We spent part of last Saturday hanging out and doing the restaurant/gallery thing in Lake Oswego’s gorgeously refurbished downtown.

Sounds like a couple of years from now, some of those same experiences will be available in Oregon City- that 27,000 population, aging urban core just seven miles or so to the south of LO.

Today’s Portland Daily Journal of Commerce tells us of two major projects now underway in the Clackamas County seat.

One is a retail-oriented lifestle center named The Rivers at Oregon City. To be situated just off I-205, it is being developed by CenterCal Properties. You may know them from the widely praised Bridgeport Village.

The other entity, The Cove, is going to be a 103-acre a mixed-use waterfront project with restaurants, condos, town homes and offices. This development will be at the confluence of the Willamette and Clackamas Rivers.

“Oregon City is in the process of amending its urban renewal plan, acquiring properties in and around the downtown core, as it prepares for growth, ” the DJC’s Kennedy Smith notes Oregon City’s city manager Larry Patterson as saying. Patterson also told Smith that Oregon City has been buying up land that could be used as parking lots to work with these developments.

These developments will serve a city that has been growing about 6.25 percent per year, Patterson told Smith.

Related posts:

1. Portland A “New Urbanism” Hub? Not Quite, Say Some Experts
2. The final run of the double decker from Lake O - Update
3. What’s your favorite Portland-area park?
4. PDC’s downtown projects
5. TapeGate stirs city/suburb cold war