Today Gramor Development will be making application to the City of Vancouver to officially begin the $1 billion dollar conversion of the old Boise Cascade site. This project will completely transform the southernmost portion of downtown Vancouver along the Columbia River. The 32 acre Boise site has sat vacant for years and has offered no river presence or river life for the residents of Vancouver. That is all about to change.

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If you look at the above photo, the Columbia Waterfront development will begin along the west side of the Red Lion Inn at the Quay and extend to the west almost to the far left edge of the photo. This project will include 3,300 residential units, 250,000 square feet of retail space and approximately 1.000,000 square feet of commercial space.

It may look something like this…

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Image & design courtesy of Twist Architecture-Design

Changing the face of Vancouver, WA

This growth will completely change the face of Vancouver, WA. It will bring a life and vitality to our downtown core that has been slowly waking up over the last 10 years. It will connect all the new growth around beautiful Esther Short Park to the Columbia River. It will draw us in and invite us to live, work and play along the river. Be able to truly enjoy this amazing piece of land we’ve been blessed with.

We likely won’t see any completion until 2012 but this will begin the process to make it a reality. The entire development will likely build out over 10 to 15 years depending upon how the market continues to heal.

Please stay tuned and save this site as I’ll continue bringing more information as it becomes available.

Well, maybe not full blown Hollywood but pretty close. This promotional short film was created for a Blog Makeover Contest put on by InmanNews. Believe it or not, I was not the winner of the contest but I am a winner to have such a great promotional video to show off this blog and our community.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video has been living over there on the upper right side for a while now but I want to give some proper credit for all the effort that went into it. My friend Chris Martin of Chris Martin Studios is the mastermind behind this whole production. I shared with Chris my hopes and goals of the video and he listened and came up with something that far exceeded my expectations! If you have any marketing needs I’d suggest you give Chris Martin Studios a peek and see what he can do for you.

Thank you Chris for giving this fun little project “legs” that will allow it to live on here for a very long time! Now, if I could only figure out how to really clone me…

~~~Curious who I lost too? Check it out…~~~

Yes, my friend Maureen Francis pulled out the “big gun” Kid Rock to get the win. Way to go Maureen. I can’t wait to see what the Real Estate Tomato does for your big makeover!

That’s right, it is an absolutely beautiful Mother’s Day weekend. The sun is out, the weather is warming, head out and enjoy. I’m getting ready to do just that. The kids and I are going to head down to the Columbia River to watch the Tall Ships for a while and maybe take care of a Mother’s Day thing or two. Don’t forget to do something special for that special mom in your world.

As mentioned the other day, you can go check out the Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Chieftain this weekend in downtown Vancouver, WA. These ships are beautiful and worth taking the time to go check out.

The weekend schedule is as follows:

For additional info check out historicalseaport.org or call 800-200-5239.

Below are a few of the photos I took while there the other day. You can also check out all the pics over on Flickr in the Lady Washington set.

What are you waiting for? It’s going to be a wonderful weekend, get out and head downtown behind the Quay and check out these ships.

Today I took a few minutes to head down to the Columbia River to check out the Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Chieftain. These two ships are amazing! They are both replica ships from different eras. They will be here in town from now until Monday the 11th of May. I’d highly recommend you stop by and check them out. This weekend they will be doing some exhibitions, battles and moonlight tours. I also took some photos that I’ll be putting on my Flickr site as soon as I get them uploaded. Stay tuned for those.

If you want to see these for yourself, head downtown Vancouver and go to the back side of the Inn At The Quay. There is a large parking lot by the outdoor amphitheater on the river.

(In the video I mention 150 years ago, it would have actually been about 250 years ago!)

Columbia Waterfront development is making progress. I recently attended a meeting at the City of Vancouver all about this $1 billion dollar project. Below is the video flyover built by the architect that shows what this could look like.

However it ends up, it will completely change the face of Vancouver, WA for the better (and I love this place already).