In Vancouver's case, Cain's team decided they wanted to emphasize public access. Walking the site with Gramor president Barry Cain, we talked about how to approach a development like this, where the waterside is the obvious attraction but ultimately it's meant to be a fairly high-density urban neighborhood. And while my French dip was tasty enough, I don't think it's just because of the food. (At least Vancouver never tear-gassed anyone.) The developers and their partners had to convince Vancouver's city council to approve rebuilding the trestle in order to punch roadway openings through it, a $44 million investment.ĭid I mention it was a rainy Wednesday when I visited? This is noteworthy because, while the primary multi-story residential and office buildings (across the street from the main promenade) are still under construction, the two waterfront restaurants when I visited them last week (part of a pair of two-story retail buildings) were packed. The trestle has amounted to a kind of Berlin Wall or something like Trump's ridiculous and race-baiting proposed border wall with Mexico: one big warning that says "go away" to not only people but to economic opportunity. ![]() Then there was the pesky fact of the railroad trestle, which has long enacted a terrible cost to Vancouver by severing the city from its greatest asset: its Columbia River waterfront. It took another 12 years before developers from Gramor Development were able to break ground.īoise Cascade first had to remove its paper mill, then clean up contaminated soils. In 1962, the Boise Cascade Corporation assumed ownership of the facility and produced paper products there until 2006. In Vancouver's case, this land was established as a saw mill and lumber finishing plant in 1911, then in 1928 it became home to the Columbia River Paper Company, making pulp and paper products. In that way, The Waterfront is part of the larger story of American cities reclaiming their industrial waterfronts and giving them back to public use. But it's worth saying first that the most impressive thing about The Waterfront, or at least the most welcome aspect, is that it exists at all.Ī recent aerial view of The Waterfront ( Gramor Development)įor the past century or so, this stretch of the Columbia, just west of the Interstate Bridge and just south of downtown Vancouver, has been cut off from public access and devoted exclusively to industrial use. The developers' approach to the mix of architecture, landscape and urban design is quite different than what has transpired in Portland's most comparable 21st century riverside neighborhood: South Waterfront. There is a lot to like about The Waterfront, as this new development is officially known. And to the north, from time to time a freight train would sound its horn as it continued along the trestle that has long severed Vancouver from its waterfront. ![]() ![]() ![]() Just south of this new waterfront enclave, traffic whizzed by on the Interstate Bridge, and more slowly, a succession of barges and small watercraft cruised by on the river itself. Across the Columbia, a steady stream of commercial jet planes descended towards PDX. Turns out it was merely in the process of landing at Pearson Field, the small airport just east of here. As I walked towards the development's quartet of new buildings in various stages of completion, a World War II-era fighter plane zoomed overhead at low altitude as if ready to dive-bomb. Though rain and fog had blanketed the region, in the distance to the west I could still make out the industrial facility on the edge of the property: the LaFarge North America concrete factory. Grant Street Pier at The Waterfront Vancouver ( Brian Libby)Īs I arrived last Wednesday at Vancouver, Washington's newly redeveloped stretch of Columbia River waterfront, it seemed like a scene out of a movie.
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