EvCC will soon have bus station

Published 10:49 pm Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Everett Community College students should soon have more than a curb and run-down shelter with a bench to sit on while waiting for the bus.

College Station, a new bus terminal with shelters, a drivers rest area and a customer service office, is expected to open between Tower and 10th streets in downtown Everett by February.

“Overall, it’s just a better customer experience,” said Tom Hingson, director of Everett Transit.

The City Council has voted to hire Pellco Construction of Mount Lake Terrace for $2 million to build College Station.

The council also started looking for companies to demolish five houses that it bought for $1.7 million to make room for the bus station.

The new transit hub will be safer and more secure than the often-crowded bus stop currently used for the college a block away on Tower Street, said Higson.

Everett Community College Vice President Michael Kerns said the current bus stop doesn’t mesh with the college’s vision of building a more transit-oriented campus.

“It doesn’t have the amenities you need,” he said. “It’s really waiting on a sidewalk.”

He said having a larger bus station closer to the campus could encourage more students to take mass transit to the campus.

It also could draw other regional bus services that shuttle students from outside Everett, he said. Just 30 percent of the college’s students live in the city, where Everett Transit operates.

Everett Community College is expected to double in size over the next decade.

Eventually, the campus is expected to surround the bus station, which is now on its eastern edge.

The campus is already expanding in that direction. Whitehorse Hall, its largest building, opened just west of College Station, earlier this year.

The $5 million project, which is more than a year behind schedule, will cost nearly twice as much as the city originally planned.

That’s because it had to buy a row of single-family houses for land.

Transit officials previously planned to build on the campus, but those plans were nixed when the college ran out of room for its own projects.

Hingson said there were also delays because of a change in state law that required archeological surveys to search for American Indian artifacts. None were found, he said, and the project is now moving forward.

Linda Logger, who takes the No. 9 route from 128th Street to classes at the college four days a week, struggled up a dirt mound in flip-flops while waiting for a bus earlier this week.

She said a spruced-up bus station would be a nice addition to the campus and the Broadway area, but she could live without it.

“It doesn’t make a difference to me,” she said. “As long as there’s a bus to get me home at the end of the day.”

Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.