Planning in smaller sections can strengthen Vancouver overall
The Columbian
Published: January 21, 2015, 4:00pm
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Fourth Plain Boulevard offers a variety of opportunities and challenges for existing and emerging businesses. Vancouver's Fourth Plain Corridor plan is one of several city plans intended to help Vancouver, citizens, and businesses create conditions that will retain, expand, and grow the economy within the city's diverse communities.Photo Gallery
In Vancouver, the answer is yes. The city’s plan for business growth is based on a set of strategies for eight geographic places that were designated to attract private investment through public investment. Each of these subareas has a detailed, but largely unimplemented, plan.
Now, city economic development staff members are dusting off the community’s pre-recession planning efforts and preparing for implementation. We are shifting our focus to less planning and more doing.
Opportunities abound in these subareas. They include places for industrial and technology development, urban reserve areas and locations with a dynamic blend of residential and commercial spaces to nurture business expansion and jobs. Plans for areas from the downtown waterfront development to the east side’s Columbia Tech Center were designed to be implemented in ways that link public investment with private development. Implementation will include a variety of customized strategies. Some examples:
• Working with property owners to identify priorities and details for street improvements based on needs and costs.
• Reviewing and proposing appropriate amendments to development standards and allowed uses.
• Identifying issues with difficult-to-develop properties, such as potential brownfield sites and vacant older buildings.
• Identifying successes on all levels to attract new investment and celebrate the efforts of the city, residents and businesses.
Building partnerships between businesses, the city and area agencies toward workforce development and industrial cluster development is essential to retain, expand, recruit and grow our economy. Just as the implementation steps will be unique to each site, each site is a collection of individual nodes — each with its own character, purpose and condition — requiring different levels of attention and investment.
One example of a subarea with such distinct nodes is Fourth Plain. As with the other seven area plans, the Fourth Plain plan contains focus points, such as the intersection of Fourth Plain and Fort Vancouver Way. Fourth Plain is the “front door” for many of the city’s businesses and residents, and the plan indicated that the area had not yet reached its full potential for residential and commercial growth. City economic development staff and community partners are now beginning to tackle the job of implementing the Fourth Plain plan, starting with the node at Fourth Plain and Fort Vancouver Way.
Other of the eight subareas are Downtown, Central Park, Section 30 Urban Employment Center, Lower Grand Employment Area, Riverview Gateway Subarea, 112th Avenue Corridor, and Fruit Valley Subarea. Adjacent influence areas are also considered to be part of the process, and the scope of the planning effort is sizeable, substantial and challenging.
The challenge is that the plans were created in the pre-recession era, and resources since that time have diminished and attention has lagged. Even at state and federal levels, funding and resources are now especially scarce. Implementing the subarea plans will require targeted resources and focus, but as we emerge from the recession with our plans in order, the subarea plans will become the foundation for community growth and economic development opportunity.
As noted in the Fourth Plain plan, “the success of any plan does not depend on its adoption by a city council or by the quality of its physical design; success is achieved by actual programs and built projects that combine to change the landscape and the economy in ways that conform to the vision.” And, partnering with the private sector, the city is up for the challenge of addressing fundamental economic improvement by growing the local economy through implementation, which translates into: less planning and more doing.
Teresa Brum is Vancouver’s Economic Development Division Manager.
