Waterfront district with 10,000 residents envisioned
Friday, September 2, 2005
By JEFFREY MIZE, Columbian staff writer
Vancouver has one final chance to reclaim its waterfront, an opportunity the city cannot afford to squander, a college professor said Thursday.
Will Macht, a Portland State University adjunct professor, presented his waterfront vision Thursday to almost 200 people at the Columbia River Economic Development Council's quarterly luncheon.
Bart Phillips, the council's president, said Macht was invited to speak because the development council has a responsibility to provide a venue for new ideas.
Decisions made in the next few years will shape Vancouver for the next 100 years, Phillips said.
"Are we going to be Bellevue?" Phillips asked, referring to the Seattle suburb that has a well-developed downtown and a significant job base. "Or are we going to be Bothell?" a much-less-defined suburb.
Macht believes Boise Cascade's decision to sell its 27 acres west of the Interstate 5 Bridge presents Vancouver with the opportunity to create a waterfront district where 10,000 people could live, a district that could surpass anything that Portland has to offer.
Macht, who was Vancouver's developer on the Officers Row restoration almost 20 years ago, has sketched out a plan for 37 blocks on the waterfront south of the BNSF Railway tracks. He envisions a bustling community with 4,800 condominiums and apartments, 300,000 square feet of waterfront restaurant and retail space and 2,300 on-street parking spaces.
He also proposes creating seven waterfront plazas, each roughly the size of Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland, connected by an esplanade running the length of the district. He believes the city should extend downtown's street grid into the waterfront district and develop the area on a block-by-block basis using multiple developers to spread the risk and to increase design diversity.
To accomplish this vision, Macht argues Vancouver should purchase property from Boise Cascade and the Port of Vancouver to control the scale, pace and design of the riverfront district and to ensure the area is not underbuilt. Zoning, he said, is inadequate to control the scale of development.
Vancouver should hold onto the land and lease it to developers, he said. That way, the city could collect rent from its leases and property taxes from the buildings, he said.
"This is simply a wise investment," Macht said.
But Steve Burdick, Vancouver's economic development manager, believes the city can exert influence over the redevelopment process without purchasing the land.
"I think Will under-represented the city's leverage," Burdick said after listening to Macht's presentation. "He mentioned zoning like the correct zoning already is in place, and it's not."
Mayor Royce Pollard and other city officials also have rejected Macht's call for the city to buy the land.
"We're not going to buy that property, but we are going to have a say about what goes there," Pollard told The Columbian's editorial board earlier this week.
Transportation pieces
Macht's proposals for moving people and freight across the Columbia River also defy conventional thinking.
He proposes building a new bridge west of the existing railroad bridge that would provide four lanes for vehicles, two tracks for light rail and one track for freight, commuter rail and intercity passenger travel.
To decrease congestion on the Interstate 5 Bridge, Macht believes two lanes could be added in the 38-foot gap between the two spans. The bridge's center portion could be raised, using existing piers, to provide more clearance for river commerce and to eliminate the need for bridge lifts, he said.
Macht said downtown Vancouver, from Fourth Plain Boulevard south to the Columbia River, is roughly the same size as downtown Portland, from Interstate 405 east to the Willamette River.
While downtown Vancouver has only one bridge, downtown Portland has seven bridges, not counting the Sellwood, Ross Island and St. John's bridges, Macht said.
"How vital economically and in all other respects would downtown Portland be without six of these bridges?" he asked "I don't see anyone trying to remove them."
In contrast, traffic heading in and out of downtown Vancouver has to converge on the I-5- Bridge, which concentrates congestion, Macht said. Planning is under way for a replacement bridge that would have 10 lanes, but Macht doesn't believe that provides an adequate solution.
"A single replacement of that clogged artery, no matter how wide or how high or how beautiful, will not restore its health," he said.
Estimates indicate a new I-5 bridge could cost $1.2 billion or more. Tolls are often mentioned as a way to pay for bridge construction.
Macht said tolls not only would create political upheaval on both sides of the river, but it would cost as much as $250 million just for toll plazas and other systems to collect money from motorists.
Cool reaction
City officials and others have been cool to connecting a new bridge to Mill Plain Boulevard. Pollard earlier this week said the city extended Mill Plain to the west to move freight to the Port of Vancouver, not to provide another route for cars to cross the Columbia.
Burdick said he appreciates Macht putting forward his ideas to spur more debate on waterfront development and river-crossing issues.
"Sometimes you get good ideas from a fresh perspective," Burdick said after the luncheon. "Maybe his transportation concepts are at least worth taking a look at."
Larry Paulson, executive director for the Port of Vancouver, questioned the wisdom of placing housing so close to railroad tracks at a time when the port is discussing adding new tracks near the waterfront to serve its Columbia Gateway project.
Macht replied that housing already exists along the BNSF Railway tracks, from the Columbia Shores condominiums, where he has lived for the past five years, east to Southeast 164th Avenue.
Macht also argued the city needs to close the West Eighth Street railroad crossing, which would eliminate the need for engineers to blast their locomotive's horn as they approach the crossing.
After the luncheon, Paulson said there are ways for houses and railroads to coexist, but it needs to be carefully planned from the beginning so you don't have residents complaining about the noise and demanding action.
Phillips said he believes the luncheon "did what we wanted to do, which was to stimulate some new thinking."
"Who knows how these ideas manifest themselves?" he said. "But I do believe we need to get the maximum level of development down there, which may be more than what the market is willing to give right now."
Jeffrey Mize covers Vancouver city government for The Columbian. Reach him at 360-759-8006, or by e-mail at
jeff.mize@columbian.com.
Read more about Will Macht's ideas for crossings over the Columbia River and redeveloping the Vancouver waterfront at
www.columbian.com/ images/ ColumbiaCrossing. pdf
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