Siemens will close most of its 53-acre Oregon campus, shut its childcare center

Daniel Nenni · 2026-04-27T10:14:32-0700

Mentor Graphics' Wilsonville campus in 2005. The longtime Oregon company has been owned by Siemens since 2017.LC- THE OREGONIAN

By Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive
German industrial giant Siemens plans to sell off most of the 53-acre Wilsonville campus that came with its 2017 purchase of Mentor Graphics Corp. and consolidate remaining operations into a single building.

Siemens will also close its on-site childcare center in June, leaving employees and other families scrambling to find alternatives for their kids in Oregon’s tight childcare market.

“We don’t have time to find a place that could potentially match what we’re losing,” Raishelle Everett, who has two kids enrolled in the center.

The Wilsonville site is an artifact from a time when remote work was uncommon. Large Oregon companies like Mentor offered amenities like a cafeteria, gym and on-site daycare to attract employees and make them feel more connected to the business.

Siemens’ employees work hybrid schedules today and the company says it doesn’t need the expansive campus, though it “remains focused on our long-term presence in the region.” It says the childcare center isn’t something the company offers at other U.S. sites and “is not sustainable to maintain within the new consolidated building.”

To Gerry Langeler, who co-founded Mentor in 1981, the campus’ pending sale marks a sad transition from a different era. Langeler moved to Oregon in the 1970s to work at Tektronix and tried to replicate the feel of that company’s large campus near Beaverton when Mentor opened its Wilsonville site in 1990.

“What does the corporate campus do for you? There’s still the benefit of the casual hallway conversation, where the ‘A-ha moment’ happens,” Langeler said. “Those things matter at the end of the day in terms of culture and spirit.”

Mentor Graphics made electronic design automation software, which engineers use to develop highly complex products like computer chips. Siemens paid $4.5 billion to acquire Mentor and its Wilsonville campus nine years ago. Mentor had 5,700 employees at the time, including about 1,000 in Oregon.

Siemens won’t say how many of those local employees remain, but the EDA industry is thriving. Artificial intelligence companies are using the software to accelerate chip design and incorporate new capabilities.

When Langeler was leading Mentor in the 1980s and early ‘90s, he said the company was building its software into specialized computers and needed lots of physical space to accommodate the hardware. So he said a large campus made sense in that era.

But having employees together provided other benefits, he said, through connections across Mentor’s departments and a feeling that employees were pursuing a common goal. He said chance conversations on the basketball court or over lunch in the cafeteria sometimes led to inspiring ideas.

“There was this corporate spirit,” said Langeler, who left Mentor in 1992. “We’re on the same team, we’re fighting the same battle for the same goal. I don’t know how you generate that without personal interaction.”

Mentor’s Child Development Center was especially important, Langeler said, in recruiting and retaining young employees.

“We felt it was very valuable to our employees, which in turn was valuable to us,” he said.

Everett said the Child Development Center had 70 families enrolled. She said parents were shocked when they received an automated call in early March about the pending closure, learning that they would have a little more than three months to find alternate care for their kids.

“Every single teacher in that program really cares about children of all ages,” said Everett. Her husband works at Siemens but she said most of the parents who have kids in the childcare center aren’t Siemens employees.

While Siemens plans to sell much of its Wilsonville property eventually, Everett said she’s frustrated that the Child Development Center is closing before the property hits the market or the company has a buyer lined up.

“It’s going to be sitting empty in the middle of the city of Wilsonville,” she said.

Siemens has agreed to let the childcare center stay on campus through September 2027, according to Everett, if parents can establish and fund a nonprofit to operate the facility. But with the June closing date rapidly approaching, Everett said that’s a high bar.

“We’re running out of runway to spin up a nonprofit that keeps these teachers employed and these families enrolled,” she said. (The families have created a website to rally support for the childcare center.)

Wilsonville has fielded concerns from “many families” about the childcare facility shutting down, Mayor Shawn O’Neil said at a city council meeting last month. He called it a “sudden closure,” a nod to employees’ concerns that they didn’t receive more advance notice, and lamented the loss of a facility that has served generations of Wilsonville families.

“While I understand that corporations sometimes face difficult decisions, the closure of a long-standing center like this understandably raises concerns for the families who rely on it,” O’Neil said. He said the city will work with community members and other partners to help families who are losing their childcare.

While major companies in Seattle and the Bay Area still have large campuses, Oregon now has just a handful of corporate employers large enough to sustain one. Intel, for example, still operates multiple sites in Washington County. And Nike has been expanding its campus near Beaverton and occupies more than 40 buildings across 400 acres.

Nike, though, closed its on-site childcare center in 2020. And Tektronix has sold portions of its 250-acre campus in Washington County.

Now a semi-retired venture capitalist, Langeler said it’s clear the nature of work has changed. He said much of what employees used to do in person is now automated and so maybe the value of some on-site collaboration has diminished.

Still, Langeler said he is mourning the loss of Mentor’s old campus in Wilsonville.

“It had a really good vibe. Whether it was in the buildings or the commons for lunch or the gym, it felt really good and I’m sorry to see it go,” he said. “But again, reality is reality.”