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With the “awooga” of horns, a fleet of Model A Fords puttered down Grant Street on Thursday and turned left onto Columbia Way, officially opening the new intersection at the heart of Vancouver’s future $1.3 billion mixed-use development on the waterfront.

“People are going to look back at this time in 20, 30 years, and say today was the start of a whole new era for downtown,” Barry Cain, president of Gramor Development, told the crowd of more than 100 city officials, local leaders, business people and residents gathered at the 32-acre site.

Based in Tualatin, Ore., Cain’s company is developing the 21-block project called The Waterfront on a former industrial site that’s been off limits to the public for 100 years. Buildings on three blocks will begin rising in spring, and in a year, $150 million to $200 million worth of development will be under construction, Cain said.

At Thursday’s ceremony, Cain announced the retail-commercial-housing development’s first tenant for the first office and retail building on Block 6. M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, a nonprofit group that awards millions of dollars in grants annually, signed a letter of intent move its Vancouver executive headquarters from 703 Broadway to the top two floors of a seven-story building at 305 Columbia Way. The lease for the 18,000-square-foot space begins Sept. 1, 2017, according to a Gramor Development press release.

M.J. Murdock’s move is in keeping with a recent pattern of businesses moving within downtown. Although downtown Vancouver rents are at least $10 per square foot cheaper than in Portland, it has attracted few new businesses from Portland or outside the region.