EVERETT — Carole Williams wouldn’t mind having hundreds or even thousands of new neighbors one day. A proud resident of downtown Everett, she’s excited about the changes just over the horizon.
“I’ve been living downtown since 2001,” she said. “I just really enjoy it.”
In the year since the Everett City Council passed the downtown plan, designed to encourage more residential and commercial development, change hasn’t rushed into Everett’s central blocks. New projects take planning, financing and time.
But behind the scenes, the city has pushed forward with goals outlined in the plan and developers have been getting closer to breaking ground. In the next year, construction is scheduled to begin on scores of new condominiums and apartments in the city’s core.
“We don’t see cranes just yet, but they’re coming,” said Karen Shaw, the city’s director of economic development and human needs.
Shaw points to three downtown projects that signal the coming changes:
The Elks Club is developing a new five-story building, already under construction, at the corner of Hoyt Avenue and California Street. When completed next summer, it will include space for the fraternal organization and nine view condos.
Across the street, the existing Elks Club building at California Street and Rucker Avenue will begin coming down this autumn. In its place, Skotdal Real Estate plans to develop the $30 million, seven-story Library Place complex with 201 condos and apartments, along with retail space.
The nine-story Colby Tower will rise from the corner of Colby Avenue and 26th Street with nine luxury condos, three floors of office space, elevated parking and street-level retail spaces. A project of Everett’s Timothy and Donna Corpus, who own Studio Donna Salon Spa, it is scheduled for completion by spring 2009.
Other projects in the planning stages include a 40-condo development at Everett and Rockefeller avenues and another 19-story building by Skotdal Real Estate at the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore. On the edges of downtown, major mixed-use developments are planned along the Port of Everett waterfront to the west and the city’s riverfront on the east.
While construction crews haven’t rushed in yet, Shaw said she’s pleased with some important actions that will help encourage downtown development. Chief among those was the City Council’s decision this summer to extend until 2018 a tax break program that allows qualified apartment and condo owners in the downtown blocks to skip 10 years of property taxes on the value of new buildings. Instead, they pay taxes only on the value of the land.
“That provides impetus for people moving into downtown Everett and buying homes or condos who might not do so otherwise,” said Timothy Corpus.
Additionally, the city has awarded a contract to a firm that will study parking downtown, and whether parking meters or other measures would help or hinder traffic and parking at businesses.
Shaw added that a streetscape plan to change the look of a few downtown streets, notably Rucker Avenue, also is advancing.
The city also hopes to add a bit of relaxing public space in the midst of downtown. The council has approved a new plaza-like area between the Everett Performing Arts Center and the former Key Bank branch on the corner of Wetmore Avenue and California Street. A building at 1615 California St. will be razed to make space, and the city is exploring potential uses for the Key Bank branch, which will stay.
In the meantime, Shaw and other downtown boosters note the addition and expansion of restaurants and shops in the past year, especially along Hewitt Avenue. The North Everett Lions Club, just north of Hewitt, is being revamped to host a dueling piano bar and meeting space. A few blocks away, Trinity Lutheran College of Issaquah will lease and eventually purchase the five-story Port Gardner Building at the southwest corner of California and Wetmore.
Some of the city’s commercial property owners also are sprucing up or looking to buy more in downtown. Lobsang Dargey, who bought the Everett Public Market building in 2006, has built new office spaces, added a working elevator and attracted new tenants to his property. He’s also considering other potential purchases, he said.
John Fujii of Vancouver, Wash., doesn’t have to be convinced of downtown’s potential. His family’s commercial real estate holdings include, as of this summer, the historic Bank of Everett Tower at the corner of Colby Avenue and California Street. In that $14 million deal, he also purchased two parking lots just west of the 1925 office building.
“It’s a good location in a town that’s on the threshold,” said Fujii, who plans to continue a renovation of the building’s interior spaces the previous owner started. “I think there’s a lot of interest in the urban redevelopment of Everett.”
Shaw said she hears regularly from other developers and potential investors “interested in kicking tires and looking at what’s possible downtown.”
Tom Hoban of Coast Real Estate Services, which manages the Bank of Everett Tower, said investment interest in Everett is real.
“I’d say the investment interest in Everett is high, but that’s because it’s high everywhere,” Hoban said. “It helps, with Port Gardner Wharf and the riverfront projects especially, that downtown has a good story we can show to investors.”
Timothy Corpus said he’s finalizing financing for Colby Tower, helped by the fact that six of the nine condos in his project already have been reserved. Calling it an “exciting time” for Everett, he said he hopes the changes downtown encourage more improvements to existing buildings in addition to new construction.
All of which would be fine with downtown resident Williams, who has launched the Downtown Everett Fan Club Meetup group for people who like to socialize in the city. She’s looking forward to having more dining and shopping choices come as more people move into the urban blocks.
“The more, the merrier,” she said.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
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