Turtle Place Emerges as a Model of Downtown Beauty and Home-Grown Sustainability
Welcome to Turtle Place, a model of sustainability and a vision of urban beauty
that is being created along Seventh Street between Main and Washington, where C-Tran operated a transit center for more than two decades.
Look for Project Manager, Lawn Chair Guy Carl Dobbs, keeping tabs from his lawn chair, and stop by to see what’s new! Check back here, look around the site to learn more, or visit our project blog, “Notes from the Lawn Chair”, for regular updates and developing information.
"This is a great gift to our community," says Mayor Royce Pollard. "Especially when you consider what was there
before and think about what this will become, we should all be very grateful for this community effort."
About the Name
There's a good reason why Vancouver’s downtown is located where it is. This rich, fertile area has been a population center for thousands of years. Before the Americans, Hudson’s Bay Company prospered here. And before Europeans settled the area, it was a gathering place for native peoples, and known as “Turtle Place.”
The general area called Turtle Place enveloped the entire Vancouver National Historic Reserve and extended west across Interstate 5, into what is now downtown Vancouver. Turtle Place was used by indigenous peoples to access the Columbia River for fishing and gathering food, as a temporary residence and as a trading place. The Klickitat Trail, an important native trade route, which traveled overland to connect The Dalles upriver on the Columbia and Yakima beyond, had its southern terminus in the vicinity of Turtle Place.
Turtle Place was selected as the name of this plaza to broaden the connection between past and present and to build on the idea of living in harmony with our natural environment.
Living sustainably requires that we husband our resources, conserving where possible, reducing consumption, while recycling and re-using resource materials already in play. Look around Turtle Place for examples of how these sustainable practices can be applied in a variety of ways in our daily life.
As we move into a new dimension of human history and see our downtown prosper and embrace the future, we also honor the past, learn from and reuse it to create what will come next.
Our Partners
Spearheaded and funded by Vancouver’s Downtown Association, Turtle Place is possible only because Vancouver’s Downtown Association, C-Tran, and the City of Vancouver have worked together step by step to bring this temporary plaza into being.
After C-Tran’s recent move to the 99th Street Transit Center at Stockford Village, it no longer needs the plaza but will retain ownership at least until plans are solidified for the Columbia River Crossing project, which might require reintroducing a transit station to this site.
But in the meantime, all agencies are working together to bring this temporary plaza to the downtown environment. “This is a great project,” says C-Tran’s Executive Director Jeff Hamm. “It’s an innovative way of adding vitality and quality to the downtown environment as we wait to see what happens with that piece of property as the Columbia River Crossing Project develops.”
C-Tran will continue to provide basic maintenance for the property at roughly the same cost, while the city will designate it as a temporary park, and allow police to patrol the area and enforce rules.
VDA is proud to partner with Nutter Underground, who will be providing services as general contractor for the project.
A Beautiful Downtown Plaza, Fully Sustainable and Rich with Art
The first step in the process will be cutting through the concrete and tipping it up to create planter boxes and benches for seating. Discarded materials from Clark Public Utilities, C-Tran and City “boneyards” will be incorporated into a sculptural water feature. This commissioned piece of artwork will be the plaza’s centerpiece, and will be a fountain that uses runoff from a neighboring building. A large-scale mural on the south wall of 704 Main, designed by local design team Tribe 2 Studios, will brighten the plaza year-round, and will reinforce themes of community and sustainability.
Clark Public Utilities has also been working closely with the project, and is helping secure energy-efficient LED lighting for use throughout the plaza. And the plaza’s water won’t just be recycled—it will also be filtered by the plaza’s rain gardens, native plants specifically chosen for their hardiness in our local climate, and their low water needs. Water that once ran across parking lots and dumped directly into the Columbia River will now trickle through these sustainable gardens that will purify it and return it to the natural environment.
All design work has been donated by local civil engineering firm Harper Houf Peterson Righellis, leaders in landscape architecture and sustainability planning.
Project Funding
Funded by a State Program to Revitalize Urban Areas
Vancouver’s Downtown Association is committed to revitalizing Vancouver’s downtown, and to supporting the businesses that operate here. Programs include the Annual Spring Clean-Up, monthly First Friday Artwalks, annual hanging of flower baskets, and an ongoing effort to revive Main Street and make downtown Vancouver the hub of our growing and re-emerging community.
VDA is funded largely by member dues, fundraising, and sponsorship efforts. But for each of the last three years, the association has participated in a state program that allows businesses to designate a portion of their state business and occupation taxes to help improve declining inner cities. Working closely with local businesses that want to see their community revitalized, VDA has created a sizable fund that is specifically dedicated to downtown infrastructure improvements. Donors whose contributions have helped fund this effort include The Columbian, The Bank of Clark County, First Independent Bank, Albina Fuel, Hi-School Pharmacy, and Burgerville.
