Major employer expands to Sisters

BASX Solutions, a leading national manufacturer of modular structures and cleanroom solutions, has leased 27,190 square feet of light industrial space in Three Peaks Industrial Park. The 15.59-acre park sits on the northern section of former Forest Service property, located on the north side of West Barclay Drive and bordered by North Pine Street on the east and the Ponderosa Best Western property on the west side. To the north is Forest Service land, and across Barclay to the south is the site of The Woodlands.

The park has 14 lots, on which three have been developed and a fourth is under construction with a fifth in planning.

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BASX will create 30 jobs in its forthcoming Sisters operation, assembling surgical suites.

The building is owned by Roth Home, who occupy one sixth of the building. BASX, in taking the remaining five bays to assemble surgical suites, will create 30 jobs.

BASX Solutions specializes in custom-engineered products catering to healthcare, military, high tech, and construction fields. Its modular surgical suites are critical components in natural disasters, battlefield conditions, or expansions of an existing facility.

Co-founder Dave Benson is a resident of Sisters, and told The Nugget "Naturally, living here, I am delighted that we can expand our footprint into the Sisters community."

BASX has over 525 employees in Redmond working under 200,000 square feet of roof.

"We would have taken the entire building had it been available," Benson said. "There are simply no buildings of this size that meet our needs in Redmond."

Sisters commercial developers are banking on the dwindling supply of flexible use, light industrial real estate in Bend and Redmond. The space being taken by BASX languished for nearly two years and several other commercial developments have been slow to attract tenants.

As Sisters grows, however, developers are convinced that a mini commercial boom is underway, and cite several tenants who have added Sisters to their operations portfolio.

Benson's team decided against the larger Laird building C that has remained empty for two years following Laird's departure in 2022 from Sisters. "That would have been a good choice for us," Benson said, "but because it sits directly across the street from residential homes, I didn't want our truck activity to disturb the neighbors. Living in Sisters, it was important to me to be a good neighbor."

Mayor Michael Preedin said, "How great is it that a quality company is coming - it's very exciting! Welcome BASX. I want to thank Eric Strobel, our fantastic EDCO representative, as well as City and County officials for their part in helping BASX to locate a portion of their operations into Sisters. A couple dozen or more living wage jobs are just what the Sisters community needs, and it feels like a perfect fit."

In 2021, BASX was acquired by AAON Inc., a publicly traded, large scale HVAC manufacturing company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with facilities in Kansas City, Missouri, and Longview, Texas. AAON has been in the HVAC industry for 35 years with sales for the most recent quarter of $327 million. It trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol AAON. It closed Friday at $137.25 per share.