Corvallis Neighborhood Guidance, Where to Look and Why

0:00Welcome

Hi, Marty here. As someone who has moved so many times, understanding the layout of a city is so important before I move someplace. So I want to share with you some things that I’ve learned as a somewhat long-time resident here of the fantastic city of Corvallis.

0:22Corvallis at a glance

All right, we are about 60,000 people, and 30 [thousand] of them are our fantastic OSU students. So we love them, and they are right here in this section of town. But that’s not where we’re going to start today.

0:34North and south: Harrison Boulevard

We’re going to start with Highway 34. Highway [20] comes in, it now divides, but it’s going to come up here on Harrison Boulevard. And Harrison extends and extends and extends out, and it goes to Oak Creek. Essentially, this is the division between North Corvallis and South Corvallis. If I wanted to speak in technical terms, it kind of jogs off, but we’re not going to be technical for this.

0:58East and west: Highway 99W

Now, Highway 99 is also, when we go into downtown, 3rd and 4th Street, and it is the division of east and west Corvallis. So we’ve got northwest, northeast, southeast, southwest.

1:16Where prices run highest

If we’re going to talk price per square foot, southeast is actually the most expensive part of town to live in on a price-per-square-foot basis. But really, what you want to look for is this: the closer you are to campus and views, that’s where you’re going to spend more of your money.

1:42The street grid

Now, let’s go into layout. Because I’m a woman of a certain age, I sometimes need to put my readers on. So here we go. Washington is the beginning of the presidents. He was our first president here in the U.S. The presidential streets go east to west, and the numbered streets go north to south, so it’s a nice grid pattern, primarily in the downtown district. Once you get into some of the outlying districts, we have a little bit more interesting streets, and we don’t have all the presidents and numbered streets there.

2:08Downtown

I’m going to start first in the northwest section of town. This is a really popular area. Our downtown area is located right here, and this is what we call downtown Corvallis. A lot of things happen. We have all sorts of festivals during the spring, summer and fall, and even during the winter there’s always something going on in downtown Corvallis.

2:31The Flats

And then this area over here, right around Buchanan and Tyler and over probably to Garfield and almost Circle, is the area that I call the Flats. This area tends to have larger lots, single-family homes that are single-story. It’s usually about 0.2 to 0.4 acres in this area of the Flats.

2:59Close to campus

But right over here, from about Taylor over towards the university, we’ve got a lot of university housing. There are a lot of older homes here. It’s a very vibrant part of town. Really lovely.

3:12College Hill

Now, a little bit further up on Harrison, because we’re taking Harrison west, we’re going to get into College Hill. This was kind of our first university row, where the professors would be. There are unique homes. You can tell if you drive around: on top of the street sign, there’s a little marker that says College Hill. It goes on both sides of Harrison.

3:37Witham Hill

Now we’re going to go north, slightly west of Harrison, and we’re getting into the part that’s called Witham Hill. This was developed between the 60s and 70s. You’ve got some unique homes, all sorts of different architecture, everything from mid-century modern to modern to colonial. It’s really a lovely and charming part of town. I live in Witham Hill, so of course I’m a little biased there. We also have Arnold Park.

4:04Timberhill

And then a popular place for a lot of people who are moving is Timberhill. Timberhill is popular for a lot of reasons. You are close to the Timberhill Athletic Club, and they have a tennis club there as well. There are all sorts of hiking and biking paths in Timberhill that lead up to McDonald-Dunn Forest. The higher you go up here, right off of 29th, the more expensive the houses tend to get. There are areas of townhomes here, and there’s some recent development.

4:43A new neighborhood off Kings Boulevard

Close by Timberhill, off of Kings Boulevard, is a new neighborhood. It’s built by Sladen Homes. They’re excellent builders as well.

4:52The hospital and the animal streets

And then we’re coming back closer to the northeast. We’ve got the hospital, which is up in the northeast-northwest corridor, and there’s what I call the animals: you’ve got Cougar, and Antelope and Deer and Fox. I think that’s really fun. The hospital area also has some newer housing, and some of the older animal-street housing.

5:18Northeast Corvallis

Now, here is the northeast. In the northeast we’ve got Conifer, and we have a middle school that’s located over here. There’s not a ton of housing in this area. More of the northeast housing is further up off of 99, toward Adair, and there are lots of acreage properties.

5:39Crescent Valley and Vineyard Mountain

Also north, if you take Highland Drive here, this is going to lead you up past the second high school, which is called Crescent Valley, and it’s going to take you out to Vineyard Mountain. This is where you have more acreage properties, right outside of town.

