resorting to large corporate tax breaks.

"The mayor's office was very, very proactive in trying to get us to stay here," Hammann said.

City officials found out about Nautilus' relocation plans almost by accident in early 2004.

By then, the company was actively considering four options: moving to Colorado, site of a key regional office; crossing the river to Portland or its suburbs; building at an undeveloped location in Clark County, where the company could build from scratch; or find a site in Vancouver that met the company's need for at least 200,000 square feet of space.

Officials said they caught wind of the possible departure during a routine "Business Visit Team" checkup. About once a month, the team -- Mayor Royce E. Pollard, City Manager Pat McDonnell and Gerald Baugh, manager of business development -- visit one local company for an hour.

"We ask what we can do to help them," Baugh said. "Sometimes it's to get out of their way, sometimes it's to help them get through a process."

Keeping Nautilus became an immediate priority, Pollard said. "We're not going to let that happen," he recalls telling Hammann. "We'll work with you on that."

City officials took Nautilus executives on a tour of Vancouver locations, but none immediately jumped out as a good fit. Hammann said he eventually told Pollard, "We're stuck. We can't find anything that meets our needs in the city of Vancouver.

"They've got this great facility in Denver. We're going to go and take a look at it."

Meanwhile, the city had been working closely with Pac Trust Realty Inc. of Tigard, which owned the former Vancouver headquarters of Consolidated Freightways Corp., trying to find a new tenant for the location that had been vacant since the trucking company went bankrupt in 2002. Pollard even delivered his 2003 State of the City address in the nearly empty building, trying to draw attention to the city's determination to fill it.

Nautilus officials weren't initially impressed with the cavernous building at Southeast Mill Plain Boulevard and 164th Avenue, about two miles southeast of the company's old headquarters. "It was a big square building," Hammann said. "Sort of a '70s look."

But Pac Trust hooked Nautilus up with an architect who showed the company drawings of how the building could be transformed into a fitness campus with the iconic look the company sought.

Hammann was sold, and eventually Nautilus agreed to lease the space -- for 10 years at an initial annual rate of $1.9 million -- with an option to buy after 10 years. The company has an option to extend the lease for another 10 years, or it can buy the site for $22.5 million within the first seven years of the lease.

Importantly, neither the city nor state offered financial breaks to keep Nautilus, officials said.

After $15 million of renovations, the building has been transformed to incorporate the company's logo swirl in concrete, on steel and on a huge oval carpet under the natural light of an atrium. A royal blue found only in the company color scheme is splashed throughout the outdoor grounds.

The facility includes outdoor playing fields, sport courts and a running track. Hammann's office overlooks a synthetic turf football and soccer field, part of the outdoor sports area dubbed "The Backyard."

The former college football player said he plans to coach his Clark County Youth Football team -- called the Battle Ground Hawkeyes after Hammann's former team, the University of Iowa Hawkeyes -- on his company's field.

The outdoor facilities will be open to the public, possibly through a reservation system that had not yet been finalized by Wednesday, though Hammann said this week that he liked the spontaneity of some grade school boys who rode their bikes onto the basketball court on a recent day and started a pickup game.

Quite a few things remain to be worked out at the facility. But the company's headquarters' location is no longer one of them, and for that Hammann said he's thankful.

Vancouver officials, of course, are, too.

The new 485,000-square-foot building and outdoor facilities will be officially introduced to the public Saturday at "Backyard Fitness Fun Day."

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