Gramor Development Celebrates 40 Years!

DJC Oregon Milestones 2025

May 22, 2025

FOUR DECADES OF MAKING IT TO THE NEXT YEAR

When Barry Cain opened Gramor Development in January 1985, his goal was simply to make it to the next year. He started out modestly, building automotive centers that typically housed three or four automotive service franchise businesses.

Retail development has been the common theme for Cain over the four decades since. From shopping centers with a handful of tenants to The Waterfront Vancouver’s expansive 20 city blocks featuring retail, offices, restaurants, residential units, senior living and hotels, Gramor Development has completed more than 70 retail and mixed-use developments in the region. The company develops and owns its projects and has in-house property managers to oversee them once construction is completed.

In the early years, with several automotive centers under his belt, Cain wanted to explore different types of developments and expanded his scope to include retail, mixed-use centers and, eventually, neighborhood retail centers with grocery stores. The first one was in Happy Valley. “We had never been involved with grocery store development and we had a lot to learn,” he said.

“But it eventually became a little bit of a niche for us, looking for areas that could justify a new or more modern type of grocery store. This also turned out to be a good way for us to focus on the local community rather than travel out of the area, which became more important as our Gramor family began to grow.”

By 2003, Gramor Development was working on projects such as Lake View Village located in Lake Oswego, a mixed-use project that really started the process of transforming Lake Oswego’s downtown into an active destination. Lake View Village features 91,000 square feet of retail shops, restaurants and office space adjacent to a lake and the city’s Millennium Park.

“At the time, Lake Oswego citizens didn’t much frequent their downtown, and understandably why. There just wasn’t much there. We were told that people there didn’t want to go to restaurants or shop in their downtown, they wanted to go to Portland," Cain said. "But we were pretty sure that wasn’t the case. We felt the existing buildings just didn’t provide for the type of design that was required for successful retail and I think we proved that point adequately. For us as a company though, this was a center that helped us start focusing more on design and details than we had before.”

Reed’s Crossing Town Center in Hillsboro reflects Gramor Development’s focus on providing mixed-use projects that feature open spaces and amenities to foster community interaction. Construction began in 2023 on the 104,000 square foot center anchored by Market of Choice. Opening in late Spring 2025, Reed’s Crossing Town Center is the most highly anticipated amenity for Reed’s Crossing. At 474 acres, Reed’s Crossing is, by density, the largest mixed-use master-planned community in Oregon’s history.

Cain said it was a prime opportunity amid South Hillsboro’s growth due to its proximity to large employers such as Intel, Nike and Salesforce as well as access to transportation and quality of life.

“Bringing quality grocery, restaurants and services is now a natural next phase for this sought-after community,” he said. “When we started construction, the last time a new grocery and retail shopping center launched in the Tualatin Valley corridor was 1996. Nothing like this existed anywhere nearby.”

A consistent strategy over the years is that Gramor has centered on sites that were the best in a market, even though expensive. Many of them have been extra complicated with some taking a decade or more to finalize permitting and start construction. Among them The Waterfront Vancouver.

Cain who with a small group of local investors, formed Columbia Waterfront LLC and purchased the 32-acre property in 2008. Gramor then created a master plan for development  that included over 3,000 residential units, office space, two hotels, a number of restaurants and winery locations, 250,000 square feet of retail and 10 acres of park space.

“We knew that when the Boise Cascade paper plant was taken out, downtown Vancouver would begin a revival. But we wanted to make it clear from the outset that Vancouver was heading in a different, more positive direction. That’s why we did everything we could to make it world class,” Cain said.

Columbia Waterfront LLC dedicated the land for a half-mile long city park to help reconnect people to the Columbia River and committed to help pay for initial park improvements. PWL Landscape Design, from Vancouver B.C., who had done the Olympic Village, was brought in to design the park.

In addition, Larry Kirkland, a world-renowned public artist, joined to design the Headwater’s Wall water feature, which represents the Columbia River Basin, and the Grant Street Pier, a signature cable-stayed pier constructed out over the Columbia River with no structure in the river. Charles Stone of Fisher Marantz Stone from Seattle was brought in to do the lighting. Stone is best known for doing the lighting for the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world in Dubai, the 911 Memorial and the Washington Monument. 

Construction on The Waterfront Vancouver started in 2016, and the largest commercial urban development looks to eventually be valued at more than $2 billion. Virtually all the retail, office and residential space is leased. The park and all its features opened in 2018, and Cain thinks it has probably become the leading tourist attraction in the Vancouver- Portland metropolitan area.

As he celebrates 40 years in business, Cain said he feels personally and professionally rewarded by the opportunities he and his Gramor partners have had to really enhance so many communities.

“You know we have been really fortunate to be able to bring together a relatively small, hard-working, talented group of people who have stayed together for a very long time. That’s the most gratifying thing of all. That we have been able to all work so closely together for so long on so many projects, and we all still like each other,” he said.