Daimler Truck North America has officially cut the ribbon on its new $40 million engineering building on Swan Island, pulling a big chunk of its testing brainpower under one roof. The 110,000-square-foot center, dubbed Corp 42, will consolidate vehicle testing and R&D and features 32 shop bays where test trucks are built and staged, including a few painted up like Dr. Seuss’s Thing 1 and Thing 2 for good measure.
What's inside Corp 42
The new facility’s 32 shop bays and expanded test-vehicle capacity are at the heart of Daimler’s latest upgrade, as reported by the Portland Business Journal. Opening-day coverage from the outlet shows engineers shifting their testing work into the building so more of the operation lives under a single, tightly coordinated roof.
Funding and incentives
DTNA says the project ran roughly $40 million and is designed to centralize testing for its battery-electric and hydrogen vehicles, according to Daimler Truck North America. Public support helped smooth the path. Prosper Portland authorized forgivable loan funding for related campus investments, and the engineering facility landed a five-year Enterprise Zone tax abatement, per Prosper Portland.
Regional ripple
Corp 42 is not the only footprint Daimler is leaving on the local industrial map. Prologis is moving ahead with a roughly 270,000-square-foot build-to-suit project in Northeast Portland that will serve as an aftermarket parts hub for Daimler, the Portland Business Journal reports. The deal highlights how DTNA’s Swan Island investment is feeding demand up and down Portland’s freight and logistics corridors.
Construction under the surface
Putting a heavy-duty engineering center on Swan Island required serious work beneath the slab. The site sits on liquefiable fill and faces lateral-spread risk, challenges that called for extensive ground improvement, Advanced GeoSolutions notes. The firm’s project summary outlines a deep-soil-mixing buttress and hundreds of aggregate piers, including 256 six-foot DSM columns installed to about 82 feet and 277 30-inch aggregate piers, all aimed at limiting settlement and stabilizing the building’s footprint.
What comes next
DTNA employs more than 3,000 people in the Portland region, and company leaders say Corp 42 is a key tool for keeping high-skill engineering work anchored on Swan Island, Daimler Truck North America notes. “Daimler Truck North America is proud to call Portland, Oregon our home,” DTNA President John O’Leary said in a company statement. The company adds that the new center will support dealer training and future vehicle validation across its Freightliner and Western Star brands.
