In search of downtown Lynnwood

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, May 19, 2001

It’s a work in progress, city officials say

By Janice Podsada

Herald Writer

LYNNWOOD — They’ve both had Lynnwood delivery routes for more than eight years, and know every address in town, but Fed-Ex driver John Borromeo and UPS driver Rolando Yen don’t agree on where downtown Lynnwood is.

Borromeo says it’s at the corner of 196th Street and 44th Avenue West; Yen says it’s further west, near 196th and Highway 99.

Then there’s Mae Wilson, who has lived in the area for 40 years. She disagrees with both deliverymen.

"There is no downtown Lynnwood," she said.

City officials, on the other hand, say downtown Lynnwood isn’t a corner and it isn’t the mall, but a work in progress. Officially, it’s a 77-acre area bounded by 44th Avenue W, 196th Street SW and I-5 that they’ve dubbed the Lynnwood Triangle. It’s a patchwork of strip malls, an area that officials and local business owners say is ripe for development.

The city and private developers want to turn the Lynnwood Triangle into the central business district, Main Street USA, the city’s business and retail center.

Two years ago, the Lynnwood City Council took steps toward the transformation when they voted to create a public facilities district, empowering its board to sell bonds and raise money to create a central business district.

Under state law, the PFD can use 0.033 percent of the state sales tax to finance the project. For Lynnwood, that amounts to about $500,000 a year.

But creating the PFD set the clock ticking. Under state law, construction must get under way by January 2003.

Officials expect to meet the deadline, said Jim Cutts, the city’s community development director.

The city, the PFD and the Lynnwood Chamber of Commerce are about ready to commission a 15-month, $500,000 study that will examine land-use, zoning, environmental and, most important, traffic issues in the proposed central business district.

"We won’t build a CDB unless we can carry the traffic," Cutts said.

In the meantime, questions linger. Where is downtown Lynnwood? Is it a corner, or a planner’s dream? Or is it, for now, Alderwood Mall?

When Lynnwood High School students want to hang out, shop or catch a performance by their school band, they stroll across the street to Lynnwood central — Alderwood Mall, a kind of downtown with a roof.

It’s a retail shopping area, with more than 150 stores. People stroll through its 74-foot wide aisles. Like any downtown, it’s a great place to window shop or people watch.

The mall’s management sponsors more than 100 civic events each year, including local high school performances, Lynnwood Trolley Days and the city’s Spring Music Festival, said Beth Schooley, Alderwood Mall’s marketing director.

Before the mall opened in 1979, Lynnwood "was just a place you went through to get from Edmonds to the freeway," said Wilson.

Every morning more than 500 mall walkers get a 1.5-mile workout each time they circle the mall.

But bottom line, the mall is private property.

You can’t have a demonstration there or tack a flyer to one of its 12 kiosks without management’s permission.

The American vision of downtown includes function as a town square, a public forum whose purpose, in part, is to encourage the free exchange of ideas.

The town square is where the street musician, the evangelist, the pamphleteer, the prophet and the politician are welcome — as long as they don’t cause a disruption .

That’s not the case at Alderwood Mall.

"It is not a public space, and there is no class A office space," said Sheryl McGrath, president of the South Snohomish County Chamber of Commerce.

The corner of 196th and 44th is public, but one of the activities that planners envision when they describe downtown is people strolling along its streets.

But as Borromeo put it, nobody in Los Angeles and nobody along 196th walks unless they work nearby or they’re hiking to the nearest gas station because their car broke down .

"I’ve been in towns that have a traditional main street, but Lynnwood doesn’t have one," said Rick Frans of Lynnwood.

Should it have a traditional main street?

City planners and business owners and the Lynnwood Chamber of commerce say yes. Adding business and retail space adds money to the city’s coffers, McGrath said.

"With that kind of potential business growth, the tax base for the city grows — without raising property taxes, which pay for city services,"

And once you add office space and living space to the central business district, you add jobs to the city, McGrath said.

"Every day 90,000 people from Snohomish County go south to go to work," McGrath said.

"You add a downtown and you get more jobs downtown — you get some of those 90,000 people off the road."

Two years ago, consultants advised the city to build a central business district — or as it was termed, an entertainment district with hotels, theaters, theme restaurants and shops. Its anchor would be a proposed convention center, a public-private venture, but a $34 million price tag made the city council balk.

Now, the hope is that private money will finance a regional event center.

"The regional event center is something that’s still on track," McGrath said.

Residents are mixed about building a central business district, pointing to the influx of people and traffic as an additional burden to an already congested city.

But Lynnwood continues to grow, adding population and a fledgling CDB just west of Alderwood Mall, the Fisher Business Center.

So where is downtown?

Is it a corner, a mall or a planner’s dream?

For now, the answer seems to be all of the above.

You can call Herald Writer Janice Podsada at 425-339-3029 or send e-mail to podsada@heraldnet.com.