Downtown Vancouver and future development

[DevanXL]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

Vancouver really isn't an independent entity when it comes to this sort of thing. It is inextricably tied to the greater Portland metro economy. As long as Portland's economy remains healthy and housing in Portland remains tight/expensive then Vancouver will continue to grow. If there is a big regional downturn and places like the Pearl and other parts of Portland end up overbuilt with thousands of vacant apartments/condos then every project in downtown Vancouver will come to a screeching halt.

Yes and No. You are right that the area is very much connected on what happens in Portland, but Vancouver is growing much faster than the Oregon side of the river. Alot of companies are growing in this area with places like Fisher Investments bringing in thousands of high paying jobs to the Vancouver/Camas area, DiscoverOrg going public, and alot of medium sized businesses moving into the city. I think the tax situation here is very attractive for businesses looking to move or expand to the area with the benefit of having the amenities of a major metropolitan area right next door. I believe the city is leaning in on this and hoping the increased office space in Downtown/Waterfront can attract some larger players to the city.

[texasdiver]

New article in today's Vancouver Columbian about the pace of construction in downtown Vancouver. Here is an excerpt:

https://www.columbian.com/news/2021/...s-on-the-rise/

Downtown Vancouver is on the rise: Vancouver construction continues at dizzying pace despite virus delays

Despite numerous impacts up and down the construction pipeline — everything from skyrocketing material prices to widespread labor shortages — the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t constrained the amount of development in downtown Vancouver.

The city is in the midst of an unprecedented construction boom, with seven major projects underway or recently completed and many more waiting in the wings. The past decade has seen a consistent ramp-up in construction activity as the economy moved past the recession, and the current crop of projects is larger than at any prior point.

“We’re on track to have twice as many (residential) units come online as have been built since 2007, which is pretty amazing,” said Vancouver economic development director Chad Eiken. “We’ve never seen this level of activity in the downtown.”

The Waterfront Vancouver has been the main focal point of development in downtown Vancouver in the past few years, but it only accounts for two of the projects currently under construction — aside from one at the Port of Vancouver’s Terminal 1 redevelopment site, the remainder are all on the north side of the BNSF Railway tracks.

The vast majority of the square footage under construction is slated to become residential space, along with a mix of office and hotel uses. That’s good news, according to Eiken, because it means the city is on track to meet a goal set in the 2007 Vancouver City Center Vision plan: add at least 4,551 new multifamily units to the downtown core by 2027.

The city’s permitting process has four main stages: pre-application, land use review, building permit review and then, once the permit has been issued, construction. There are currently four projects in the pre-application phase, totaling 484 units, plus three in the land use stage with a total of 507 units.

Four more projects are in building review, with a combined 457 units, and 11 projects are actively under construction or have permits issued. That’s 2,339 units in the pipeline for the next couple of years on top of 949 units that have already been built downtown since the adoption of the 2007 plan, Eiken said, in total representing about 75 percent of the target for 2027.

Commercial development is also showing signs of increased growth, Eiken noted. The city has only added a few major office buildings since the recession, he said — the Hudson Building, Hurley Tower and the Murdock building at the Waterfront — but several projects currently in the pipeline will probably double or triple the amount of new office space added in the post-recession era.

The city doesn’t have a hard target for office development like it does for residential, Eiken said, but it all serves the same goal.

“A lot of it is more in the intangible area of adding vitality to the downtown,” he said. “By bringing more residents to the downtown as well as workers, there’s more support for the local businesses, and as we know, the more rooftops we get in the downtown, the more likely it is that we’ll get a grocery store, so it’s really important that we get income levels up but also the number of units in the downtown.”
. . . .