Snohomish County doesn’t have any true skyscrapers. Not even close.
Suffice it to say that Everett and its environs keep a pretty low profile, especially compared with Seattle’s bristling skyline.
In fact, you’d need to stack
the tallest six buildings in Snohomish County on top of each other to surpass the height of Seattle 76-story, 937-foot-tall Columbia Center.
Everett’s tallest building, by comparison, is a 12-story, 197-foot-tall hospital tower nearing completion on Colby Avenue. It’s just a smidge higher than the already iconic masts at downtown Everett’s Comcast Arena. A few feet behind that is the air-traffic control tower at Paine Field
The lack of any clear standouts made it tricky to quickly point to the county’s tallest buildings while reporting recent stories.
The question is relevant now because things are changing — and could change more in the near future.Zoning in Everett and Lynnwood allows developers to erect buildings far taller than anything that exists now. Note that one story is, in general, at least 10 feet tall.
In Everett, buildings of up to 200 feet tall are allowed downtown in a two-block-wide zone along Colby Avenue, between Everett and Pacific avenues. However, city code potentially allows buildings of unlimited height in this zone if the projects meet a combination of incentives, such as providing public access. Some other downtown Everett zones allow 150-foot-tall buildings, with a chance to build up to 225 feet, again based on incentives. In Lynnwood, buildings of up to 350 feet are allowed in the central business district, a triangle-shaped area bounded by 44th Avenue West, 196th Street and I-5.
In unincorporated Snohomish County, special high-density, mixed-use zones called urban centers allow buildings up to 180 feet tall. Developers must meet certain conditions. The only urban center proposed so far is for high-rise condos of up to 17 stories at Point Wells, near Woodway. The project is controversial in part because, unlike other proposed urban centers, Point Wells is not along I-5 or a highway.
Another interesting question: How to measure building height? Should you count antennas? Lightning rods? HVAC equipment? Do you stop tallying at the part of the building that’s normally occupied? Here’s an example: a new 13-story building proposed in Lynnwood could be 254 feet tall counting its architectural spire, 190 feet if calculated to include the maintenance structures on the roof, or 168 feet without them.
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