The glory of making Portland’s list
In case you missed it, Vancouver’s future waterfront park earned kudos in alternative tabloid Willamette Week’s Feb. 10 article, “28 Reasons to Love Portland Right Now.”
Yup. Something we did is getting noticed in The Big City populated by young men wearing skinny jeans and beards you could hide a squirrel in.
Our mention on the list came in at No. 17: “Because Portland is finally getting the Columbia River park it deserves … in Vancouver.”
The roughly 150-word blub talks about how Vancouver’s downtown waterfront soon will feature a public park after being blocked for more than a century by a series of mills.
“Plans include a cable-suspended pier that’s lit up at night, which is destined to become the city’s most recognizable landmark, and arguably topping anything Portland has done with its two river shores,” writes reporter Sophia June.
I’ll pause here to let you savor this moment.
June also mentions how Vancouver’s riverfront Renaissance Trail will connect to the park and new beach, which she says is “something Portlanders have been working to establish on the Willamette for years, without success.”
Considering that Willamette Week describes Vancouver as “Portland’s suburb,” this is lavish praise, indeed. We’ll take it, even if it doesn’t include the context: The city is building the 7-acre park as part of a $1.3 billion commercial and residential development by Gramor Development of Tualatin, Ore. Construction began last year, and the park and first buildings are slated to be open sometime in 2017.
To give you a flavor of the rest of the list, here are a few other compelling reasons to love Portland: “Because Japan is trading us its best ramen in exchange for novelty doughnuts” (No. 5), “Because we’re the easiest place to get birth control in the nation” (No. 9), “Because we recycle enough paint to coat the Golden Gate Bridge seven times every year” (No. 14), and “Because this is the best place in the nation to be a cat person” (No. 22).
Now we just need to cook up a similar list for reasons we love Vancouver, starting with “Because we’re emerging from the shadow of Portland.”
