As the 2017 ULI Spring Meeting host city, Seattle itself is one of the event’s main attractions. A booming economy, explosive job growth, and a thriving food and coffee scene have made Seattle a city to emulate. Half a dozen pre-meeting mobile tours will give attendees a close-up look at the marquee projects and distinctive neighborhoods—Pioneer Square, South Lake Union, and a greatly revitalized waterfront—that define the city.

Beyond Seattle, however, there is much to explore around the Puget Sound and the Pacific Northwest, and the Spring Meeting provides a great opportunity to delve into a few of the region’s smaller but fascinating markets. Portland, Oregon; Bainbridge Island, a city in Kitsap County, Washington; and Tacoma, Washington, are unique destinations on their own, and tours of each will offer a different take on life in the Pacific Northwest. From a real estate perspective, Portland and Tacoma are emerging markets, still ripe for new development and investment opportunities, while Bainbridge Island offers a snapshot of a rarified community that moves at a more tranquil pace. We encourage you to explore these places off the beaten path and enjoy a train, ferry, and streetcar ride in the process:

The Portlandia Express: the Portland, Oregon, Mobile Tour

Please note: Attendees must arrange their travel to Portland for this tour, and will be traveling from Portland to Seattle by Amtrak train to the ULI 2017 Spring Meeting on the evening of May 1.

Tour Date/Time

Tillkum Crossing (Photo courtesy of Travel Portland)

Monday, May 1

7:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

Tour Meeting Location

38 NW Davis Street, Suite 300

Portland, OR 97209

 Like Austin and Nashville, Portland is a secondary market that has been on the rise in recent years, lauded for its affordability, natural beauty, and authentic local culture. Equity investors both domestically and internationally are gravitating to Portland as its profile ticks upward.

“We’re at a pivotal point in Portland,” says Sarah DeVita-McBride, manager at ULI Northwest. “We are the number-three market to watch in Emerging Trends, and we’re very quickly becoming part of the national conversation. As Seattle and San Francisco become less affordable, a lot of people are coming here.”

This tour will highlight parts of the city that are undergoing revitalization, including OldTown/Chinatown, a formerly industrial neighborhood that hugs the west bank of the Willamette River.  Old Town is adjacent to the Pearl District—a quintessentially cool Portland neighborhood that is home to galleries, lofts, upscale businesses, and the famous Powell’s Bookstore—but is just now undergoing the renaissance that Pearl District experienced more than 20 years ago. Old Town contains prime waterfront land, yet the city is taking a balanced approach to reflect concerns about social equity and affordability.

Several renovations of existing properties have been completed in Old Town, and several others are in the planning stages, including the redevelopment of a 14-acre (5.6 ha) site where a U.S. Postal Service (USPS) facility sits. This facility will be demolished to create new development opportunities and a seamless linkage between Old Town and the Pearl District. The tour will start at Old Town and make its way north to the Pearl District, visiting the USPS site along the way. Representatives from the Goodman family will also discuss the 11 or so land sites it owns throughout Old Town—known as the Ankeny Blocks—that are available for development.

The tour will then head to the Southwest Waterfront, where attendees will tour the new Collaborative Life Sciences Building, a new biotechnology and science lab jointly owned and operated by Oregon Health & Science University, Oregon State University, and Portland State University. The Southwest Waterfront has been struggling, and the hope is that this project along with Zidell Yards—a planned mixed-use neighborhood with new residential, commercial, and retail space over 33 acres (13.3 ha) of remediated industrial land—will energize the area.

One of the top U.S. cities for cyclists, Portland is on the cutting edge of multimodal transportation infrastructure. The tour stops at the new Tillikum Crossing, a multimodal bridge that carries pedestrians, cyclists, buses, and streetcars—but no automobiles. Next up is the Central Eastside Industrial District, where a small-scale manufacturing and light-industrial revolution is taking place. This is where Portland’s “maker-hood” is taking shape, tapping into the area’s storied industrial past.

The tour culminates with a relaxing two-hour Amtrak ride from Portland to Seattle in time for the ULI 2017 Spring Meeting. Tour participants will get their own private car, where they can mingle with Portland-based ULI Northwest leaders and have deeper conversations about their dynamic city over drinks and dinner. Register for the Portland tour.

Island Time: Bainbridge by Ferry

Grow Community in Bainbridge Island was designed according to the One Planet Living standard.

Tour Date/Time

Tuesday, May 2

9:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

 Tour Meeting Location

Washington State Convention Center

For city-dwellers, Bainbridge Island is the ultimate getaway. In fact, many of its residents take the ferry across Puget Sound to Seattle to work each morning, returning to the island’s slower place of life at dusk. “It’s a very desirable residential destination,” says tour leader and ULI Northwest member Stephen Antupit. “It offers a pace that is very different than the other neighborhood tours. Here, you set your clock for island time.”

This tour starts with a leisurely ferry ride across Elliott Bay and continues with a stroll along Winslow Way, one of the island’s commercial streets, to tour the Bainbridge Art Museum, an example of sustainable building and design and built through a public/private partnership. Several forces have converged to make Bainbridge what it is today: a progressive and affluent enclave for a select few. A strong environmental ethic along with a strong NIMBY and anti-development mind-set have made the island one of the least affordable and most exclusive neighborhoods in Greater Seattle.

“There’s a tension between how desirable the place is, and how to preserve that,” Antupit says. Smartly built infill projects have responded to this tension, including a pocket neighborhood developed by the Cottage Company and Grow Community, a net-zero, sustainable community of single-family homes and townhouses that are quickly selling out. The community was designed according to guidelines of the One Planet Living platform, and was a featured as a case study in ULI’s Building Healthy Places Toolkit. Tour participants will hear from Grow’s lead architect and will learn more about building sustainable, socially cohesive communities. Register for the Bainbridge Island Tour.

Tacoma: City of Destiny

The Thea Foss Waterway on the Tacoma waterfront.

Tour Date/Time

Tuesday, May 2

8:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Tour Meeting Location

Washington State Convention Center

The third-largest city in Washington after Seattle and Spokane, Tacoma is in the early stages of a refresh, and is getting a second look from developers and investors getting priced out of the Seattle market. “Until recently, they said Tacoma was a bit out of their target market and that they couldn’t get the rents they needed,” says tour leader and ULI Northwest member Gareth Roe, senior planner, BCRA Design. “Now, that has changed.”

Known historically as a blue-collar, industrial city, Tacoma is now considered an affordable frontier on the Puget Sound with people relocating to Tacoma for its reasonable home prices and rents and commuting to Seattle for work. The tour kicks off with a welcome at LeMay–America’s Car Museum from Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland, a ULI global trustee and Daniel Rose Fellow who was recently featured in the ULI Leading Voices podcast. Mayor Strickland will talk about some of the new initiatives and developments underway in Tacoma—many of which are rising from former industrial sites and remediated land along Tacoma’s waterfront, which participants will have the opportunity to visit.

These new developments include the following: a new mixed-use community rising along the Thea Foss Waterway, home of the Museum of Glass, dedicated to the art of glassblowing, and where a new promenade is opening pedestrian access to the waterfront; Point Ruston, the site of a former copper smelter that is now a new lifestyle-oriented condo and apartment community offering pristine views of Mount Rainier and a new pedestrian footbridge into Port Defiance Park, one of the largest urban parks in the United States; and the Hilltop and Stadium District, an established neighborhood where new transit-oriented development is taking advantage of expanded Tacoma Link light-rail streetcar service, offering quick trips to downtown.

The tour wraps up with a tour of downtown, where University of Washington, Tacoma, is seizing many of the new development opportunities. The university, whose enrollment and footprint are growing, has been converting old warehouses into new classroom and office space, and spurring the opening of new businesses that serve the university. The tour concludes with pints at 7 Seas Brewing, which opened in Tacoma in 2015 and is part of an emerging microbrew scene. Register for the Tacoma tour.