Despite hardships that have affected downtown Vancouver, its biggest supporters were filled with optimism at a Thursday gathering focused on the area’s near future and its outlook for years to come.
Business advocates have already spruced up the look of downtown by planting new trees, picking up cigarette butts and making plans to hang nearly 200 flower baskets from lampposts in May. Now, some new projects are going below the surface as business leaders follow through on a plan set a decade ago.
The Vancouver City Center Vision Plan was launched in 2000 by city planners, businesses, port officials and downtown residents, said Lee Rafferty, executive director of Vancouver’s Downtown Association.
“It’s a blueprint for how to grow downtown into what it should be,” Rafferty told about 60 people who attended the Thursday meeting, her group’s quarterly gathering at the Hilton Vancouver Washington.
The plan, as outlined on the city’s Web page, aims to reach a “messy vitality” downtown, with a mixture of residential, civic and retail redevelopment in 130 square blocks that include waterfront acreage that once housed the Boise Cascade mill. The mix should attract more downtown jobs and residents, said Rafferty.
She highlighted recent developments that follow the plan, including a $1.5 million renovation of the two-story Ludesher Building at 113 W. Ninth St. The project being led by Portland developer Aaron Jones follows city development guidelines that call for preserving main-floor space for retail shops.
“But we also need to activate the second floor,” Rafferty said.
Jones and two partners remodeled the building to include space for downstairs retail tenants and seven upstairs residential apartments, which consist of studio, one- and two-bedroom units.
“We think there’s a lot of potential here,” said Jones, who is eyeing other downtown buildings that are for sale.
Rafferty said buildings with upstairs apartments support the ground-floor businesses, such as flower shops, coffee shops and bars. Offices on the second floor could mean “more lunches will sell at downtown restaurants,” she said.
Downtown office rents still come in substantially lower than the fees charged in Portland’s trendy Pearl District, and its successful Hawthorne and Alberta Arts districts, said K.C. Fuller, a broker with Eric Fuller & Associates, a Vancouver commercial real estate firm.
“They’re anywhere between $20 and $38 (per square foot to rent space),” Fuller said. “Our rates in downtown Vancouver are $12, $17 and $18 (per square foot), at the max.”
Lower rents are attracting companies such as Pure Imagination, a Vancouver company that now invents toys in a downtown office loft, and Mt. Tabor Brewing, which will relocate its Portland microbrewery to the downtown Ludesher Building in June.
“We need more of these small boutiques that invite people to come downtown,” Fuller said.
The downtown core lacks the larger corporate office users that often transform sectors into higher-rent districts, Fuller acknowledged.
“Hopefully, the big boys will follow,” he said.
