Edmonds might buy downtown plaza

Published 10:49 pm Friday, June 29, 2007

EDMONDS – A small plaza on the southwest corner of the Old Milltown shopping center is among the few places in downtown where people can sit outside and relax.

As the iconic shopping center undergoes major renovations, the City Council is considering buying the plaza space to make sure it doesn’t change.

“Just having some open space where people can sit down and take their sandwiches and eat there, I think it’s a nice addition,” City Council President Peggy Pritchard Olson said. “That’s what people like. We don’t have a lot of those places in the downtown area.”

Developer Bob Gregg owns Old Milltown, which sits along Fifth Avenue between Dayton and Maple streets.

The narrow plaza, which is at least three decades old, is landscaped with shrubs and flowers and has three picnic tables, a gazebo and some benches. It’s bordered by a handful of storefronts in the old shopping center, including Fifth Avenue Hair Salon, Old Milltown Pizza and a Quizno’s Subs.

There’s almost always someone sitting at one of the benches or tables, said Virginia Mensing, 71, who was visiting a friend Friday at Fifth Avenue Hair Salon.

She hopes City Council members find a way to buy the plaza.

“Everybody who lives down there thinks they should,” said Mensing, who’s lived in the city for 50 years. “It’s a nice entryway into Edmonds as you get down here and into the district.”

The City Council this week voted for staff to get an appraisal of the plaza space.

Gregg is reportedly open to selling the plaza to the city, Councilman Ron Wambolt said.

“He was perfectly agreeable to sell to us,” Wambolt said. “He said he had no immediate plans to renovate that southern portion or to do anything with it, but with developers, that can change anytime.”

Gregg could not be reached for comment.

The city has enough money to buy the plaza, but council members want to see the site’s appraised value before naming a price, Wambolt said.

“It would be nice to preserve that,” he said. “It’s been there forever and citizens are accustomed to it.”

Gregg sued the city earlier this year for striking down his initial plan to remodel Old Milltown, which is now being renovated under a revised set of plans.

Under the revised plans, the northern half of the shopping center will be separated by a 15-foot ceiling. The top floor is slated to be leased as office space, and the bottom floor would be split into spaces for three tenants.Earlier this month, the city reached a $30,000 settlement agreement with Gregg to avoid more expensive legal bills.

Under the agreement, the city also is giving him until Jan. 15, 2008, to apply for a building permit to renovate the old shopping center under current building codes – if he wishes – even if the City Council changes the codes in the meantime.

The building codes would allow Gregg to build on the Old Milltown site all the way out to the sidewalks, the developer has said.

During a public hearing about the settlement agreement, some Edmonds residents voiced concern the settlement agreement might make it easier for Gregg to build over the plaza space.

Gregg said he had no plans to develop that space, but people were still worried.

“Out of that meeting, the main concern that came out was we really liked that space and we don’t want it to go away,” Olson said.