Oregon Portable RV Cabins of Cascade Locks is a business that is going somewhere.
Lots of places, starting with a southern Oregon casino.
The company’s work — portable cabins for employee housing or accessory unit dwellings — can be seen on Forest Lane, just inside the gates of Bear Mountain Forest Products, where company founder Roger Hicks leases space inside and in the yard.
Hicks has lived in Cascade Locks since 2004, when he bought the 23-unit Bridge of the Gods Motel and RV park, on WaNaPa Avenue. (“It’s been slow but picking up,” he said of the motel business.)
The portable units are an extension of something Hicks has been doing since he was a child.
“I’ve done a little bit of remodeling with my Dad since I was 5. Since I was able to get around, I’ve remodeled homes,” Hicks said.
He has been building portable homes for about nine years as a sideline and turned it into a business this year. Hicks has a crew of four going and is now turning out a set of six 400-square-foot units on contract with Seven Feathers Casino in Canyonville. Two have been delivered, with the rest to be completed by February.
The design of the portable cabins resembles the cabins and motel units on WaNaPa that Hicks has gradually renovated in the last few years. A portable cabin demo unit is on site at the motel.
The unit’s basic design is a kitchen-living space at the entry, short hallway and bathroom, and a back bedroom.
“Basically just the basics,” Hicks said. The homes are built on trailers atop I-beam frames, and then un-bolted upon delivery.
“They’re considered in the portable RV category,” Hicks explained. “We took the RV code and instead of making thin walls, we said, ‘Why can’t we build a home with the same kind of thing?’”
Units have 10-inch walls, using all 12-gauge wire; each is equipped with a bathroom heater and jacuzzi jet tubs.
“We kind of go way out on that; people love those, it makes them like they want to come and stay for awhile,” Hicks said. Early units had standard wood flooring but he switched to waterproof flooring. Other features include blinds installed inside the glass; all have a front porch and some units have a rear porch.
Hicks said the units are durable, constructed of lumber bolstered with metal hurricane straps.
“I don’t see my roofs blowing off. There are no nails in any of our construction, it’s all deck screws,” Hicks said. “The advantage of it is, when we first designed these, I took my plan to a guy in eastern Oregon and he used staples and pop nail guns, and the first two he did, it’s so wet here in our weather that the nails (popped loose) and the siding was sticking out. I said, ‘I gotta put a deck screw on that,’ and I got to thinking I should just use deck screws on everything. It’s not coming apart. It’s solid as it can get.”
The units sell “in the $80,000 range,” depending on how many you buy and what time of year, Hicks explained.
“Everything’s (made of) lumber and lumber prices go up in the summer time,” he said. “Everything’s flexible. I spent the first deposit on lumber to provide a decent price.”
He said Seven Feathers Casino visited Cascade Locks to see a demo unit he had built for them. “They asked, ‘How many of these can you build?’” He’s starting with six and hopes to sell more to the casino and other large buyers.
“We went all the way to Arkansas and New York to see about making these into FEMA homes,” he said.
The units can also be customized to adhere to municipal codes for accessory dwelling units.
“It’s really the door opening in different areas. All the way to people wanting these in the backyard for the grandkids coming home,” Hicks said. “If we get the orders, this is just the start.”
Hicks is training his current employees to build the units and has a long-term goal of up to 100 employees. (However, the plans for the units themselves are not yet found on paper, to avoid anyone copying what he does. “I gotta show (workers) where every screw goes. It’s all up here,” he said, pointing to his head.)
“If we get a large order, we’ll need to rent more space. This is beautiful here, to look at the growing that possibly could happen,” he said, gesturing around the Bear Mountain yard. “It could be up to a 100 people. There need to be about two people to replace me. Right now, starting out I’m trying to do as much as I can.”
Hicks said casinos are under a federal guidelines, but “if we build one for someone’s back yard, we have to go through the Hood River building department; the design could be a little different. I think we can make adjustments for what they’re asking for.”
He’s sold units to customers in Montana, and a few in Washington state.
“We’ve got all the proving done we need to do to start gearing up and start making them,” he said.
Hicks rents interior space and a yard from Bear Mountain, under a deal coordinated by Paul Koch, business consultant (and retired Cascade Locks city manager).
“This way we can keep it in Cascade Locks,” said Koch.
“We were looking at building these closer to Medford,” Hicks said. “Paul’s went out of his way to keep this here. There is an expense in moving these down there (to Seven Feathers), but it’s better for me to be locally here.”
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