Gramor Development says it’s set to start long-awaited construction in spring 2016 on the first two buildings in the 32-acre redevelopment of downtown Vancouver’s Columbia River waterfront. But the company’s president said a hotel project that was presented last December as a signed deal is no longer a sure thing and that other hotel discussions are in the works.
The Tualatin, Ore.-based company has submitted preliminary requests for city approval of two waterfront buildings and a temporary surface parking lot at the foot of Grant Street, which is being extended south of the BNSF Railway rail line to the Columbia River’s edge. Barry Cain, Gramor’s president, said each of the two-story buildings will have two or three restaurants with a variety of food specialties. Gramor says its current plan is to start construction on those buildings next spring.
But the company’s first development proposal, submitted to the city in a pre-application request, doesn’t indicate construction of a 10-story hotel that Cain had announced to much fanfare last December. Cain said at that time that the company wanted to start building that hotel this fall.
Cain told The Columbian this week that he still has plans for a hotel, and thinks the waterfront could attract more than one hotel project. But he said the deal with a hotel partner announced last year has not come together as expected.
“I’m not positive the one (company) we’re working with will get us the timing we want,” he said.
The absence of the hotel as a first-phase project doesn’t mean the overall project is behind schedule, Cain said. The company had long expected to start building around the start of next year, and it expects to meet that goal, he said.
“The timing hasn’t changed. Our thinking about what comes first has changed,” he said.
Dianne Danowski Smith, a spokeswoman for Gramor, said the company is working aggressively to find restaurant and hotel partners for the development. While Gramor has identified Block 16 and Block 8 as possible hotel sites, Smith said that a hotel could be built on “either or both” sites.
Cain said he remains extremely confident that the location will appeal to operators of traditional and perhaps boutique hotels.
“Once this thing gets going, hotels will want to be here,” he said. “This will be a place that people will want to be.”
In its pre-application submittal to the city’s Community and Economic Development Department, Gramor said the project’s first two buildings on Blocks 9 and 12 would house a combination of restaurant, retail and/or office space. It provided no names of possible tenants.
“At this moment, it is targeted to begin construction in Spring 2016,” the company says in it’s pre-application narrative.
With street construction now underway, the basic layout of the community is becoming evident. A new street, Columbia Way, is partly constructed as the east-west spine of the mixed-use community. To the south, Festival Street will be a key access point to a waterfront park and the Block 9 and Block 12 retail-commercial buildings that will have unobstructed river views.
In its development application, Gramor says that the smaller of those buildings will contain just over 14,000 square feet and the other will be almost double that size. The buildings should be completed in the first quarter of 2017, Cain said.
The surface parking is temporary at least through construction, and Gramor is considering building underground parking for apartments and, possibly, restaurants, Smith said.
The first construction other than roads will be on a waterfront park, Cain said, with work scheduled to begin in mid-October, Cain said, Gramor also is moving forward next spring on construction of a 14-story apartment building with 150 units, a condominium building of up to 15 floors and more than 100 units, and a six-floor office building, Cain said.
Port plans
As the waterfront project gets underway, the Port of Vancouver is pursuing a redevelopment plan for its 13-acre Terminal 1 site adjacent to the waterfront property. The port’s land currently houses the Red Lion Hotel Vancouver at the Quay. The port has invited the public to participate in a design of that site.
Initial development concepts will be presented at a public workshop from noon to 1:30 June 18 at the Port of Vancouver’s offices, 3103 N.W. Lower River Road, Vancouver.
The review of Gramor’s first two buildings is being led by Jon Wagner, senior planner in the city’s Community and Economic Development Department. The preliminary conference will be held at 11 a.m. June 25 in the Birch Conference Room of Vancouver City Hall, 415 W. 6th St.