5:55Ponderosa Ridge

One thing I forgot to mention, but not for too long, is Ponderosa Ridge. Ponderosa Ridge is a newer development. It’s next door to the Timberhill area, and it crosses over by MLK Park. MLK is another lovely park; there are so many parks and lovely points of interest throughout town. I think you’ll love it. Ponderosa Ridge has been around for about five or six years. This is the newer section, this is older Ponderosa Ridge, and there’s another section that’s a little bit over here. It’s just not showing yet on this map; the map is a little bit older.

6:37The Willamette and Linn County

Now, let’s go over here to the south. By the way, a quick point of interest: this is the Willamette River. Here, the Willamette divides Benton County from Linn County. Most of Corvallis is in Benton County, but there are a couple of pieces of Corvallis that are in Linn County, off of Peoria Road and off of some other little acreage points. There are also some nice farms and a public golf course over here. This is Corvallis, Linn County. I’m going to come back to Corvallis, Benton County.

Something fun about the Willamette is that it runs south to north. When I first moved here, I remember people saying, let’s go down to Portland, and I was like, isn’t that north? But they say it because it’s downriver on the Willamette. There you go. Just a Marty weird fact.

7:27South Town

All right, now back to it. So, South Town. This is the original South Town area. It’s fun, it’s vibrant, it’s unique.

7:38Willamette Landing and Willamette Park

And here is Willamette Landing. This was built starting in the early 2000s. Really nice homes, a planned subdivision. It has lots of parks. There’s also Willamette Park, with tons of soccer fields down there and Frisbee golf, and there are trails that lead all around, so you can go from Willamette Landing all the way back into the city of Corvallis.

8:05Eating out in South Town

We also have a couple of little restaurants down in the South Town area that are really fun to try: Block 15 Brewery and Four Spirits Distillery. It’s a pocket that’s really growing. When we first moved here, we moved to South Town, and we really liked it. It gave us a great avenue to explore all of Corvallis.

8:28Avery Park

South Town also hosts Avery Park. Avery Park has got these nice loops and a huge, long table. It dwarfs my kitchen table here. It’s made from one tree log, it goes the entire length, and it’s gorgeous. Someday I’ll go take a picture of it and show it to you all. Avery Park is a nice, special place. It’s also close to the OSU campus and sporting activities, so if you come for a football game or one of those big events, you’ll find a lot of people paying $20 to park down there and just walk across a couple of streets to get there.

9:06Oregon State University

And here is campus, Oregon State University. You’ve got Reser Stadium here, and the track and field over here. Nice part of town.

9:19Grand Oaks

Over here, because we’re now in the southwest portion of town, we have Grand Oaks. This is another planned subdivision. It was started by one builder and transitioned to Legend Homes. Really good builds. You have some other single-level homes at the bottom of this area. Really great place. This is an area of development where we’re waiting to see what happens. Some of the trees have been cut down, and we’re waiting for a developer to come and do some nice building there. So we’ll get back to you on that.

9:53Country Club and Brooklane

Now, here’s the meat of southwest Corvallis: the Country Club area. It has a nice golf course, and if you’re a big golfer, I’m going to invite you to join the Corvallis Club. This area is called the Country Club. There are houses there with pools, large lots, unique architecture, and it all comes off of Brooklane. Brooklane hooks back into campus as well as 35th Street. It’s just a really nice area.

10:25A 55-and-older community

This area here is Hollyhock. This is a planned community for 55 and older. They’ve got single-family homes, apartments and townhomes, all for people over 55, and they also have an assisted living portion. So it’s really nice that we’re caring for all ages here: we’ve got housing for our OSU students and housing for our seniors.

10:51Barley Hill

And then we’ve got some other nice builds over here, called Barley Hill. There’s a Barley Hill neighborhood and some other lovely neighborhoods; I can’t tell you all of their names. But that’s a general overview of Corvallis and the neighborhoods.

11:03Out to Philomath, and how to say it

If you see this road here, 20/34, it’s going to take you out to Philomath. Don’t be like me and listen to Google when you first move here and call it [FILL-oh-math], because you’re going to get giggled at and people are going to correct you. Just call it Philomath [fih-LOH-muth] from the get-go. And you can go through Philomath out to the coast.

11:24Wrapping up

I hope you enjoyed this little tour and layout of Corvallis. If you have any questions or need any information, just let me know and I’d be happy to hook you up. Thanks so much.