A local company that creates and sells equipment that analyzes wireless signals is broadening its spectrum with a new location that offers plenty of room to grow.
SignalHound, which since 2010 has marketed its products to private and public customers in the United States and overseas, is moving to Battle Ground and increasing its square footage nearly sevenfold.
It’s a necessary step, said company owner Bruce Devine, as the limited capacity of SignalHound’s current location was starting to hurt the bottom line.
“We were ready to build last year,” Devine said. “We haven’t been able to grow like I wanted to.”
SignalHound employs 15 people in its 3,000-square-foot original location at 35707 N.E. 86th Ave. in La Center. The new site, at 1502 S.E. Commerce Ave. in Battle Ground, is a 20,000-square-foot facility situated on 2.1 acres.
“It’s a huge jump. We’re only going to be using 8,000 square feet and leasing out the other 12,000 until we grow into it,” Devine said.
The company’s employees gathered Thursday to watch a crew of 25 from Robertson and Olson General Contracting raise their new office’s walls. A construction crane — an increasingly common sight in Clark County — dominated the scene.
‘We have a building!’
Crews broke ground back in May, said contractor Matt Olson, though this week is the first that shows a dramatic change on the lot.
“I’ve been working at it for two years, and it’s just a bunch of paperwork,” Devine said. “Today, we have a building!”
For Battle Ground, the new build continues an existing trend toward development that’s kicking into high gear across the county, said Olson, whose company has handled some of the most high-profile projects in the region’s recent history, including The Waterfront Vancouver and The Uptown Apartments. The contractor also recently handled Battle Ground’s new Ace Hardware and Dutch Bros. locations.
“Battle Ground has had some activity, I think the most they’ve had in years,” Olson said.
SignalHound designs, programs, builds, markets and ships all its own products. It specializes in spectrum analyzers, which are used to measure the power of the spectrum of known and unknown wireless signals.
The average consumer off the street may not have much use for a $11,900 SM200A — 20 GHz Real-time Spectrum Analyzer. But organizations like universities, commercial groups and governments have a vested interest in understanding any frequencies headed their way, and Devine’s products “give people the eyes to see wireless signals,” he said.
SignalHound does around 60 percent of its business abroad, often with the FBI, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.
“All of the three-letter agencies are buying from us,” Devine said.
The new office has been a long time coming for SignalHound, he added. He started hunting for a facility with a little more wiggle room in April 2016, though he struggled to find a location that fit all of his company’s needs.
“I just didn’t want to believe there was no place suitable to lease, so I kept pounding that drum for nine months,” he said.
Once he accepted that he’d need to build from scratch, he went through five lots before settling on the 2.1-acre plot in Battle Ground, one of several similar empty sites in the area.
“I’m going to mourn the loss of my one-minute commute,” he deadpanned. “Now it’s going to be a 27-minute commute, but it’s going to be so much better.”
