What’s new in Clark County? Well, what’s not?
For a place that’s home to unparalleled Northwest history — it was the region’s first permanent non-native settlement, the center of commerce and culture, home to war heroes and host to colossal wartime shipyards — we’ve sure got a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on right now.
New political faces and factions, new economic patterns and needs, new infrastructure and places to play. A spiffy new community center has risen in Battle Ground; a spacious new main library in downtown Vancouver is under construction.
Of course there’s also a hefty helping of the same-ol’ same-ol’: commuters and congestion. Civic pride, citizen involvement — and clueless corruption. Natural beauty and rampant overdevelopment. Heck, we’ve even got the same old newspaper we’ve had for the last 120 years, despite times we can only describe as tougher-than-tough for print media everywhere. … But we digress.
Welcome to Clark County, Washington, and The Columbian’s annual Portrait edition — our guide to what’s new, and what’s not, in the place we call home.
In 2010, political leadership is new. For the first time in 14 years, Vancouver voters chose a new mayor last year. Seventy-year-old incumbent Royce Pollard, whose plainspoken and pugnacious personal style came to embody the little city aiming to be more, lost a decisive election to fresh-faced city councilman Tim Leavitt, 38.
The election swung on a hugely expensive and controversial piece of newness: plans to replace — not repaint, refurbish or retrofit, but actually tear down and rebuild — the Interstate 5 Bridge. Like it or not, the 93-year-old bridge is our lifeline to that big-sister city to the south, with all its jobs and commerce, recreation and inspiration.
Pollard said for years that tolling the bridge to help pay for the project is inevitable. Leavitt said he hated the idea and would consider it only as a last resort. Voters didn’t much care that the mayor of Vancouver has virtually no power over this matter — they appreciated Leavitt’s emphasis on their pocketbooks. Plus, many said, they were just plain ready for a change. Fourteen years is a long time for one man to occupy the throne. The younger man won, 54 percent to 46 percent.
A different kind of political upheaval took place a couple towns over: Days before the election, a state audit confirmed that Washougal Mayor Stacee Sellers, whose platform was fiscal responsibility, had bought expensive dinners and wines during city business trips. Other city funds couldn’t be accounted for. Easy decision: Voters dumped Sellers in a landslide, and she resigned before her term was up.
Notice a pattern here? Folks in Clark County are worried about their wallets. And businesspeople in Clark County are worried about the folks who are worried about their wallets. Thousands of jobs have been lost in construction and manufacturing. Exports of grain and lumber through the Port of Vancouver have dwindled.
But there’s a warm wind blowing, and a hot sun shining, on Clark County nonetheless. The port is doing booming business shipping wind turbines, and SEH America has already begun making solar silicon wafers at its east Vancouver facility. The Japanese-owned firm also bought the Hewlett-Packard campus in east Vancouver — for years the source of a steady trickle of layoffs — and is likely to expand its silicon wafer production into solar energy and other emerging technologies.
“This area is emerging as a renewable energy hot spot,” said John Marck, president of Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas in Vancouver. “Look out five years, this (will be) a major site for solar companies.”
If the sun is bright, this must be time for our close-up: Hollywood has come to the ‘Couv. In 2009, big-screen stars Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser and Timothy Hutton all spent time in Vancouver filming new movies or TV shows. In fact, “Extraordinary Measures,” the Ford-Fraser vehicle, and “Leverage,” the Hutton TV drama, both featured The Columbian’s stylish new/former office building south of Esther Short Park.
So, despite the difficulties, we must be looking pretty good these days. We even added a couple of big parks — a 240-acre one over in Hockinson that’s heavy on the ball fields and basketball courts, and a bucolic 88-acre greenspace near the Fairgrounds — plus several smaller neighborhood parks, as a voter-approved parks district works its way toward achieving its goal of 35 new places to hike and play.
There’s nothing new about changing times. And there’s nothing new about venerating traditions and institutions. In The Columbian’s Portrait section, we’ll take a good look at both.
