Downtown Vancouver remains a stronger market relative to many other neighborhoods. Downtown has enjoyed a surge in popularity compared to the other urban neighborhoods in Portland. If you want a true city living experience you are limited to neighborhoods like Downtown Portland, The Pearl District, Lloyd District, South Waterfront, and Slabtown in Portland or right here in Downtown Vancouver. Portland still suffers from empty storefronts and a depressed office market in the city center. Vancouver on the other hand is adding merchants and restaurants and has a fairly tight office market that is actually expanding rather than contracting.
The City of Portland has made some major changes in the structure of the local government and it seems like things are starting to improve. They are however going to need allot of time to recover their sagging reputation. Thats the thing about a reputation, it only takes a minute to ruin it, it can take years to gain it back.
Vancouver has to be very careful here and mindful of its own history. In the 1980s and early 1990s Vancouver's downtown was in terrible shape. The beautiful Esther Short Park was over run with vagrants, drug dealers, and strung out prostitutes. Main Street had more sleazy card rooms and pawn shops than they did restaurants. Even after the beautiful park renovations and the fabulous redevelopment of the old Lucky Lager brewery site Vancouver still clung to the reputation as being a dumpy city. The Mayor continued to push for redevelopment and the city continued to improve. After the recession ended and the Waterfront started to emerge the city started appearing on the news for positive reasons rather than negative stories. Now that the Waterfront is 70% built-out, the city enjoys the reputation for being a destination and the hip place to hang out. It took nearly three decades to crawl out from under the crappy reputation and our local leaders need to be vigilant not to let the homeless overrun it, nor let crime get out of hand. That shiny reputation we have earned over the last 15 years can be gone in an instant. The city needs to reap the rewards of higher tax revenues downtown and if they screw up and let things decline they will never recover the investment they have into the redevelopment. Politicians are rarely smart enough to see that.
I did a YouTube video that goes over the six condominium developments in the Downtown specifically as a bit of a guide to condos. You can watch that here:
