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.