Quincy: A town in transition

In today's Wenatchee World, there is a article about the up and coming city of Quincy, sharing some great info regarding the big business moving into the area, some projections regarding new home building in the near future, how the tech influx has increased the population of students at schools, and other helpful information that anybody owning a home in North Central Washington will be interested in.

http://wenatcheeworld.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070401/NEWS04/704010448/0/FRONTPAGE

QUINCY -- A small part of Microsoft's first data center went on line here Tuesday with barely a whisper. No fanfare. No comment from company execs in Redmond.

But even so, the roar of what the tech giant has started in this ag town of 5,300 is noticeable everywhere you go.

As Quincy celebrates its centennial this weekend, local real estate agents say, prices on prime farmland within or near city limits have skyrocketed 10-fold since Microsoft bought its data center property early last year.

In a city that normally sees three or four new homes built per year, city administrator Tim Snead estimates some 1,400 new homes could be built over the next few years.

Work is expected to begin this summer on a 125-acre movie theater, hotel and business complex on what last year was a wheat field.

Volunteers from Turner Construction, Microsoft's general contractor, helped plant trees at a new sports complex that the city began to build last year with state funding.

A brand new urban growth area, which adds 2,200 annexable acres and more than doubles the city's size, may soon have to be revised and expanded. The city council approved the new growth plan only last December and intended it to last for 20 years.

"If we wait five years to do anything, we're going to be up a crick," Curt Morris, commission president of the Port of Quincy, said.

Morris owns the former wheat field where he says the new hotel/movie complex will be built. Two years ago, he says he wouldn't have imagined such a project on his land.

"We've been planning for this growth for quite a while," Morris said, "but it's going faster than we thought."

Also lured by the nation's cheapest electricity, fast Internet connections over the Grant County PUD's fiber-optic network, and cheap land, Yahoo! began building a large data center of its own in Quincy later last year. Intuit, maker of TurboTax and QuickBooks, will begin a data center this year.

Port and city officials estimate that data center and new home construction has flooded Quincy with 650 to 1,000 construction workers and subcontractors.

Local businesses say the in flux has increased their sales by 25 percent or more.

Construction workers are staying in local motels, shopping in local stores and dining in local restaurants. At quitting time -- 5 p.m. -- their pickups jam Quincy's two stop-lighted intersections, creating "traffic jams" or lines of vehicles five or more deep.

'The more people, the more business'

At Rosy Rosenberger's Idle Hour Cafe & Steakhouse, many noon lunch conversations now center around concrete and conduit.

West along Highway 28, JoAnn Coen says her Zack's pizzeria is drawing new crowds of both construction workers and the curious in town to check out the new data centers.

"All of the people it's brought in have really been awesome," Coen said. She and her husband Timothy Coen just finished renovating their 26-year-old business.

Pickups are taking up a bigger-than-usual part of the parking lot at Quincy motels like the Country Cabin Motel & RV Park.

Its owner Bakshish Singh Judge says that since he bought the motel in March 2006, he's catered more to construction workers than tourists.

Behind its blue-and-orange facade, the Hispanic-focused Central Market was already growing along with Quincy's Latino community -- about 64 percent of the total population, according to the 2000 census. The new construction workers have helped boost his business even more.

"The more people, the more business," owner Allen Dearie said.In a few years, Microsoft's 75-acre site could host as many as six buildings, each housing rack after rack of super cooled, high-capacity computers that process data from on-line sales, e-mails and services.

Subcontractors hired for the project occupy a small city of temporary office trailers -- about 100 of them -- along the east end of the Microsoft job site.

But experts say large data centers, once built, can be operated with a handful of employees. Microsoft, Yahoo! and Intuit have not revealed the potential size of their personnel rosters here.

Jobs are plentiful -- for now

Questions linger around town about whether Quincy's economic boom will end when data center construction is complete, and workers go home. For now, jobs are plentiful.

Lisa Karstetter, executive director of the Quincy Valley Chamber of Commerce, says Yahoo!'s general contractor, DPR Construction of Redwood City, Calif., will also build Intuit's data center.

She said many construction workers and subcontractors expect to be working in Quincy for several years or more, as they open branch offices here to service these big companies for years to come.

Quincy real estate agent and builder Bob Konen says the flurry of activity has increased prices on prime farmland within or bordering Quincy's urban growth boundary

He said about two years ago, farmland that sold for $4,000 an acre today would sell for $40,000 or more.

Grant County chief appraiser Barry Moos said a sale for 11.73 acres of Quincy farmland sold for $600,000 in August 2006. The same buyer sold it weeks later for $1.35 million, he said.

Another property that sold in 2004 for $150,000, sold last June for $455,000 -- an increase of more than 200 percent.

Moos said the tenfold price increases reported by local Quincy land sellers sounds conceivable.

"I'm seeing vacant land going up fairly dramatically in the last year in Quincy," he said.

In northern Quincy, not far from the Yahoo! job site, Vancouver, Wash.-based, Aho Construction is working on the first phase of a 389-home subdivision with homes starting at $130,000.

South of town, off Central Avenue, Entezar Development of Bellevue is building its Serenata subdivision of 134 homes with prices that start at about $430,000.

Construction of model homes has begun, but uncertainty remains about whether all the proposed homes will actually sell.

Agents for both Entezar and Aho say they've sold homes. Guadalupe Garces, saleswoman for Aho said all 79 homes in the company's first phase of construction have sold.

But Moos said the county has no records of home sales in either of the two projects. Ernest money paid to reserve a building site doesn't count as a sale by county standards, he said.

'I can probably ride this little wave to retirement'

Near the Entezar site, longtime local developer Tom Grebb has taken a more pragmatic approach.

Grebb doesn't build homes, but sells the land. Buyers choose their own contractor and build their own homes.

The first two phases of Vidon, his development of smaller to mid-sized, upscale homes began in 1994 and are all sold.

Currently about eight homes are being built, with land available for about 39 more. He says the development could expand to another 30 acres -- with 80-100 building sites -- if the market allows.

He thinks it will.

"I'm optimistic that this will keep going," he said. "To me, the wait and see will be this summer, when Microsoft comes (more fully) on line, and Yahoo! gets here. Until then, we really don't know what demand will be."

Konen also sees continued growth. "I think there's going to be growth here, pretty solid, for the next 10 to 15 years, as more of these big (tech) outfits come in," he said.

"It's very exciting," he added. "I'm 54, so I can probably ride this little wave to retirement."

Land prices have put pressure on schools, according to Roger Fox, superintendent of Quincy schools.

The district's student population, currently about 2,300, was already growing by some 40 students per year, Fox said.

"We're in trouble," he said. "We were already overflowing when the tech flowhit. I have a feeling we're going to have a whole school district full of portables at some point."

He saidescalating land prices have taken a bite out of the buying power the district has with its $5 million in previously unsold surplus bonds.Fox says the district is close to buying some farmland just outside the city limits for a new high school and elementary school. If money doesn't stretch, he said the board may have to ask voters for a bond.

Agriculture and agro-industry still flourish at Quincy's strong vegetable-processing and storage facilities, which employ thousands.

The town's Farmer-Consumer Awareness Day is one of its biggest yearly draws.

Crop dusters zoom almost daily over fields, and Quincy's John Deere dealership is arguably still the biggest store in town.

But for the first time in a century, an important new industry is in town -- just as Quincy's next 100 years are beginning.

Christine Pratt: 665-1173

pratt@wenworld.com.