Washougal's Real Ribbon-Cutting Still Hasn't Happened
August 27, 2026
August 27, 2026
Ask a dog owner in Washougal where they take their dog to run off leash, and most of them will tell you the same thing: they drive. The nearest fenced dog park is roughly 11 miles away, at least a 20-minute trip by car, which turns a five-minute idea into a whole errand. That's still true today. It's also supposed to change any time now, because Washougal has spent the better part of seven years and more than $9 million building the city's first off-leash dog park a few blocks off Main Street. The city said it would be substantially complete by early spring. As of this writing, its own website still describes the dog park in the future tense.
That gap between what was promised and what's confirmed is worth paying attention to, because it tells you more about how downtown Washougal actually works than a press release would.
The project is called the Washougal Towncenter Revitalization, or WTR around city hall, and it's been in motion since 2019, when the city's Comprehensive Parks and Recreation Plan first recommended buying property downtown for a park. The reasoning was specific: Washougal owns 26 parks, but at the time, only one sat inside the towncenter itself. City planning documents also noted that the towncenter carried a higher poverty rate than the city overall, 22.2 percent compared to 13.7 percent, which became part of the case for prioritizing investment there.
The site sits between the Washougal Community Center and City Hall, next to where the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District plans to build a new branch, a location the district picked back in 2020. When finished, it's supposed to include the dog park, a splash pad, a playground, a pocket park, and expanded parking.
Getting there took real public process. Over 500 residents responded to an online survey in November 2023 alone, on top of an earlier open house and a virtual Q&A session. By February 2024, the city had an estimated total cost of $9.12 million and had procured $8.15 million of it, leaving a $970,000 gap that then-City Manager David Scott said he was confident the project's contingency could cover. Design consultants ended up trimming about two dozen line items, mostly by scaling back paver quantities and shelter sizes, to close some of that distance without cutting anything residents had specifically asked for.
Construction moved in stages. The Community Center closed for eight to twelve weeks starting in September 2024 for an interior remodel and a new storefront entrance. Full-scale site work began in early 2025. By October of that year, the city reopened 'C' Street along with the new parking lot, a milestone the city flagged as a sign things were on track.
That same month, the Vancouver Business Journal named the Towncenter Revitalization its Top Project of the Year, one of more than two dozen projects honored across Southwest Washington. "We've been working hard to create a place where people want to spend time, whether they live here, work here, or are just visiting," Mayor David Stuebe said when the award was announced. The city's own release at the time was direct about the finish line: substantial completion expected by early spring 2026, March or April, in time for the new amenities to open as the weather warmed up.
Spring came and went. As of late August, the city's homepage still runs a standing line describing the WTR project as something that "will develop" the dog park, pocket park, and expanded parking, not something that has. That could mean the copy simply hasn't been updated since the ribbon was cut. It could also mean the ribbon hasn't been cut yet. Neither the city's newsroom nor local coverage has published anything describing an opening event for the dog park, splash pad, or playground specifically.
That silence is notable because Washougal has shown it knows how to announce a finished park project when one is actually done. In June, the city held a ribbon-cutting for a much smaller set of upgrades at Hamllik Park, a new multiuse basketball court, new baseball and softball dugouts, and ADA-compliant ramps, funded through a federal Community Development Block Grant. Both the Columbian and the Camas-Washougal Post-Record covered it, with Mayor Stuebe quoted saying the improvements would "help ensure this community space continues to serve Washougal families for years to come." If the city's flagship downtown project, the one that won a regional award, had reached the same finish line, it's reasonable to expect similar coverage. So far, there isn't any.
None of this means the project has stalled. Construction schedules slip for boring, unremarkable reasons all the time, and a target set in September can drift by a season without anything being wrong. It just means that if you're a Washougal resident who's been waiting to walk your dog somewhere other than 11 miles away, the honest answer right now is: close, but not confirmed.
While the marquee project finishes up, smaller changes have already landed on Main Street. Compass Coffee took over the old Washougal Coffee Roasters space at 1700 Main Street, giving that stretch of downtown a new morning stop in a storefront that's been serving the same corner for years.
The Washougal Community Market wrapped its second season at Reflection Plaza, 1703 Main Street, running every Friday from 2 to 6 p.m. between June 5 and July 31. The city built the market specifically around handmade and homegrown vendors, not resellers or franchises, and expanded it to a nine-week run this year after a smaller pilot the year before.
And on August 8, the city's Second Saturday Summer Series closed out with a ribbon-cutting of its own, this one for the newly named Molly Coston Community Garden at 2036 Main Street. The naming isn't incidental. Coston served as Washougal's mayor from 2018 to 2021 and has held a council seat since, and among the projects she's helped shape are the Steigerwald Restoration, the Waterfront Trail, and the Towncenter Revitalization itself, the same project still finishing up a few blocks from the garden that now carries her name.
There's one more piece of the summer worth marking before it's gone. Washougal ran its first-ever Movies in the Park series this August, three free Saturday screenings at Hathaway Park on 25th Street. The third and final one is this Saturday, August 29.
Hathaway Park has been Washougal's default gathering spot for a long time. It's where the Fourth of July parade starts, where National Night Out sets up every year. The new civic park downtown, whenever it's officially done, isn't meant to replace that. It's meant to give the other half of town, the stretch along Main and C Streets where City Hall, the Community Center, and the future library all sit within a short walk of each other, a green space it never had. Washougal has spent decades with its community life split between a park on the residential edge of town and a Main Street corridor with almost none of its own. That's the gap this project was built to close, and based on what the city's own website says today, it hasn't closed it quite yet.
If you're catching the last movie night Saturday, it's worth walking the two blocks over afterward to see where things actually stand. Seven years and more than $9 million is a long time to wait for a piece of your own downtown. It's worth watching closely enough to know when it's actually finished, not just when it was supposed to be.
Whether you've watched this stretch of Main Street change from a porch you've owned for twenty years or you're still learning which corner has the good coffee now, it helps to know what all of it means for your home's value. Dawn Jensen-Beaudoin has spent years walking Washougal properties with a contractor's eye, not just a listing agent's. If you're curious what a finished downtown park two blocks away actually does to your home's numbers, Get a Free Home Valuation and get a straight answer instead of a guess.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
Let’s build your future in Southwest Washington. Contact me today for a strategy session that goes deeper than the floorboards.