Vancouver and Clark County

[360Rich]

^^^OK dude, we get it; you don't like Vancouver.

These are multi-story developments, primarily in the downtown area. How is this sprawl?

[alexjon]

Because there is no centralized method to development in Vancouver, not even on the waterfront. 3 stories here, 6 stories there, and just on and on and on until you've got concrete and faux brick as far as the eye can see.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Vancouver, but I do hate the apologists who insist that Vancouver is going down the right path by greenlighting any building anywhere and turning the city into Cartown, USA.

[Civ E JB]

Oh that's right, I keep forgetting Seattle is a portrait of perfection. Right down to Ranier Beach, Aurora, and most of 99. They aren't sketchy or run-down at all. The only reason we can't talk about sprawl in Seattle is that every available bit of unprotected land within city limits has already been developed, including plenty of strip malls.

Vancouver has issues as does Seattle. The latter is simply further along in its development. I've lived in both cities and I'm kinda excited about the future for both and their respective opportunities.

[alexjon]

Originally Posted by Civ E JB

Oh that's right, I keep forgetting Seattle is a portrait of perfection. Right down to Ranier Beach, Aurora, and most of 99. They aren't sketchy or run-down at all. The only reason we can't talk about sprawl in Seattle is that every available bit of unprotected land within city limits has already been developed, including plenty of strip malls.

Vancouver has issues as does Seattle. The latter is simply further along in its development. I've lived in both cities and I'm kinda excited about the future for both and their respective opportunities.

Yes, but Seattle has the three densest urbanized areas in the state within its city limits, so I'm pretty sure those strip malls, artifacts of what people called prosperity back in the day, are allowable.

I'm not saying that Vancouver is without a future, no. What I'm saying is that there is undue hostility to the tenets of smart growth, right down to block-wide low-rises that would get laughed out of Portland. And the transit situation? Dire. Absolutely dire.

And people fiercely defend this tendency toward Midwestdom, like being the closest you can get to Lubbock without a layover in Denver is a good thing.

[PuyoPiyo]

Actually to me, Vancouver's growth is not that bad or should I say impressive?

Right now Vancouver only have the population of 160,000 and they are going to annex a more than doubled size of current city of Vancouver size, which will add Vancouver another more than 150,000 which making it totally going up to 260,000 to 350,000. That would be the second largest city in the state of Washington surpassing Spokane and Tacoma. Also what's the funny is that if Vancouver is in the state of Oregon, then it will be the second largest city in the state of Oregon.

Vancouver also are the only the city on Columbia River, with their downtown on the Columbia River.

Vancouver is the only city that have its own city buses (their city bus service is not that so bad) other than Portland in the metro area.

There's lot of cool projects planned on for the downtown Vancouver, such like waterfront project. Do you think you can find any other city with 160,000 population with that such of project? Not many. Also Riverwest project are one of the coolest project. Haven't you take a look at Esther Short area in downtown Vancouver? Every block on the corner of Esther Short Park are brandly new, plus they have the Art Center planned on one of Esther Short Park's corner.

Yeah you are right, Vancouver is not really big or impressive as Portland, but Vancouver are still not like a big sprawl with no downtown like Henderson, Nevada, with surprisely higher population compare to Reno.

One more thing I have to say, I don't understand why I don't see anybody ever act ignorant on Portland from Vancouver, except Portlanders act ignorant against Vancouver. Or maybe they are just jealous of our growth?

[alexjon]

I'm going to withhold my opinion on the matter since the facts speak for me and I obviously am not gaining any friends by being a typical cynic. The near-sighted comment about vancouverites not speaking ill about portland and then turning around and doing the same is classic and is perfect punctuation to this whole affair.

I will say that annexation is a classically anti-urban maneuver, though. It's like my hometown-- 1.3 million people and 400 square miles to roam. Yeehaw!

See y'all later (from the top of the future Park Avenue West, probably!)

[PuyoPiyo]

County officially to oppose casino





Public hearingsClark County public hearings on negotiating a new memorandum of understanding with the Cowlitz Tribe:

• 6 p.m. Monday, La Center High School, 725 Highland Road.
• 6 p.m. Thursday, Maple Grove Middle School, 12500 N.E. 199th St., Battle Ground.
• 10 a.m. April 15, Clark County Public Service Center, 1300 Franklin St.

Saturday, April 05, 2008
By JEFFREY MIZE and MICHAEL ANDERSEN, Columbian Staff Writers
Clark County’s commissioners will vote Tuesday on a resolution that states their opposition to “a major­ commercial gaming facility in unincorporated Clark County” without mentioning the Cowlitz Indian Tribe.

