We want to grab some coffee. We want to stop by the brew pub on Friday night and listen to the guitar player. We might even want to try our first Ethiopian food, if it smells good.
We want to get our hair styled, and we want to have a neighborhood tax guy, a family attorney and maybe even a loan officer. We want to walk just far enough to get ice cream after dinner that eating it doesn’t seem too sinful.
In short, we want what City Hall appears to want as it considers the future of the Tower Mall. Vancouver is launching a major campaign to redevelop the 25-acre triangle of Vancouver Heights bordered by East Mill Plain and MacArthur boulevards and North Devine Road. While not derelict, the use of the property has strayed from retail to low-rent social services offices over the last 15 or 20 years, and some of the buildings are vacant. Neither a blight nor a jewel, it presents a rare opportunity for revitalization outside the downtown core.
Vancouver is long on history, but most of the city was built in the short heyday of the automobile. The crowning achievement was the opening of Vancouver Mall in 1978, which ironically sealed the eventual fate of the much smaller Tower Mall site.
We generally lack funky neighborhood districts and those cute little places around the corner. (Uptown Village is one of the rare examples.) Instead, our city reflects a car-dependent 20th-century development pattern. Did you ever see anyone walk from the east Vancouver Lowe’s to the 192nd Avenue Walmart? Us neither, though they are technically across the street.
The city’s plan has two parts. First, the city owns 12 acres that includes the mall. That building is likely to be razed and replaced with a mix of housing and neighborhood retail and commercial uses.
The city also has influence over the remaining 13 acres of the triangle, which will fall into its 205-acre subarea plan and 53-acre redevelopment site. By making a plan and doing the paperwork, as it did with the highly successful Esther Short Redevelopment Area downtown, the city will be in a position to encourage private investment.
So far the details are suitably undecided. The city is just launching a public process to elicit ideas and support for what it will call The Heights District. An open house was held Saturday, and more information is on the city’s website at cityofvancouver.us/ced/page/heights-district-plan. The final plan is due in July 2019.
Before that plan is drafted, many questions will have to be decided. What will become of the current tenants? Should the new Heights District continue to be home to social services agencies and groups such as NAMI Southwest Washington, whose clients struggle with mental illness? If not, where should these important organizations go?
And what sort of public spaces should be included? Will there be a park, an amphitheater, or some other public amenity? What do the residents of the eight neighborhoods within walking distance want? What role can transit play in bringing people to the site?
One positive sign is that the city’s planning group includes an economist in addition to the usual collection of land use planners and technical experts. The idea is that the city will foster the development, but it will be the private sector that sustains it. Whatever happens, we can’t wait to enjoy it. Except maybe the Ethiopian food. Like the city’s final plan, it will have to pass the sniff test before we bite.
