Vancouver Waterfront Project - thoughts? (Camas: camping, live, store)

[Scurrytom]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

The thing I'm looking forward to the most is a market building similar to Vancouver's Granville Island Public Market which is something they have planned. The big restaurants they have opening are mostly large upscale chain places. Well, not chains exactly, but not originals either as they have other locations and are fairly upscale. A market hall like the one on Granville Island would be something unique to the Portland area. The Saturday Market and food courts around Portland are OK as far as they go. But they are still outdoor temporarly type structures and tents. And honestly kind of trashy. A big indoor food court with local venders where one can go for a cheaper bite for say a Saturday or Sunday bunch or afternoon is something I'd use more than $30-40 a plate sit down fine dining places. Anyone who has been to the market hall on Granville Island knows what I'm talking about.

I agree. That would be something truly unique for Vancouver/ Portland area, Maybe E even drawing portland tourists across the river. Unique artist studios like Vanvouver of the north would be great.

[Jimrob1]

Originally Posted by nestvine

There is a plan in place for building a grocery store in downtown Vancouver. It is projected to be complete within 3 years. https://www.columbian.com/news/2018/...1-story-tower/

I was interested in reading this article, as I use to live downtown some years ago. When I went to read it, the Columbian wanted $9.95. I didn't read it. I can wait and see the new developments on a visit.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by Jimrob1

I was interested in reading this article, as I use to live downtown some years ago. When I went to read it, the Columbian wanted $9.95. I didn't read it. I can wait and see the new developments on a visit.

If you are using Google Chrome, open the article in an incognito window with a right click and you will be able to read it as they won't have known that you used up your 5 articles for the month.

[Jimrob1]

Thanks for that info. I'm going to do that now.

[trailtramp]

Enjoy reading the comments here from a few years ago about the waterfront. Have been up to visit twice in the past 6 months and it keeps getting better. Looking forward to completion of the former Red Lion area.

[trailtramp]

Enjoy reading the comments here from a few years ago about the waterfront. Have been up to visit twice in the past 6 months and it keeps getting better. Looking forward to completion of the former Red Lion area.

[cyberous]

It's fun to look back at this. Downtown has really changed since then, I wish I had more conviction in my beliefs of what the waterfront would have done for the values of downtown homes! I would have pickedup a bunch of homes down and around 16th, as the homes were pratically free back then due to the public services provided in that area. I have since moved to the East Side, but find my self stalking our old neighborhood as I have such fond memories.

With that said, it will be interesting to see what happens during the next recession, I believe its going to be a big one.

[texasdiver]

I'm pretty liberal. But I think the biggest factor that will lead to the long-term success or failure of downtown Vancouver and the Vancouver waterfront is reining in the homeless substance abusers and riff raff that have taken over so much of Portland. We live in a mobile metro area and people can basically go out and shop/dine wherever they want in the 4-county metro area.

I noticed back when pandemic restrictions on dining were much more restrictive in OR compared to WA that Portlanders were flooding over to the waterfront to enjoy evenings out. I think Vancouver can position itself as a safer and hassle-free alternative to Portland if it can keep the riffraff and homeless campers out. And business will really boom. If not then....

As I read the laws and court cases on this subject it seems that the main reason that cities can't reign in homelessness and camping in public is because they don't have adequate alternatives. Cities like Phoenix and San Antonio that have invested heavily in providing big shelters and big heavily regulated public camping areas have been much more successful at keeping the riffraff out. That should be the model for Vancouver and a way to set it apart from the growing dysfunction that is Portland's city government.