Commissioners have scheduled the vote for the morning after the first of three public hearings on negotiating a new casino deal with the Cowlitz.

Commissioners previously have voiced opposition to gambling and said they would prefer to see the tribe build a business park, not a casino, on a 152-acre site a couple miles west of La Center.

But they haven’t passed a resolution, as the anti-casino group Citizens Against Reservation Shopping requested last month.

“I’m delighted,” said Tom Hunt, a spokesman for the Vancouver-based group. “Might as well get it into one place.”

Commissioner Marc Boldt said commissioners decided to put the resolution on their agenda for one reason.

“To make CARS happy,” Boldt said. “Quite sweet and simple, I guess.”
Phil Harju, a member of the Cowlitz Tribal Council and its designated casino spokesman, said he didn’t think the resolution would apply to the tribe’s casino.

“When the land is taken into trust, it will not be a commercial casino,” he said. “It will be a tribal casino.”

But if the resolution means that commissioners oppose the tribe’s plan, Harju said, he hopes it will be voted down.

Hearings begin Monday

The county is pursuing an unusual strategy of passing a resolution against the Cowlitz casino as it prepares for a new round of negotiations with the tribe for that very project.

With the first in a series of three hearings set for Monday night in La Center, casino foes are marshaling their forces and cranking up the political pressure.

“It’s time to kill the bad deal — once and for all,” proclaims the Web site of Citizens for a Healthy Clark County, the consortium consisting of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde and three other organizations that has paid for television ads attacking the memorandum of understanding the county signed with the Cowlitz Tribe in 2004.

The American Land Rights Association, a group headed by Battle Ground activist Chuck Cushman, is calling on casino opponents to flood the hearings.
“Call your friends, call your neighbors — there must be a big turnout for the casino hearings,” the group said in an “urgent action alert” distributed Friday. “You must tell the commissioners — no MOU, no agreement, no casino, period.”

A state hearings board declared the MOU invalid last year because the county violated a state law requiring early and continuous public participation in what amounted to a growth-management decision. A Thurston County Superior Court judge subsequently upheld the hearings board’s order.

Commissioners have taken a dual approach: appealing the judge’s decision and announcing they want a new agreement with the tribe. There’s only one problem. Tribal representatives say they are ready to discuss “refinements,” but they say they are unwilling to negotiate an entirely new deal.

“The tribe believes the MOU is a solid agreement which adequately addresses the impacts of potential tribal development and sees no need to renegotiate the MOU beyond any such refinements,” Ed Fleisher, an Olympia attorney representing the tribe, wrote in a March 13 letter to the county.

But Commissioner Steve Stuart said he believes the tribe will come to the negotiating table.

“If I didn’t believe they were willing to negotiate, I wouldn’t participate in any hearings,” he said.

Stuart is perhaps the pivotal swing vote on the three-member board of commissioners. Betty Sue Morris, the only holdover from when the 2004 deal was approved, believes a tribal casino is all but inevitable and the county is currently “unprotected” from the Cowlitz casino’s effects.

In contrast, Boldt comes across as the most hostile to the casino and has repeatedly said he wouldn’t have signed the MOU in the first place.

No list

Stuart has been unwilling to offer a laundry list of what he would like to see in a new agreement, which has frustrated tribal officials
“If the county has some specific things they want to address with the tribe, we are willing to listen,” Harju said. “But they haven’t given us anything.”

Stuart said the tribe’s project has grown, up to a $510 million complex with a 134,150-square-foot casino, since the MOU was signed four years ago. And that likely means Stuart expects the tribe to come up with more money to offset the project’s effects.

The 2004 agreement required the tribe to comply with county building and health codes, to build roads and intersections to keep traffic flowing, to pay for law enforcement and prosecution of misdemeanor crimes, and to compensate the county and other local governments for lost property taxes.

It also required the tribe to deposit 2 percent of net gambling revenues into an “arts and education fund” to support various charitable activities.

Those provisions, Stuart said, are no longer sufficient to cover the project’s effects.

“When the development project changes, so must the mitigation,” he said. “I’m open to suggestions. … Are they looking at a bigger price tag? Yes. But they are looking at a bigger bank book.”

“I have no reason to get my teeth kicked in for no good reason,” Stuart added. “Anyone who thinks it’s just a walk in the park for us to have these hearings hasn’t been paying attention.”

