Christian vision for Battle Ground?

By Erik Neumann (OPB)
April 30, 2026 9 a.m.

How one businessman is transforming the heart of a Southwest Washington town.

The face of a growing town 30 miles north of Portland is undergoing a transformation. A blue brick convenience store was recently re-made into a rustic-chic bakery called Al and Ernie’s. Around the corner, a former dairy building was recast as an indoor farmers’ market with a fresh coat of white paint with black trim. A nondescript three-bedroom house from the 1930s was renovated to become Spurgeon’s Pipe and Cigar shop. The pattern continues along Main Street.

And where orange plastic construction fencing stretches around a grassy lot the size of a football field, soon this community will host a new convention center, and beside it, a new stone chapel with tall, narrow windows for First Presbyterian Church.

Welcome to Battle Ground, Washington: A rapidly growing community of roughly 23,000 people, that’s being reshaped by a group of business leaders and a pastor engaged in the “Christian localism” movement.

The driving force behind these changes is Camden Spiller, co-owner and CEO of Maddox Industrial Transformer, far and away Battle Ground’s fastest-growing company.

Spiller and his colleagues at Maddox have spoken openly about purchasing properties and developing land in Battle Ground. During a presentation to the city council last year, a Maddox executive said the company had invested in at least 30 properties in town. Using state and county property records, OPB confirmed that number, identifying more than a dozen corporations controlled by Spiller that have purchased over 30 properties in Battle Ground in the past six years.

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