Ask anyone in Fisher's Landing East what's happening to the neighborhood right now and they'll probably mention the fenced acreage off 164th, the Vancouver Innovation Center site everyone calls the VIC. It's the biggest visible thing on the horizon, and it's easy to assume the neighborhood's next chapter starts when the fence comes down.
It doesn't. Walk the calendar for September and October and the actual fall season here was written by a volunteer group, filled in by a shopping center's tenant turnover, and is already running on parks that opened years ago. The VIC matters, eventually. It just isn't where this fall is happening.
The Calendar a Volunteer Group Wrote First
The Fishers Landing East Neighborhood Association, known locally as FLENA, has two dated events on the books for the next two months, and one of them takes place on the very site everyone's watching for redevelopment.
| Event | Date & Time | Location | What It Is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ice cream social | September 19, 2026, 12:00–3:00 PM | The VIC | Free ice cream and lawn games, FLENA's seasonal neighbor gathering |
| Fall Cleanup | October 17, 2026, 2:00–4:00 PM | TBA | Dumpster drop-off for trash and large items, run with Vancouver's Waste Connection |
There's something worth sitting with here. The VIC property, the one still described in county and city planning documents as land in transition, is currently hosting a free ice cream social organized by residents. Nobody had to wait for a master plan to get approved to bring lawn games to that field. FLENA just did it.
The Fall Cleanup a month later works the same way. A neighborhood association partnering directly with a waste hauler to bring in dumpsters isn't glamorous, but it's the kind of infrastructure that doesn't depend on any developer's timeline. If you've got a couch that's been sitting in the garage since spring, mid-October is when it leaves.
The Corner That Filled In While the Big Site Stayed Fenced
While the VIC sat behind its fence, the shopping center at 2100 SE 164th Avenue, the one anchored by New Seasons Market, went through a full round of turnover that changed what a walk through the Marketplace actually looks like.
Shari's Restaurant closed there in 2023. Big Lots announced its closure the following summer. Then, in April 2025, Shake Shack opened its doors in a shared building with Starbucks, its first location in Clark County. It has no drive-thru, just indoor seating and a walk-up counter, which means it functions less like a fast food stop on the way somewhere and more like a place people actually sit down. Daiso was expected to move into the same shopping center around the same period, though nothing in the record confirms it has opened as of this writing, so treat that one as still pending if you haven't seen it yourself.
New Seasons, the anchor tenant that's been there through all of this churn, runs something worth knowing about if you shop there regularly: a sensory-friendly hour every Thursday, with overhead announcements and music turned off and staff keeping walkie-talkie volume to a minimum. It's a small operational choice, but it's the kind of detail that only shows up if you're actually paying attention to how the store runs week to week, not just what's on the shelves.
Put together, this corner of the neighborhood has quietly become something Fisher's Landing isn't usually known for: a place you can park once and walk between a sit-down burger counter, a coffee shop, and a full grocery store. That's not nothing in a neighborhood where most of the retail sits behind its own parking lot off a four-lane arterial.
The Trail Loop Is Still a Promise, Not a Place
FLENA's own materials describe real enthusiasm for what's coming to the VIC site itself: a park the City of Vancouver will run in the northeast corner, and a trail loop that would wrap the entire outside rim of the property and open to the public. Both are real plans. Neither has a completion date attached to it yet.
That gap matters for how you plan your fall. If you're hoping to add a loop walk around the VIC to your weekend rotation this October, that trail doesn't exist as public infrastructure yet. It exists as something the neighborhood association is watching for and is genuinely excited about, which is a different thing than something you can walk on this weekend.
Where the Walking Actually Happens This Fall
The good news is you don't need the VIC's trail loop to have somewhere to go. Fisher's Landing East already has a working set of outdoor anchors, and most of them predate the current development conversation entirely.
- Dakota Memorial Off-Leash Dog Park — the neighborhood's dedicated off-leash space, and the default answer if your fall routine includes a dog
- Steamboat Landing Marina — river access with the kind of view that explains why this stretch of the Columbia has always drawn people to it
- Leroy Haagen Memorial Community Park — one of the larger community parks in the immediate area
- Heritage Park and Homestead Park — smaller neighborhood parks within easy walking distance of most of Fisher's Landing East's residential streets
- The historic Fisher's Landing site itself — the actual dead-end at the southern terminus of SE 164th Avenue, past SE Rivershore Drive, where the old steamship pilings are still visible in the water and Indigenous pictographs remain visible to the east. It has no facilities and isn't developed, and the city's own description asks visitors not to wander onto the adjacent private property, but it's the literal namesake of the neighborhood and worth knowing about even if you've lived here for years
None of these needed a master plan. They've been here, and they're where the actual fall walking, dog runs, and river views are happening while the bigger site next door works through its own separately owned pieces.
The Season Already Started
The pattern across all of this is the same one. The neighborhood's identity this fall isn't being built by the project everyone's watching. It's being built by a volunteer group with a folding table and free ice cream, a shopping center that quietly turned over its tenants, and a handful of parks that have been doing their job for years. When the VIC's park and trail loop do eventually open, they'll add to a neighborhood that was already active, not create one from scratch.
If you're weighing what a stretch of Fisher's Landing East is actually worth, separate from the promise still sitting behind that fence, that's a conversation Leigh Calvert and Harvey Coker at Oxford Street Partners have regularly. Book a consultation when you're ready to talk through what's here now and what's still years out.
