With little fanfare, the city of Vancouver adopted the Fourth Plain Corridor Subarea Plan early this year.
Minus some new pedestrian crosswalks, few uplifting changes have taken place along the tired corridor home to higher than average crime, low income households and high residential turnover.
Some small businesses are struggling – and waiting for change.
Change takes time, especially in underinvested areas, said planner and project manager Bryan Snodgrass. But the wheels are starting to turn.
Businesses speak out
The city recently completed a survey of Fourth Plain business owners to gauge their needs and concerns about the business district.
The survey was distributed to 375 businesses in the corridor, and just more than 100 responded. The respondents were primarily small business owners, said Jennifer Keene, community block grant assistant, who conducted the survey.
High atop their list of concerns were crime and graffiti, improved lighting, vandalism, homelessness, security and safety, traffic congestion, gang activity and lack of business support by the community and the city.
Rich Bartel, owner of Regal Rest Mattress Co. on the west end across from Water Works Park, said his top concern is lighting.
Bartel said many of his customers are intimidated by the area – some park in front of the store and honk for him to escort them inside.
“People don’t want to be here after dark,” he said. “What they did to Esther Short was beautiful, but it upset the anthill. Now (homeless people) make this park a point of contact. As much as there has been an increase in police presence, it doesn’t seem to be making a big difference.”
The corridor’s appearance and crime rate hurt his business, Bartel said.
“I’ve been here 24 years manufacturing specialty mattresses,” he said. “You’d think if you’re the only one making a factory-direct product locally, people would be flocking to you.”
Most of the businesses in the corridor are closed during the evenings, and many are closed on weekends.
“There are vacant buildings and ‘For Lease’ signs everywhere,” he said. “People don’t want to shop here or invest here. They just think ‘this is scary.’”
Bartel, who owns his building, has made improvements to the interior and exterior hoping to attract business and spruce up the neighborhood, and is itching for an action plan to give him and other business owners direction.
He would, however, need help financing upgrades to his façade, he said.
Jim Kurfurst, who owns Butcher Boys and sits on the Fourth Plain Subarea Plan Oversight Committee, said the intent to clean up Fourth Plain is good but that some of those involved have been “busy giving out feel-good pills” and are looking at a solution simplistically.
Kurfurst has noticed a decline in homeless loiterers due to increased police patrols, but said he would like to see the city’s code enforcement department focusing on forcing property owners to get rid of abandoned cars and junk in their yards.
The area could handle two police officers dedicated solely to it, he added.
“I’ve been here since 1969 and it wasn’t always this way,” Kurfurst said. “This started out as a blue collar area, but it’s been declining since then.”
In the 1970s, Orchards was the hot spot drawing residents away from Fourth Plain, followed by Cascade Park in the 1980s and Hazel Dell in the 1990s. With the closure of Alcoa and Vancouver Plywood Co., many of the area’s blue collar jobs have disappeared, he said.
The solution starts at the roots, not just by planting trees or putting a divider down the street – a move Kurfurst thinks would kill small businesses.
Jeff Skondin, who opened Crema Dolce coffee and gift shop on the east end of the corridor a year ago, is dealing with a traffic burm that divides Fourth Plain in two and makes it difficult for drivers traveling east to turn left into his parking lot.
Despite the inconvenience, Skondin said his first year in business has been decent. He was drawn to the corridor by its high traffic counts.
“Sometimes I wish we were in a yuppier area where people have more money to spend,” Skondin said. “Some of the kinds of people who hang around are intimidating, but I think you have some of that wherever you go.”
Snodgrass said there were no real surprises in the survey results.
“It reinforces the impressions from the planning processes, and if anything, there was a stronger emphasis on crime,” he said. “I also noticed concerns about lack of other business types – clothing and grocery retail in particular. There was awareness, not in viewing other businesses as competition, but how the whole area plays out as a market destination.”
The next step is identifying the programs, departments and organizations that may assist with addressing the concerns.
The oversight committee met Oct. 18, and from here, those committee members still interested in the cause – plus some newcomers – will form a task force to develop strategic plans for change, said Grace Farmer, community outreach specialist for the Community Housing Development Center. Farmer was hired with a United Way grant to “stir people up” about the issue.
Farmer is also interested in getting a merchant association going in some form, but there has so far been minimal support. The association could take the form of a website translated into several languages to reach all of the businesses in the enormously diverse corridor.
A larger community meeting will take place in November, but the date has yet to be set.
Driving change
The city’s transportation department is nearly finished with a transportation study to create a unified vision for a streetscaping plan.
The plan, which will have to be OKed by the city council, will outline sidewalk widths (10 feet), where trees and bus stops should be located and landscaping to soften the corridor – essentially facilitating the concept of what its general layout should be, said Transportation Planner Todd Boulanger.
From there, the task force will have a say in the aesthetics.
The department is looking at the corridor in three sections.
Boulanger said he sees the western end with a village look, and imagines it as a new Uptown Village with family-oriented businesses.
The middle is the “green necklace,” as it contains the Kyocera site and the City Public Works operation center, with more landscaping and less urban development.
The eastern end is a commercial zone with no discernible theme and little walkability.
In addition, the city is drafting several code changes that could extend the multifamily tax abatement that applies downtown to Fourth Plain, and others that address building setbacks from the roadway and parking issues to create a multi-modal, pedestrian-friendly corridor, Snodgrass said.
Anchor projects along Fourth Plain are in states of fluxuation. Kyocera, Fred Meyer, First Independent, Clark College and others signal progress.
Kyocera
The Vancouver Housing Authority had an option to purchase the Kyocera site, which has since expired, said LaVon Holden, interim co-director.
The agency is continuing discussions with the company about whether it will be involved in the purchase of the property – as are others, she said.
As a public development agency, Holden said the hope is to develop a use there that would serve the area with public-private partnerships, but the vision is not necessarily to own anything built on the site in the end.
“We see the opportunity to be a catalyst and facilitator for change, and we have some skills in this arena,” Holden said.
The site has contaminant issues, which has factored into price discussions with Kyocera, but the issues are not holding up the conversation in any way, she added.
Fred Meyer
The retailer is vacating its location at Grand and Fourth Plain boulevards to anchor the Grand Central development along Highway 14, leaving many with questions about the future for the centrally located site.
Site Acquisition Manager Don Forrest, who sits on the Fourth Plan Corridor Subarea Plan oversight committee, said the store was in need of more space and couldn’t justify the cost of redevelopment.
Fred Meyer is in final negotiations with a buyer that he suspects the neighborhood will be pleased with. Forrest could not give any specifics, but said the buyer is a complementary use for the area, and if all goes well, an announcement should be coming within a month.
First Independent
The bank is in the midst of redeveloping its Fourth Plain branch with an international theme.
First Independent has a long-term plan to remodel or rebuild many of its older branches, and when the bank learned of the intent to designate the corridor as an international district, it followed suit, said Public Relations Manager Tammi Olund.
“The remodel was already planned, but the subarea plan gave us our theme,” she said. “The international theme really works well for that branch because many of our clientele do not speak English as their primary language.”
Water Works Park
In other projects across the corridor, the city has upgrades scheduled for Water Works Park, which contains Swift Skatepark, at the western end and the City Public Works operations center. Realignment of the intersection of Northeast 65th Avenue and Fourth Plain Boulevard will be underway soon.
Clark College
The college is gearing up to start predesign work on its $33 million Advanced Health and Technology Building, planned for the corner of Fort Vancouver Way and Fourth Plain Boulevard.
In the last legislative session, the college received $250,000 in predesign funding for the new building that will house new technology and health-related programs to supplement its medical radiology, dental hygiene and pharmacy technician programs.
The college sees the project as an anchor for the redevelopment plans and one that will serve as a gateway into the corridor.
Construction will likely begin in 2011, said Director of Plant Services Jim Green.
