Everett Station District Alliance expands, changes name
Published 1:30 am Thursday, February 26, 2026
EVERETT — The Everett Station District Alliance has changed its name and will expand its service area across the city of Everett, the organization announced Tuesday.
The Everett Station District Alliance formed in 2016 and was incorporated as a nonprofit a year later. Its goal was to encourage public-private partnerships to drive business growth and create a walkable neighborhood in the Everett Station District, already a public transportation hub that’s expected to get busier when Link light rail arrives there in the coming years.
Now, it’s called Stations Unidos, expanding its boundaries to serve south Everett, particularly the Casino Road neighborhood, as well as doing community development work around future light rail and bus rapid transit stops.
Stations Unidos announced the expansion along with Local Initiatives Support Corporation Puget Sound, known as LISC. LISC partners with local governments and community organizations to grow economic development and help create affordable housing.
The newly expanded nonprofit will continue its work in the Everett Station area, including its business improvement district, which funds paid ambassadors who walk and bike around the neighborhood, picking up litter, addressing graffiti and checking in with businesses.
But Station Unidos will now also do broader work, including investing in real estate to preserve the affordability of existing housing and small businesses, as well as building new affordable housing and commercial space. The nonprofit plans to meet with stakeholders by the summer to set a vision for the organization’s future work, its CEO, Brock Howell, wrote in an email Tuesday.
“Since our beginning, we have focused on setting a vision for the Everett Station district to become greener and try to inspire others to take action,” Howell said at Tuesday’s announcement. “Now, our programs expand with preventing displacement, developing housing, incubating new businesses and creating great public places.”
One of the primary reasons for the expansion to south Everett, and Casino Road in particular, is because of the coming arrival of Sound Transit’s Link light rail, bringing additional displacement pressure in a neighborhood already facing rising costs for housing. Creating affordable housing — and affordable commercial space in particular, which can be difficult to find — were steps floated in a 2025 city report that looked for ways to improve affordability and economic mobility for south Everett residents.
Marshall Foster, who recently joined Sound Transit as the regional transit agency’s Chief Planning and Development Officer, said during a roundtable discussion at Tuesday’s announcement that the work Station Unidos will be doing is going to be critical in the coming years before light rail is built.
“You can work together to mitigate these kind of issues that can come from the changes with light rail. Those things can be done,” Foster said. “But if you’re trying to chase your tail once all the big decisions are made, it’s orders of magnitude harder to do so. So, it’s very important. Now is the time.”
Station Unidos will be governed by a nine-person board of directors.
Alvaro Guillen, the director of the south Everett community organization Connect Casino Road, said the collaboration between organizations like Station Unidos, the city of Everett and other regional partners could allow neighbors and residents to stay in the place they call home, reaping the benefits of the long-term investment of a light rail system.
“I think for this work to be successful, it needs to be community-led, guided by the community, making sure we are not only doing place making, but more importantly, place keeping,” Guillen said. “It is very important that we preserve the community’s identity and we make sure that communities are represented when we bring any space activation to the neighborhood.”
Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.
