The pending departure of North Face, a landmark outdoor apparel company founded in San Francisco in 1966, highlights the challenges for nontech businesses in a region with the country’s highest housing costs.

The expense of the Bay Area was “a factor” in the decision, announced last week, to move the company’s headquarters from Alameda to Denver, said Craig Hodges, a spokesman for North Face’s parent company, VF.

VF, a Fortune 250 company that bought North Face in 2000, is itself relocating from North Carolina to Denver, and bringing JanSport, another Alameda subsidiary, there as well. North Face and JanSport’s move will mean the relocation of 650 jobs.

The North Face’s retail stores, including three in San Francisco, won’t be affected by the move. But it’s a conspicuous addition to the roster of companies that have recently left the Bay Area.

San Francisco engineering giant Bechtel is moving its headquarters by the end of the year to Reston, Va., where it has already expanded to be close to its federal government clients. In the past two years, Bare Escentuals, a cosmetics company, left San Francisco for New York and Jamba Juice moved from Emeryville to Frisco, Texas.

Spectrum Location Solutions, a consultant for company relocations, found that 9,000 California companies had moved their headquarters or chosen to expand outside of the state between 2008 to 2015. Colorado was the fourth-most-popular state destination. Spectrum blamed California’s high taxes and strict regulations.

Besides costs, other factors included VF’s desire to consolidate its U.S. brands and operations, Hodges said. It’s something the company has already done in Asia and Europe.

“Business just gets done faster and more efficiently,” he said of the overseas offices.

Colorado also agreed to give VF $27 million in tax credits for the move, though Hodges said the company plans to donate an equivalent amount to its charitable foundation.

“VF is not the kind of company that bases long-term business decisions like this based on some kind of incentives that it receives,” he said.

Founded in 1899, VF Corp. also owns Vans sneakers, and apparel and footwear brand Timberland, both of which won’t relocate to Denver. Vans is located in Costa Mesa (Orange County), and Timberland is in Stratham, N.H.

Two mountain-climbing enthusiasts, Doug Tompkins and his then-wife Susie Tompkins Buell, founded North Face in the mid-1960s, when mountaineering and hiking were catching on with Sierra Clubbers and other Bay Area outdoors buffs. The company’s name comes from the side of a mountain that is typically the iciest and hardest to climb in the northern hemisphere. (Tompkins died in 2015 in a kayaking accident.)

The company moved from San Francisco to Berkeley, then San Leandro, and finally — in 2012 — Alameda.

North Face occupies more than 200,000 square feet of office space at 2701 Harbor Bay Parkway. The 6-year-old headquarters includes environmental features like solar panels and a rock climbing wall. Hodges said the future of the Alameda office, which VF owns, hasn’t been determined.

Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, a Los Angeles research firm, said relocations don’t have a significant impact on the state or local economy, even though they grab headlines.

“I always think it's funny that these corporate relocations get such massive attention,” he said. “Corporate relocations are a minuscule portion of employment.”

Job growth remains robust in the Bay Area, with unemployment below 4 percent in San Francisco, Alameda and Santa Clara counties in June.

Many companies leave California because they’re struggling financially; one such example is Toyota, which moved its North American headquarters from Southern California to Texas in 2014, Thornberg said.

“You come to California when you're healthy and strong, and you leave when you're sick and weak,” he said.

However, VF has continued to grow despite turmoil in the retail industry. Last month, the company reported fiscal first quarter revenue of $2.7 billion, a 23 percent jump from the previous year.

“This in no way is a downsizing,” said Hodges of the relocation, adding that all current employees will be offered jobs in Denver.

Thornberg believes North Face’s relocation won’t hurt Alameda’s economy significantly, but it is an indication of the challenges that companies and cities face. Seattle’s Amazon is in the midst of a high-profile hunt for a second corporate headquarters location, and no cities in the Bay Area are among the 20 finalists for the new office site.

“The Bay Area has become housing-constrained,” Thornberg said. “In that kind of environment, only the strongest survive. Right now, the strongest is tech.”

Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf