by Geon, Bryan
Troutdale
Troutdale’s residential districts sprawl across the hills and bluffs south of downtown. A few older houses still stand in the old grid above the historic downtown, and relict farmhouses dot the rolling highlands, but most homes date from the 1950s onward. As one proceeds south and southwest, the housing stock grows generally newer, and contemporary homes on culs-de-sac dominate much of the southern half of the city. Many of the houses on the ridges on either side of Beaver Creek offer views of Mount Hood and the Sandy River. The subdivisions off Cherry Park Road, in the city’s southwest, have newer homes and provide vistas across the Columbia River to the Washington Cascades (nice) and the Camas paper mill (less nice). The unincorporated zone between Troutdale and Gresham, in pretty countryside above the Sandy River south of the city, still has a definite rural feel.
These cities are literally at the doorstep of the Columbia River Gorge, and world-class hiking, windsurfing, and waterfall-gazing are only minutes away. At the same time, when the Gorge winds blow, Troutdale and vicinity take the brunt of the blast, and ice storms and snow storms, when they occur, are more severe. (Trees with weak limbs do not fare well here.) Besides the Gorge winds, occasional nuisances include low-flying planes from Troutdale Airport and occasional whiffs of the paper and pulp mill across the Columbia River in Camas, Washington. These cities offer a reasonably quick commute to Portland International Airport and its adjacent industrial zones, but traveling on Interstate 84 beyond Interstate 205 is very congested at peak times. Decent bus service exists, but coverage is fairly limited.
Websites: www.fairvieworegon.gov; www.ci.wood-village.or.us; www.ci.troutdale.or.us
ZIP Codes: 97024 (Fairview), 97060 (Wood Village and Troutdale)
Post Offices: Fairview Post Office, 1700 NE Market Dr; Troutdale Post Office, 647 SW Cherry Park Rd
Police Stations: Fairview Police Department, 1300 NE Village St, 503-674-6200 (non-emergency); Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, Wood Village City Hall, 2055 NE 238th Dr, 503-823-3333 (non-emergency); Troutdale Police Department, 234 SW Kendall Ct, 503-665-6129 (non-emergency)
Emergency Hospital: Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center, 24800 SE Stark St, Gresham, 503-674-1122, www.legacyhealth.org
Library: Fairview-Columbia Library, 1520 NE Village St, Fairview, 503-988-5655; Troutdale Library, 2451 SW Cherry Park Rd, 503-988-5355; www.multcolib.org/
Parks: Fairview: four small city parks, plus Metro’s Blue Lake Regional Park; Wood Village: Donald R. Robertson City Park; Troutdale: more than 20 parks and open spaces, including Glenn Otto Park on the Sandy River and Columbia Park (www.ci.troutdale.or.us/parks-facilities/); the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area and several state and regional parks on the Sandy River lie just east of Troutdale
Community Publications: Gresham Outlook, www.theoutlookonline.com
Public Transportation: TriMet, 503-238-RIDE, www.trimet.org; bus service to Portland and Gresham
Corbett and Springdale
The unincorporated community of Corbett lies on a rolling plateau between the Columbia and Sandy rivers near the western end of the Columbia Gorge, about 20 miles east of Portland. The area is largely a landscape of working farms, orchards, and wineries, with spectacular views of Mount Hood and the Columbia River from some places. Housing stock runs the gamut from old farmhouses and American vernacular homes to daylight ranches and huge new custom homes. The community’s small commercial center lies on the Historic Columbia River Highway; Crown Point, the unofficial gateway to the Gorge, is just east of town. Although Corbett lacks big city amenities—or even small city amenities—it’s a short drive from the eastern edge of the metropolitan area, and is close to recreational opportunities in the Gorge, on Mount Hood, and on nearby Larch Mountain. Corbett has its own small, highly sought-after school district (www.corbett.k12.or.us) with nationally ranked charter and regular high schools. Indeed, Corbett’s strong public schools are a primary draw for many new residents, including residents who would not normally consider semi-rural living. Corbett can be extremely windy when the Gorge winds blow, and in winter it is the metro-area community most subject to ice and snow storms.
Corbett
The low-density community west of Corbett and east of Troutdale along the historic highway is known as Springdale. The historic Springdale School in the center (such as it is) of Springdale is home to the Corbett Arts Program with Spanish.
Website: www.corbettoregon.com (unofficial)
Vancouver and Clark County
Once upon a time, back in the 1840s, Clark County included all of what is now the state of Washington. Although the county has diminished dramatically in size since then, it has grown equally dramatically in population. A steady flow of settlers and homesteaders arrived throughout the second half of the 19th century, and the county’s towns and cities started to expand in the early decades of the 20th, but the first big population boom occurred during the Second World War, when the Kaiser Shipyards in Vancouver employed nearly 40,000 people. During the war years, Vancouver’s population exploded from 18,000 to 100,000; many of the new residents were housed in temporary facilities, and thousands of houses were thrown up in postwar years to accommodate the influx of wartime workers who decided to set down roots. More recently, nearby Portland’s growth, along with Clark County’s lower average home prices, the historic lack of an urban growth boundary to constrain sprawl, and the fact that Washington has no state income tax, combined to attract tens of thousands of new residents. Clark County’s population now stands at about 440,000.
Unfortunately, job growth in Clark County has not kept pace with the area’s explosive population growth. For more than a decade, Clark County’s unemployment rate has been well above the Washington state average, and the jobs picture here has been worse than in other parts of the metro area. Many residents—about a third of the labor force—commute across the river to jobs in Portland. Rush-hour congestion along Interstate 5 between Vancouver and downtown Portland is, on average, the worst in the region, and the old Interstate Bridge is showing its age. A proposed new bridge, together with associated access ramp changes, was expected to have a price tag in the billions, and was finally killed by the Washington legislature, which refused to fund its share. The county’s sprawling new developments have contributed to traffic congestion problems within the county as well, since road networks have not kept up with population growth.
Despite the congestion, Clark County remains an appealing destination for many newcomers. Although housing costs in places like Camas are well above the metropolitan average and new growth management laws in Washington are putting the brakes on willy-nilly rural development, Clark County as a whole has some of the most affordable homes in the metro area, and both rents and home prices are much lower than in Portland proper or its western and southern suburbs. Clark County’s relative affordability has only increased following the post-bubble decline in real estate values, which hit Southwest Washington harder than the rest of the region. Washington is further fiscally attractive to some because it has no personal income tax, although it has high sales and property taxes. (If you live in Washington but work in Oregon, you will be subject to Oregon income tax.) Clark County is also perceived (at least in Clark County) as having better schools on the whole than Oregon does, with lower student-teacher ratios and more stable funding, although this generalization definitely is not true across the board. Clark County voters (especially North County voters) tend to be more politically conservative than their counterparts in Portland and its Oregon suburbs, although this generalization, too, does not paint a complete picture and is increasingly less true in Vancouver.
Vancouver and other large incorporated areas have their own neighborhood associations, which can be good resources for people planning a move. (A map of Vancouver associations is available at http://www.cityofvancouver.us/cmo/page/neighborhoods.) The unincorporated populated areas of Clark County also have neighborhood associations (see www.clark.wa.us/neighborho
ods/associations.html).
County Website: www. clark.wa.us
Vancouver
Boundaries: North: Hazel Dell, Felida, Orchards (unincorporated Clark County); West: Vancouver Lake; Columbia River; South: Columbia River; East: Camas; unincorporated Clark County; Area: 49.9 square miles; Population: 167,500
Popularly relegated to the status of bland suburb to its much larger neighbor across the Columbia River, and dwarfed in public esteem by the more glamorous city of the same name in British Columbia, Vancouver USA (as the city has branded itself) has had trouble getting noticed. Civic boosters point out that if Vancouver were in Oregon it would be the second-largest city in the state, and emphasize that the city predates Portland by a couple of decades: the British Hudson’s Bay Company established Fort Vancouver as its western headquarters in 1825. But until recently, the ’Couv has been treated like the quiet, homely sibling of its popular, wild sister south of the river. Then Washington legalized same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana, when both remained illegal in Oregon until 2014, and suddenly Portland looked decidedly old-fashioned in comparison.
Vancouver
Even without these decidedly liberal developments, Vancouver’s stigma—if being thought of as completely unexciting is really a stigma—was already fading. Downtown redevelopment has given a breath of new life to the city’s wheezing old commercial center, the city’s restaurant and arts scene is growing, and annexations and a general influx of new residents have increased the city’s population dramatically and have (at least theoretically) given it a bigger voice in the region.
Of course, many Vancouverites are happy with their city the way it is (or was). (In response to the common “Keep Portland Weird” bumper sticker, some vehicles have begun displaying stickers exhorting readers to “Keep Vancouver Normal.”) Housing is more affordable here than in Portland, many neighborhoods have a great sense of community, the city is close to outdoor recreational opportunities, and there are plenty of amenities and mainstream shopping opportunities; at the same time, the cultural events and urban attractions of Portland lurk just across the river. A slim majority of Vancouverites oppose extending the light rail system to their city (or oppose paying for the extension, at any rate.) The potential downsides of living in Vancouver include high crime rates in some neighborhoods, a limited job base (and consequent high unemployment rate), sprawl and resulting car-dependency, airplane and/or train noise in some locations, and, for people who work in Oregon, Oregon income taxes and an increasingly congested commute. In short, Vancouver appeals to lots of people; whether you are one of those people depends on what exactly you’re looking for.
Downtown Vancouver (www.vdusa.org), perched above the river just west of Interstate 5, manages the neat trick of being simultaneously down-at-heel and up-and-coming. Old pawn shops, check cashing joints, and windowless bars mix uneasily with new residential lofts, art galleries, and day spas, as well as a host of service businesses and office buildings. Once-seedy Esther Short Park has been transformed into a venue for outdoor music festivals, and also serves as the home of the city’s farmers’ market (www.vancouverfarmersmarket.com); an underutilized new convention center is nearby. A railroad track cuts off downtown Vancouver from its waterfront, which the hulking Red Lion Hotel and its massive parking lot unfortunately dominate. It’s too early to call downtown Vancouver trendy—or even to surmise that it will be trendy in the near future—but it has become a more attractive environment for residents and visitors than it was a few years ago.
Immediately to the north, the Uptown Village neighborhood (www.uptownvillage.com) offers a concentration of late-19th- and early-20th-century homes, including some cute bungalows, with several newer houses and apartment buildings mixed in. Dozens of small shops, restaurants, and service businesses line Main Street; the Clark County Historical Museum (www.cchmuseum.org), housed in an old Carnegie library, is also here. Community spirit is strong, and Uptown Village events include a St. Patrick’s Day parade, a street festival, and outdoor summer movies.
North of Fourth Plain Boulevard, ranches, Cape Cods, and other postwar styles predominate, and the businesses along Main Street become more utilitarian. Houses east of Main Street tend to get some freeway noise; across Main, train noise becomes a potential problem as you move west. Just beyond the train tracks, the Fruit Valley neighborhood has a few residences, and even some stranded orchards, but the area is primarily industrial.
East of Interstate 5, the reconstructed palisades of Fort Vancouver (www.nps.gov/fova) stand anachronistically next to Pearson Airpark, a busy general aviation field. Nearby, the Vancouver Barracks, established in 1849 to guard the western end of the Oregon Trail, is still home to a Washington National Guard detachment; the grand Victorian houses of Officers Row, where General George Marshall and other military luminaries lived, have been converted to civic, nonprofit, and professional offices. While you cannot live in any of these places, you could live in the adjacent Hudson’s Bay neighborhood, which includes historic structures and (mostly) small houses, along with some new row houses.
The other neighborhoods that lie between Interstates 5 and 205 contain a mix of single-family homes and small-scale apartments in a diverse range of styles and degrees of upkeep. Most homes here date from the 1940s to the 1970s, although some newer homes exist and infill development is occurring in certain areas. Homes along the Columbia have great views of the river, and in some cases of Mount Hood, as well as Portland International Airport just across the water. Unfortunately, these homes were built along a busy transportation corridor and suffer correspondingly from noise from trains, planes, and automobiles. Homes located on the upper slopes of the ridge that parallels the Columbia River north of Highway 14 also have views that extend to downtown Portland and the West Hills, but with somewhat less noise. In general, these homes tend to be large in size and high in price, and many have panoramic windows to take in the scene. On the plateau just behind the ridge lie several desirable neighborhoods, such as South Cliff. While much of the area north of the ridge features pleasant, middle-class housing, some neighborhoods have relatively high crime rates, particularly the neighborhoods near Fourth Plain Boulevard from Clark College to the Vancouver Mall.
Given their vintage, many of the neighborhoods in middle Vancouver lack sidewalks, but there is a liberal sprinkling of public parks. Although much of the Columbia River shore is awaiting redevelopment, the Waterfront Renaissance Trail runs along the river for five miles from downtown Vancouver.
The neighborhoods east of Interstate 205 were generally developed more recently than those west of the freeway, so homes and apartment complexes tend to be newer. This area features a mix of commercial, retail, and residential development. Many of these neighborhoods were annexed by the city of Vancouver in recent years. Residential options include large single-family homes along with townhouses and some apartment complexes. Mill Plain Boulevard as it runs through the Cascade Park neighborhood is this area’s commercial heart. Fishers Landing and the surrounding area, at the city’s far eastern end near Camas, are among the newest and most popular neighborhoods in East Vancouver, but they are not to everyone’s taste. Some brand-new residential and retail developments have cropped up around the Hewlett Packard facility in far northeastern Vancouver, on the outer fringes of Vancouver’s urbanized area. Commuting into Oregon from East Vancouver can be a headache, although Portland International Airport and the surrounding industrial and commercial area is a short trip.
Fishers Landing
Two different school districts serve Vancouver. The Vancouver School District (www.vansd.org) covers the western half of the city; East Vancouver children attend Evergreen Public Schools (www.evergreenps.org). Both districts are quite large, with more than 20,000 students apiece. Evergreen schools have a slightly better reputation overall, but both districts contain excellent as well as not-so-great schools.
Website: www.cityofvancouver.us
ZIP Codes: 98660, 98661, 98662,
98663, 98664, 98682, 98683, 98684
Post Offices: Vancouver Post Office, 2700 Caples Ave, Vancouver; downtown Vancouver Post Office, 1211 Daniels St, Vancouver; Cascade Park Post Office, 304 SW Hearthwood Blvd, Vancouver
Police Stations: Vancouver Police Department, 605 E Evergreen Blvd, 360-487-7400 (non-emergency); West Precinct, 2800 NE Stapleton Rd, 360-487-7355 (non-emergency); East Precinct, 520 SE 155th Ave, 360-487-7500 (non-emergency)
Emergency Hospital: Southwest PeaceHealth Medical Center, 400 NE Mother Joseph Pl, Vancouver, 360-514-2000, www.peacehealth.org/southwest
Libraries: Vancouver Community Library, 901 C St, 360-906-5106; Cascade Park Community Library, 600 NE 136th Ave, 360-256-7782; Three Creeks Community Library, 800-C NE Tenney Rd, 503-906-4790; Vancouver Mall Community Library, 8700 NE Vancouver Mall Dr, Suite 285, 360-906-5106; www.fvrl.org
Parks: More than 60 city and county parks, trails, and recreational facilities, including Vancouver Lake Park, Marine Park, David Douglas Park, Haagen Park, the Burnt Bridge Creek Greenway, Columbia Springs Environmental Education Area, and Fort Vancouver National Historical Site; www.cityofvancouver.us/parksrec
Community Publications: The Columbian, www.columbian.com
