Pier appears on Waterfront Vancouver

Between parking garages for two new office buildings, the existing restaurant buildings and the Grant Street Pier, there has been a steady stream of concrete trucks at The Waterfront Vancouver.

Gramor officials said Thursday that 1,500 cubic yards of concrete has been poured into parking garages for the Block 6 office buildings just this week. A concrete truck on average contains about nine cubic yards.

“They line the trucks up and have ’em go one after the next after the next one,” said Matt Grady, vice president of Gramor Development, the Tualatin, Ore.-based developer leading the project.

Grady said all the builders in the $1.5 billion project are working to get the project done before the wet weather arrives. Blocks 9 and 12 and the Grant Street Pier are supposed to be open to the public by next summer.

“We want to get things opened up, so everyone is working frantically on this project,” he said.

The Grant Street Pier could be the first project completed. The structure is set to hang 90 feet over the Columbia River, suspended by cables connected to a mast that is in turn anchored into the shore. The anchors are placed, but the mast is still being fabricated, Grady said.

If the mast arrives by November, the suspension system could be set up by December. The pilings that currently support the pier would be removed in February.