EVERETT — A contested effort to form a special taxing area around Everett Station is in its final phase after three years of organizing.
Some business owners in the area say the neighborhood could use the help of a business improvement area (BIA), which would levy fees from property owners to fund cleanup and safety projects. But others feel the idea doesn’t have their best interests at heart.
Light rail’s arrival in Everett is still almost 15 years away, but businesses in the area are preparing for their future role as the “front porch” of the city, said Brock Howell, executive director of the nonprofit Everett Station District Alliance.
The group is the key driver behind the push to form a business improvement area in the neighborhood. Some property owners in the largely industrial area saw the need to band together to beautify and energize the area, leading to the nonprofit’s formation in 2017, Howell said.
But others asked if the city was best suited to the proposed tasks and questioned the amount of support among the area’s business and property owners.
A business improvement area can levy fees on property owners within its boundaries, somewhat like a homeowners association, Howell said. Property owners within its boundaries would pay the city, which would then pass it to the alliance for programs such as private security to patrol at night and graffiti removal, Howell said.
The group intends to enlist “neighborhood ambassadors” to identify problems and offer assistance as needed.
By summer 2023, the group wants to reboot the neighborhood’s dormant farmers market. Further out, the nonprofit’s board envisions funding a social worker program to connect homeless people in the area with resources and support.
The Everett City Council approved a resolution initiating the BIA’s creation in November. Howell said council members took up the resolution after being “engaged” at the alliance’s request. Lori Cummings, executive director for the mayor’s office, said the city council asked city administrators to work with the alliance to develop an ordinance officially establishing the area.
There are 67 property owners in the proposed business improvement area, Howell told the Everett City Council during its Nov. 30 meeting. Of those, 29 owners representing 69% of the proposed assessments signed petitions supporting the area, and one more verbally indicated support later on, he said.
Eight owners, representing 5.9% of total owners, opposed it, Howell said. The remaining 29 property owners “had not engaged” with the alliance at all, and 35 parcels owned by the city within the area were not factored in.
Howell said the alliance tried to reach the non-respondent property owners, including by mail, email and publicly announced meetings, but that most of them had “either explicitly or implicitly” chosen not to engage with the process. The non-respondents represent about a quarter of the area’s annual assessments, Howell said.
After passing a resolution initiating the BIA’s creation in November, followed by three public hearings, the council unanimously approved the area’s formation at its Dec. 14 meeting.
The Downtown Everett Association, in operation since the late 1990s, was the city’s first BIA. The nonprofit has put its revenue behind downtown revitalization and safety efforts with some success.
The alliance started pursuing a BIA in 2019, and Howell presented initial plans to the council in January 2020. At that point, Howell said the group encountered problems with unforeseen legal requirements and “moving goalposts,” and plans went on hold. That pause became indefinite when the pandemic hit, he said.
The group spent the time getting a better idea of what its potential ratepayers wanted, Howell said. That input led to smaller boundaries than originally envisioned in 2019, owing mostly to the exclusion of property owners who did not support the BIA’s formation.
The proposed district would span four non-contiguous blocks of properties, bounded roughly between Hewitt Avenue on the north and 39th Street on the south, and between Interstate 5 and Lombard Avenue on either side.
Alliance leadership felt ratepayers would be better served if the area focused its efforts on proving its benefits among supporters and ideally doubters will later want to join the area, he said.
Properties within the BIA’s boundaries will incur fees regardless of their support or affiliation with the alliance. Fees will be 4 cents per square foot of property plus its value as assessed by the county, currently 50 cents per 1,000 square feet, Howell said. That puts the BIA’s operating budget for 2023 at roughly $313,000.
Several key economic drivers of the area are ratepayers, including Kaiser Permanente and the City of Everett, which owns the transit center and public works campus.
The city’s 2023 contribution was estimated at $74,000, though it also is responsible for an unknown staff cost for accounting services related to the BIA, Cummings said.
For the area’s first year, 72% of projected funds are allocated for safety and cleaning measures, according to an ESDA fact sheet. About 12% will go towards improving area parking and “neighborhood enhancement,” while 13% is earmarked for overhead expenses like marketing and staff pay.
Roughly 3% of the 2023 budget, or about $10,000, is a built-in buffer against inevitable uncollected assessments, Howell said.
‘Property owners coming together’
Joe Sievers, owner of two storage facilities within BIA boundaries and an alliance board member, said his family has owned property in the neighborhood for over a century. As a kid he was sent to pick up trash off the sidewalks, he said.
Everybody just looks out for their own chunk of the district and there hasn’t been an effort to collectively enhance the area, he said.
Crime, homelessness and vandalism around the neighborhood were more frequent in recent years, Sievers said. With police and other city departments “stretched too thin” to address the problems fully, residents are using the BIA to shoulder some of the burden, he said.
“I hate complaining without doing anything to fix the problem,” Sievers said. “This is us as property owners coming together to do something about it ourselves.”
Sievers said he spoke with several neighbors who had concerns about the BIA, and he understood that no one wants to pay more money on top of the costs of running a business. But he considers it an investment in the neighborhood and in the city as a whole, he said.
“Like any investment, it’ll need to be monitored and controlled and tweaked as we go,” Sievers said. “But I think the proof will be in the pudding.”
Alan Mizuta, co-owner of industrial design firm Built Design, said he’s owned several properties in the Everett Station neighborhood for over 15 years. He said he believes problems with trash, vandalism and crime aren’t unique to the neighborhood and even improved somewhat in recent years.
Mizuta said he thinks the city is better suited to handle most of the concerns the alliance says it’ll take on through the BIA.
But his top concern was his claim the group “factually misrepresented” key data to the city and to business owners, including levels of community support for the project.
In an informal survey Mizuta conducted among neighbors around his properties, he said he found levels of support were considerably lower than those touted by the ESDA — by his estimation, only about 11% of owners he spoke to said they supported the effort. In letters to the council provided by Mizuta to The Daily Herald, several business owners claimed they were listed in ESDA materials during its initial organizing efforts in 2019 as supporters but never engaged with the group.
Howell said the claims of misrepresentation resulted from “comparing apples to oranges,” especially between the group’s earliest efforts in 2019 and the final result as approved this month.
He said the lower rates of support Mizuta reported were taken out of context and not representative of the larger picture, claiming Mizuta sampled only “a tiny slice” of the property owners and used different methodology than ESDA’s surveys. Howell said he hadn’t heard any complaints from business owners regarding authenticity of the group’s support levels during the 2022 process.
Howell admitted the 2019 push had run into confusion among business owners and council members alike, mostly relating to including the city in its calculations of support levels, that may have resulted in misunderstandings going into the most recent organizing effort. In its second attempt, the nonprofit focused its attention on measuring support solely among private property owners and didn’t include the city’s properties to avoid confusion, