Gramor's game-changer for Vancouver

If anyone wonders where some of those 750,000 people forecast to move to the Metro area in the next 25 years will live, it will be Vancouver.  And it won't be Cootyville.  A new development, The Waterfront Vancover, will give the Pearl and SoWa a run for their money.  With urban development spread across 35 acres (22 blocks) along the Columbia River waterfront, the development will include "3,000 housing units, 10 park acres, 1.2 million feet of office space and 250,000 square feet of retail and hospitality space."  Barry Cain, President of Gramor development is heading this major endeavor.  

Cain is the developer who worked so diligently with citizens to make sure Lake View Village successful and fit the character of downtown LO.  Lake View Village is now being threatened by the proposed Wizer Development that would overwhelm the district.  What every city needs are not more big buildings, but more good neighbors.  

The scale of the Vancouver undertaking is breathtaking - a small city really.  Reclaiming an old mill site for new development is a good match for land needed for housing and employment, and the apparent need for these services.  

Rather than trying to disperse density into towns that clearly don't want it, the Central Planners should concentrate their efforts on places where it is wanted.  In other words, a Metro should walk their talk - work with communities to realize their own visions for the future - not just some version of the oppressive Metro Plan.   

Vancouver waterfront developer nearing agree-ments with tenants; construction could start in 2015
The Oregonian  |  July 11, 2014  |  By Elliot Njus 


The developer behind a plan to build a business, residential and entertainment district at a former  lumber mill on the Vancouver waterfront says he's close to agreements with tenants that would
occupy its first buildings.

Gramor Development President Barry Cain, speaking before a crowd of 200 hosted by the Vancouver Downtown Association, said he's in talks with two restaurants and a hotel company  whose buildings could be among the first in the mixed-use development. He said his company is working on a residential building that would start construction at the same time.

"We're getting so, so close to getting really started," he said.

Cain said several businesses had expressed
 interest in the office space, and that he on.wouldn't move forward on an office building before a tenant had signed.

The waterfront development has been in the works for nearly a decade since Boise Cascade shuttered its lumber mill, leaving fallow a 35-acre site near the Port of Vancouver. It was largely cut off from downtown by a railroad berm until the city finished a $44.6 million access project to dig under the rails and connect the area to downtown roads this year.

Cain said the 22-block site is unlike any other in the Portland area because of its south-facing waterfront views. He said, too, that the development team is selling sites there for half of what a site in Portland's Pearl District would cost.

Gramor is known for retail-centered developments around the Portland region, including Lake View Village in downtown Lake Oswego and Progress Ridge TownSquare in Beaverton.