Your chance to comment on proposed skyscraper

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, August 3, 2006

EVERETT – A 19-story building proposed for the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore avenues in downtown Everett is up for public comment as it goes through the environmental review process.

The building would become Everett’s tallest, eclipsing the 14-story Everett Mutual Tower on Colby Avenue, now the tallest private structure.

The call for public comment was posted at the site, located behind Frontier Bank’s building at Colby and Hewitt avenues, earlier this week.

Comments will be accepted through Aug. 14, said Gerry Ervine, land-use manager for the Everett Planning Department.

“The environmental review is the only one that will be done on the public side,” Ervine said.

That’s because the land, used now as a parking lot, is zoned for downtown development, requiring no zoning changes, Ervine said. So far, the city’s received no comments on it.

The building, as proposed, would contain office space, parking floors and condominiums, according to plans filed by Skotdal Real Estate. That family-owned firm owns the property and the neighboring bank building.

Space for retail shops would be on the ground floor, with six levels of parking above. The eighth through 12th floors would contain up to 90,000 square feet of office space. The highest seven floors would contain more than 60 condominium units.

At 237 feet tall, the mixed-use building would be taller than any other downtown structure, including the masts on the Everett Events Center and Snohomish County’s administration and jail buildings.

But the newly adopted downtown plan calls for taller office and residential buildings, even allowing unlimited building heights, under certain conditions, along the blocks surrounding Colby Avenue.

Because the application for the new building was submitted before the downtown plan’s adoption, the 19-story tower doesn’t have to meet all of that plan’s new design requirements. On the whole, Ervine said, the new building would meet most of them, however.

Craig Skotdal, president of Skotdal Real Estate, declined to comment on when the building might be constructed or other details.

The environmental review for a project typically is valid for 18 months after approval, Ervine said, with the possibility of a six-month extension after that. So if construction didn’t began within two years after the review, the project might have to go through another review.

Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.