Forest Grove could be an even better town for college students

Forest Grove, home to Pacific University, is already a great college town full of small businesses that cater to both the student body at Pacific and to the surrounding community. The businesses here in town are great and fill Forest Grove with a lot of different types of food and shops.

In Forest Grove there are restaurants like Ridgewalker Brewing, New Chinese Cuisine, The Diversity Café, Kama’aina, Pizza Schmizza, as well as many others. These restaurants provide fresh, tasty food with decent prices, which helps out students and people in the surrounding area. The restaurants have been doing a phenomenal job here in town.

The one thing that Forest Grove is truly missing is more variety with fast food restaurants within walking distance from school that are typically open later at night. The main issue that this would fix is one that is common with the athletes here at Pacific. A lot of the time when practices finish, the UC is already closed and some of the restaurants in town are also closed. Because of this, Taco Bell or Panda Express in Cornelius continue to be the main options.

The only true complaint that I have heard from students here at Pacific is that there really is not anything to do in Forest Grove. Things like Topgolf, malls, or movie theaters are all in Hillsboro, Cornelius, Beaverton, and Portland. If Forest Grove invested in having a mall built or a bigger movie theater, the improvement of the city would be massive.

With these developments being made to the community, it would bring more people out to Forest Grove and then more people would move out here. It would also draw more people to attend Pacific and improve the local economy.

More people are already moving to Forest Grove because of companies like Intel and Nike, which are based in Hillsboro and Beaverton. Other improvements that could be made are more things to do outdoors. These outdoor advancements do not have to be big, but something like a disc golf course would get more students out and about.

Forest Grove is a great town with great businesses and even better people. It is full of potential to be a great college town.