Reconnecting Vancouver's Downtown District to the Waterfront

Call it a renewal or a revival, if you will. As one local resident put it, “Vancouver is a riverfront city without a riverfront.” That is about to change. By reconnecting the riverfront with the city’s downtown core and creating new public open space, the Vancouver Waterfront Park project will stimulate continued growth and revitalization through its long-term investment in the social and economic future of Vancouver, Clark County, and the region.

For most of the past century, the industrialization of the Columbia River riverfront foreclosed retail, residential, and leisure uses. Now the old structures that housed shipyards, paper mills, and warehouses are long gone, and the waterfront is experiencing a new beginning through a public/private partnership fostered by the City of Vancouver. The first step is reconnecting downtown Vancouver to the waterfront – a process that is well underway with the extension of Esther and Grant streets through the railroad berm that has separated the city from the Columbia River.

Next is the development of a waterfront park and open space on the waterfront – the centerpiece of the city’s park and open-space system. BergerABAM is leading a team of architects and engineers tasked with designing this signature waterfront park. The project includes 7.3 acres of active and passive park areas featuring the continuation of the popular 5-mile Waterfront Renaissance Trail, community gathering and performance spaces, urban plazas, pedestrian pier structures, restored shoreline, and interactive landscape and public art features.

As a visual and physical connection with Lewis and Clark’s Great River of the West, the Vancouver Waterfront Park also is the cornerstone of the future waterfront neighborhood planned by private developer, Columbia Waterfront, LLC, who has donated the park acreage and will contribute $1 million for construction, as part of its plan to develop residences and businesses on the remainder of the site. When the entire waterfront project has been developed, it will boast restaurants and retail businesses, 3,300 residential units, nearly 1 million square feet of office space, and a hotel, and be a mecca for businesses, tourists, and residents alike.