Grand Ronde pressure

The Grand Ronde, owners and operators of the Spirit Mountain Casino near the Oregon coast, are bankrolling a new series of television commercials to protect their status as having the casino closest to the Portland-Vancouver market. The latest commercial features several local residents talking, including one man who says: “Our Clark County leaders have a mandate to protect us from a huge casino, not to enable one.”

During the past two years, the Grand Ronde Tribal Council has transferred $815,000 from its gambling revenues to oppose the Cowlitz casino. But Siobhan Taylor, the tribe’s public affairs director, said she believes less than $100,000 has been spent to date.

“We are here to help the citizens of Clark County,” Taylor said.

Stuart, for one, said he is not persuaded by the Grand Ronde’s commercials.
“I have zero respect for an organization that is preaching community but is practicing pocketbook,” Stuart said. “They can keep running their ads and spending their money, and frankly, it is what it is. But nobody should have any misconceptions­ about their motives.”

The Grand Ronde, he said, have the same motivation for opposing the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs’ plans to build a casino in the Columbia River Gorge.

“It’s not because they love the gorge,” Stuart said. “They love their money.”
“Mr. Stuart obviously has his biases,” Taylor replied, “and he is entitled to his opinions.”

“All of our elected officials need to be very open and aware they are elected to serve and their electorate is watching them,” she added. “His words are hurtful, but certainly they are not true. And in no way are they going to stop us supporting citizens in the area who don’t want to see a misguided agreement go through.”

Federal review process

Meanwhile, the federal government is taking a leisurely approach to reviewing the tribe’s request to designate land along the west side of Interstate 5 as its initial reservation.

A preliminary version of the project’s financial environmental impact statement was released to local and state governments in March 2007, but hardly a peep has been heard from the feds in the past 13 months.

“The EIS is still under review with the solicitor’s office in Washington, D.C.,” George Skibine, director of the Interior Department’s Office of Indian Gaming Management, said in a brief e-mail to The Columbian Friday. “I am not sure, but I suspect that the major issue is simply backlog in that office.”

[PuyoPiyo]

Hictoric Kiggins House being moved to make way for project






Zachary Kaufman/The Columbian Workers prepare the Kiggins House, built in 1907, for Sunday’s planned move to the Arnada neighborhood. The building is among six on East Evergreen Boulevard that will be moved or razed to make way for the multiple-use Riverwest development, to include the new Vancouver Community Library.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
By HOWARD BUCK, Columbian staff writer It will be a slow, cautious journey for the Kiggins House this Sunday.
Starting about 6 a.m., movers will haul the residence built by former Mayor John P. Kiggins from its 101-year perch on East Evergreen Boulevard to a waiting lot in the Arnada neighborhood at 24th and H streets.
Eager to receive the building, listed on the National Historic Register in 1995, are Bruce and Judith Wood, who plan to make it their home.
The move will cost $85,000 but excavation and remodeling will cost nearly triple that, Bruce Wood said. The couple previously refurbished a house in Shumway and their current home, which is next door to the new site.
A crew began Monday to unearth the old home’s foundation. By Friday the house should be settled on several large dollies, ready to roll.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” said Keith Settle, head of Scappoose, Ore.-based Northwest Structural Moving, which was hired for the job.
“I’ll know for sure, later in the week. But it looks promising,” Settle said.
Easing the two-and-a-half story home about 18 city blocks — west, then jogging north and east — should take four to six hours, he said.
There could be brief, localized power outages as utility crews lift or lower overhead lines from harm’s way, Settle said.
Motorists on the busy 15th Street-Mill Plain Boulevard couplet could run into several minutes’ delay while the home slides by.
The house’s removal signals tangible start of work on the $160 million Riverwest project, destined to cover four city blocks at the southeast corner of Evergreen and C Street.
A new, 90,000-square foot Vancouver Community Library will rise over a public underground parking garage, close to Evergreen Boulevard. The centerpiece library could be finished by 2011.
Riverwest also will include 200 condominiums, 100,000 square feet of office space, a 65-room hotel, a restaurant and an outdoor area with a fireplace.
It will be late autumn or early 2009 before significant excavation work begins.
By fall, developer Killian Pacific expects four vacated homes that front Evergreen to be razed, said Steve Burdick, the firm’s director of development. Buildings used by the Carr Auto Group, which moved to northeast Vancouver in April, also will be demolished.
An exception is the white-brick, one-story studio designed and used by noted Vancouver architect Day W. Hilborn. Negotiations continue to move it to a site at Markle Avenue and West Mill Plain Boulevard.
The studio would hold offices of the Southwest Washington Community Land Trust, a nonprofit organization that helps provide housing to low- to moderate-income families.
Settle, 37, who launched his moving business 17 years ago, said relocating the brick home would present no unusual challenge.
“It just takes a little more steel, a little more care,” Settle said. “We’ve actually moved unreinforced brick, three-or four-story office buildings. What we tell our customers is: ‘If it can be built, it can be moved,’ ” he said.
Precaution is necessary to navigate Vancouver’s downtown, however. “It’s trickier; the streets are narrow. There are more mature trees to deal with,” Settle said.
Built in 1907, the Kiggins House is a front-gabled structure with a detached two-car garage, which will be razed. A prominent real estate developer, Kiggins apparently lived in the home until his death in 1941, at age 72. The property remained under family ownership until it was sold in 1994. Most recently it was used as offices.
Settle said he’s unfazed by handling the historic home, which will stretch to 35 feet high while on the dollies. Last summer, his company moved the registered Ladd Carriage House in downtown Portland for safekeeping during a tower construction project.
“Actually, some of these older ones are easier to work with than newer buildings. They have better lumber, to start with,” he said. “The joists are all straight-grained. No knots. And full-dimension lumber.”
Full-dimension lumber?
A century ago, a 2x4 beam actually measured 2 inches by 4 inches, and so is stronger, still, than today’s slimmed-down version, he said.
Howard Buck can be reached at 360-735-4515 or howard.buck@columbian.com.

