Burgeoning Waterfront Redefines Vancouver, Washington
The Urbanist
Ambitious development is taking Washington State’s most overlooked city from ‘Vantucky’ backwater to hip.
A few years ago an Urbanist reader approached me at a meetup and offered a story tip. Sleepy Vancouver, Washington on the Columbia River across the stateline from Portland, Oregon, was beginning to wake up.
“You have to check out the waterfront,” he said, explaining that he was certain it was one of the largest and most ambitious urban development projects underway in the Pacific Northwest. I made a mental note about it at the time and put a visit to Vancouver at the top of my project list.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic happened, and my first visit to the ‘Couve’, as I would learn Vancouver is sometimes affectionately called, was set back by a couple years. The long pause may not have been a bad thing, however, as the ensuing months would significantly advance Waterfront Vancouver and other development going on in the city.
By the time I was able to first visit Vancouver in September 2023, only four out of 22 city blocks in the 32-acre project site area remained to be developed. The result was a modern neighborhood of glass and steel towers set on a picturesque seven-acre Waterfront Park on the Columbia River that totally eclipsed the site’s past as a paper mill.