I also visited New York City last summer for a week with my daughter. We traveled and explored all over the city by subway and on foot. And I saw nothing like the homeless problem that plagues Portland. I couldn't figure out why New York was so much cleaner and researched why. And basically NYC invested in providing enough homeless shelter beds and hotel beds that they could actually do nightly sweeps to get people off the streets and clean up homeless encampments. You would still see panhandlers on the street on various street corners but it was night and day difference because they just had a piece of cardboard to sit on and maybe a backpack but NOTHING like the dumpster explosion of trash, tents, shopping carts, burnt out cars, etc. that you see all over Portland. If you can't stay on the street overnight then you can't accumulate a giant pile of garbage, feces, vermin, etc. And even if you are out on the street during the day doing your drugs and panhandling you only have whatever you can carry which is probably just a backpack and maybe a small piece of cardboard to sit on.

Anyway, maybe this is way off topic. But Vancouver has a chance to keep this problem under control but it will take serious effort. I went biking on the Burnt Bridge Creek trail last weekend with my daughter which we have been doing for years and for the first time ever we biked through a big new homeless encampment at the east end of the trail. Never saw one there before. We didn't get hassled but it was disconcerting to see that trail start to look the Springwater trail in Portland.

It is right here at this exact google photo location which is pristine in this 2016 360 degree photo but has several dozen homeless tents and piles of garbage right now: https://goo.gl/maps/4JmCaAjsaPqvy6GV9

[jertheber]

Bad county roads, potholes galore in the city, urban and suburban blight, crime on the rise. Homelessness looks to be a growing problem, along with the expansion of tents, street filth, and the wandering mentally ill and drug addicted seemingly out looking for "opportunity." We can either see this as a logical result of dodging the bullet of social neglect, or write it all off as the signs of America in decline. It seems that both may be a valid view of the decay we see among the shiny new buildings of Waterfront development.

Rounding up the homeless, the criminals, the addicted, will not be be an easy task when considering the fact that we, as a society, never contemplated such an apocalyptic scenario to unfold in our midst. And, we never anticipated the scale of these problems to overwhelm the police, the social workers, the courts, but despite our shock, it's here-- and we have so little dedicated infrastructure designed to deal with it.

My own take, resulting from past years of observation, tends toward the view that we will adapt to living around our problems, rather than dealing successfully with them. Other nations are already accustomed to the social decline they suffer, India, Brazil, Mexico, the Island nations etc, so we aren't the lone ranger in that regard.

I hope I'm wrong, I hope we will face our problems with the same level of enthusiasm that built the hydroelectric network, the interstate highway system, and the technical innovations that improved our lives and made further change possible. But those days of large scale undertakings took advantage of the economy and the social norms of that time.. And we have what we have today. A fractured political reality, a greatly troubled financial system, a much larger and vocal underclass, and a citizenry that can't agree on a damn thing.

[cyberous]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

It is right here at this exact google photo location which is pristine in this 2016 360 degree photo but has several dozen homeless tents and piles of garbage right now: https://goo.gl/maps/4JmCaAjsaPqvy6GV9

We had friends in from town and did the trail in reverse on Saturday and noticed the camp in this area. After a bit of discussion on why they choose this area it boils down to access to provisions. The rest of the trail is pretty isolated from major attractions/resources (panhandling/shoplifting) You can see this location is within walking distance to Winco. I suspect that this Winco is plagued with shoplifting/theft and (just as the Safeway on Hayden Island was before they were forced to shut down) I would also guess the public restrooms in the area heavily occupied by the homeless. The reason being is we ate at the Arbys in the location and have for years (yes I saw the other post) Never have they had a lock on the door. This time they had a lock that required a key that an employee has to manually walk you to the restroom and let you in.

I do have a little experience with the unhoused. I did some charity work (foodbank) a few years ago. I learned that there are homeless families that live a fairly invisible life. No drugs, far out of the way and adopt to their situations and utilize the systems resources. These are the unhoused that we don't even notice. However, when I talk about homeless I'm not talking about this class. I'm talking about the mentally ill or drug abusers or sometimes both. I was going to keep ranting on about what will likely happen in this area if left unchecked but sadly, I don't have a solution to the homeless problem so I'm just going to stop here.