Traffic vs. neighbors

Published 12:01 am Tuesday, April 26, 2011

ARLINGTON — Scott Whippo never imagined the changes.

When he moved to his Smokey Point neighborhood 10 years ago, the place had a wooded, rural feel.

Now the city of Arlington plans to build a street on the southern border of his neighborhood, a roadway that city officials hope will alleviate traffic headaches caused by a new medical clinic under construction and a proposed hotel along the already congested 172nd Street NE.

The new two-lane street, to be named 173rd, could be built within the next five years between Smokey Point Boulevard and 43rd Avenue NE, and would be about a half mile long. Eventually, 173rd would reach east into the Arlington Airport’s proposed southwest corner business park.

“The noise from the airport really isn’t that bad,” Whippo said. “The car noise, even now, is worse than the planes ever were. I can’t imagine the traffic noise and the dust once the new street goes in.”

The city is working to acquire all the rights-of-way needed for the new street. The new 173rd Street and its accompanying landscaping will be paid for by the developers of the property there.

“We have to do something to address the increasing traffic from the new commercial activity,” said Mayor Margaret Larson. “We are already capacity on 172nd, which is a state highway. And we can’t continue to wait for the state to improve that road.”

Arlington’s Cascade Valley Hospital and Skagit Valley Hospital of Mount Vernon are building a 42,000-square-foot, two-story clinic on four acres in the Smokey Point neighborhood. The $8 million clinic is set to open early next year to provide urgent care, primary care and specialty health care services.

La Quinta Inns plans to build a multiple-story hotel next to the clinic. The company has renewed its building permits, but has delayed construction for now because of economic concerns, city spokeswoman Kristin Banfield said.

Whippo, 59, doesn’t think people in his neighborhood have had much say in the plans for the new 173rd, which he first learned about in 2009. Part of the issue, he said, is that the new street is just part of a bigger problem in Smokey Point.

“This area is just one huge strip mall,” Whippo said. “There’s so much construction out here, that we can’t get rid of the dust in the house. People are becoming concerned about the value of their homes.”

Whippo concedes that smaller cities such as Arlington must depend on sales tax revenue for economic survival and so must encourage new business.

John Snider, who lives around the corner, also is unhappy about the new road. He’s already got a street in front of his house, but now he’ll have one on the other side of his back fence.

“I took down some trees so I would have a better view of the Douglas firs to the south. Now those big trees will be cut down and I will have nothing to block out the noise and the fumes,” Snider, 77, said. “There’ll be only about 10 feet between my fence and the new road. That’s not really enough room for the city to plant any big trees.”

The new street should help keep people from driving through Snider’s neighborhood to get from 172nd Street to Smokey Point Boulevard, Banfield said.

A noise and lighting analysis, environmental impact and archaeological studies and at least one more meeting with the people in the neighborhood are yet to come, she said.

Planning, surveying, buying property and studying the impacts of the street will end up costing the city about $1 million.

“173rd Street has been in the city’s comprehensive plan for more than 10 years. A lot of people in that newer neighborhood did not know about it,” Banfield said. “Before the street is built, we will go to the public with results of all the studies and then tweak the plans.”

The city’s current <a href="http://www.arlingtonwa.gov/index.aspx?page=141

“>plan for west Arlington calls for a mixture of residential and commercial development that is pedestrian friendly and community oriented, Banfield said.

“We want the focus to be on the community and not the parking lots,” she said.

Whippo plans to attend the city’s next meeting about his neighborhood, which could be scheduled possibly as soon as June.

“We’ll see what happens,” he said.

Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com.