October 19, 2009, 3:39 pm
For the four teams presenting ideas for a landscaped bridge over
Interstate 5 in Vancouver, Wash., winning the design competition might
seem like the easy part. The hard part will be healing a city that has
been cut off from its history.
An immeasurable added weight
from the hope of planners and city leaders piles onto the project.
They've described I-5 as a "wound" or "scar" on the city and called for
healing it in dozens of reports and position papers over the last
decade.
The huge Columbia River Crossing bridge process
threatened to deepen that wound by cutting three acres off the western
edge of the Fort Vancouver National Site. Federal rules require that
the National Park Service, which owns the land, get something in
return, however.
The Community Connector project grew out of
that requirement, said Elson Strahan, president and CEO of the Fort
Vancouver National Trust. "The National Park Service, looking at this
connectivity, really felt that as we do this, we need to rejoin the
historic district with the downtown," Strahan said.
Freeway
projects typically require some sort of mitigation: a sound wall to
keep the noise down for neighbors is a common example. According to
park service documents, Fort Vancouver, as a national historic site,
needs a little more.
The Columbia River Crossing project must
include steps to shield fort visitors from the sights and sounds of the
freeway through "culturally and historically appropriate design or
visual buffers," according to the draft environmental impact statement
on the project.
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