[PuyoPiyo]

Cowlitz: New federal rules can't block casino



Documents:» Read new federal casino regulations.


An aerial view shows the proposed Cowlitz casino site near La Center. (Janet L. Mathews/The Columbian) Tuesday, May 20, 2008
By JEFFREY MIZE, Columbian Staff Writer Newly released rules for interpreting Indian gambling law will not block the Cowlitz Indian Tribe's casino project near La Center, a tribal spokesman said.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs published final regulations Tuesday, the culmination of a multiyear process to provide clarity in what can be a convoluted legal process.

"Nothing in the regs would stop the Cowlitz project from going forward," said Phil Harju, a member of the Cowlitz Tribal Council and its designated casino spokesman.

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act generally prohibits gambling on lands taken into trust by the federal government after 1988, but it also contains an exemption for a tribe's initial reservation. The regulations published Tuesday provide guidance for how to apply that exemption.

The Cowlitz want to create an initial reservation on a 152-acre site along the west side of Interstate 5. A development partnership proposes to build a $510 million casino complex on the site, which is less than a 20-minute drive from the Portland-Vancouver area.

To qualify for the initial reservation exemption, the tribe must have both historical and modern connections to the site.

To meet the historical connection test, the federal regulations require the Cowlitz to "demonstrate by historical documentation the existence of the tribe's villages, burial grounds, occupancy or subsistence use in the vicinity of the land."

The Cowlitz Tribe can point to a number of documents, including a November 2005 opinion from the National Indian Gaming Commission. That document, reviled by casino foes, concluded the Cowlitz probably were not the dominant tribe in the region, but historical records indicate the tribe used the area for "hunting, fishing, frequent trading expeditions, occasional warfare and, if not permanent settlement, then at least seasonal villages and temporary camps."

But Citizens Against Reservation Shopping, a Vancouver group formed three years ago, asserts the Cowlitz have no significant historical connection to Clark County. The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, operators of the Spirit Mountain Casino near the Oregon coast, have taken a similar position.

Tom Hunt, a Citizens Against Reservation Shopping spokesman, said both the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indians Claims Commission agreed that the tribe's historic territory encompasses 2,500 square miles of land. The La Center casino site falls outside this area, he said.

"This isn't something we make up out of whole cloth or thin air," Hunt said. "These are decisions that have been reached after exhaustive study, and to not pay attention to them is ludicrous."

As for the modern connection requirement, the rules require the land slated for gambling be within 25 miles of tribal headquarters or other government facilities for at least two years prior to an application to have the site taken into trust.

The Cowlitz Tribe's headquarters are in Longview. Tribal attorneys say Global Positioning System measurements indicate the tribe would comply with the 25-mile requirement with several miles to spare.

[360Rich]

Public checks out new library plans

Saturday, July 05, 2008
By HOWARD BUCK, Columbian staff writer

From the outside, a sleek, glassy building would keep pace with a busy downtown.

Inside, soft wood paneling, a large atrium and quiet reading rooms would be comfortable and restful.

Fort Vancouver Regional Library District officials said that about 40 members of the public reacted favorably to architectural plans for a new Vancouver Community Library at an unveiling Wednesday.

Drafts of floor plans will be presented to the Vancouver City Council on Monday, and to the Clark County commissioners on Tuesday.

Drawn by the Miller|Hull Partnership of Seattle, a design is taking shape for the 90,000-square foot, six-story building to rise at the corner of East Evergreen Boulevard and C Street.

The architects got an early thumbs-up from Karin Ford, head librarian for the current facility that opened in 1963.

“It’s exciting. I think they’re striking a nice balance between a modern building, a 21st-century building, but one that will be welcoming, too,” Ford said. “I think it will be a great building.”

Plans call for upper floors to extend over the atrium at staggered lengths, to suggest open drawers (or a stack of books), Ford said.

They incorporate suggestions from library users, with a few new wrinkles.

Above a three-level, underground parking garage (to include 200 two-hour spots designated for library visitors to use free), the design shapes up like this:

* Basement: Staff office space, an attractive entry and retail space for Friends of the Library used-book sales.
* Main floor (“Plaza Level”): Circulation desk, newspaper and magazine selection, and a large community meeting room with room for at least 200 people.
* Mezzanine: A mellow area that capitalizes on the atrium space.
* Second floor: Children’s and teen areas, and an international center with foreign-language materials.
* Third floor: Nonfiction items, reference desk and materials.
* Fourth floor: Adult fiction, a reading room and an exterior roof terrace.



It’s no accident that the adult reading room is two floors removed from the noisier children’s areas.

“I think we heard a lot of validation for the design, so far … (It) confirmed what we need to pay attention to,” Ford said.

Other priorities include bike parking and garage security, she said. A new idea posed on Wednesday, locker space for youths who might arrive on skate boards, might be considered, she said.

Library construction should start by mid-2009 and be completed in the first half of 2011. The building is funded by the $43 million bond measure approved by voters in September 2006.

Work on the garage is slated to begin this year.

Howard Buck covers the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District: 360-735-4515 or howard.buck@columbian.com.

http://www.columbian.com/news/localN...rary-plans.cfm

[PuyoPiyo]

Oops double post, delete this please.

[PuyoPiyo]

Found some more pictures of the new design of the new library.



http://www.fvrl.org/aboutus/drawings...ers_Page_1.jpg



http://www.fvrl.org/aboutus/drawings...ers_Page_2.jpg



http://www.fvrl.org/aboutus/drawings...ers_Page_3.jpg
You can see the inside of the library building by clicking this link.

http://www.fvrl.org/aboutus/drawings...randLayers.pdf

Also you can read the informations about the new library by clicking this link.

http://www.fvrl.org/aboutus/files/Ma...nformation.pdf

But for some reason, I feel like this design was alittle too simple..

[PuyoPiyo]

Found a video of the waterfront redevelopment from Youtube. It's kinda of bad quality, but still worth to check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYJ35woJB94

[PuyoPiyo]

You can find some new renderings while reading some of SWCA's documents from its official website.

http://www.center4thearts.com/documents/

[bvpcvm]

wow, that southeast view kind of reminds me of the centre pompidou

[urbanlife]

wow, I really like this new library. It is good to see Vancouver finally get some good architecture.

[zilfondel]

Miller Hull has done some pretty darned good work. Very NW-regionalist architecture.

[CouvScott]

Riverwest

Scope: Mixed-use project featuring a public library, condominiums and commercial office and retail space.
Location: Northwest corner of Sixth and Broadway, Vancouver.
Size: More than 300,000 square feet.
Cost: $160 million.
Developer: Killian Pacific, Vancouver.
Timeline: Breaking ground this month.

[CouvScott]

400 Mill Plain Center

Scope: Two multi-story office buildings with ground-floor retail and parking.
Location: West of Interstate 5 on two blocks between Mill Plain Boulevard and W. 15th Street.
Size: 152,000 square feet.
Cost: $57 million.
Developer: The Al Angelo Co.
Timeline: Site work started this month.

[CouvScott]

Columbia Waterfront



Scope: Transformation of the 32-acre former Boise Cascade waterfront site into mid-rise office buildings retail development and waterfront condos.
Location: Shoreline west of Interstate 5 and south of the BNSF railroad berm.
Size: More than 3.25 million square feet.
Cost: Between $1 billion and $2 billion.
Developer: Gramor Development Inc., Tualatin, Ore., and local private investors.
Timeline: Breaking ground 2010.