Wacom, a digital graphics company that has long had a major presence in the Portland area, is closing its Pearl District office as its employees shift to remote work.

The Japanese company makes pens and tablets that artists, architects, designers and others use to craft digital images. It moved into the top three floors of the nine-story Pearl West building in 2016, joining an influx of technology businesses opening Portland offices during a brief period when the city became a destination for software startups and an outpost for large tech companies based elsewhere.

Portland’s tech scene began fading several years ago as the city’s most prominent homegrown companies were sold and larger businesses downsized local offices. The pandemic-era move to remote work has left few large tech offices in Portland’s core.

“After evaluating the long-term impact of remote work, we decided to make the change permanent and close our Portland office,” Wacom spokesperson Melissa Ashcraft told the Portland Business Journal, which first reported the company’s plans. She said the company is also closing the ground-floor Wacom Experience Center, a demonstration lab for Wacom products and a community meeting space.

Wacom will retain a small office and warehouse in Vancouver, where it opened its first U.S. office in 1989. Its Portland office closes next month.

The company had 160 employees in Vancouver when it opened its Pearl District office and had anticipated shifting most of those workers to Portland and adding as many as 140 more. Ashcraft declined to say how many people worked in Portland office, but she said most of Wacom’s U.S. employees are in the Portland and Vancouver areas.

Oregon has the second-highest rate of remote work in the U.S., trailing only Colorado. Employees of many smaller Oregon tech companies are mostly or entirely remote, with many of their workers doing their jobs from home.

A handful of well-known tech companies still have downtown Portland offices, including Amazon, Google and eBay, which just renewed its lease for 57,000 square feet of office space near Portland State University.