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Vancouver Waterfront Park

Vancouver, Washington

Client: City of Vancouver / Gramor Development
Artist: Larry Kirkland
Project Manager: John Grant Projects
Landscape Architect: PWL Partnership
Estimated Completion: 2018

Situated along a half mile stretch of south-facing riverfront, the Vancouver Riverfront Park represents the redevelopment of the old Boise-Cascade mill site on the Columbia River. Part of a private-public partnership, the park and adjacent commercial development will bring a vibrant mix of green, retail, and commercial spaces reconnecting the city’s downtown core to its waterfront.

Reclaiming nearly thirty-two acres and twenty-one city blocks of available land, the park will include the iconic Grant Street Pier, an extension of the Waterfront Renaissance Trail, expansive open lawn and play areas, an urban beach, basalt steps, seating areas, park amenities and furnishings.

Suspended ninety feet over the Columbia River, the Grant Street Pier provides a dramatic visitor experience. Floodlights mounted to cablestay piers highlight the mast’s structure while discreet steplights integrated into guardrail stanchions provide pedestrian lighting along the pier. Marker lights along the pier edge connect the pier to the nautical history of the site.

A water feature that narrates a didactic history of the Columbia River and its tributaries is illuminated in a theatrical manner to minimize the lighting equipment’s intervention within the artpiece.

2021 ASLA Honor Award General Design, Public Ownership
2020 IALD Award of Excellence
2020 NLB Tesla Award
2019 IES Puget Sound Gloria Koch Leonidas Illumination Award of Merit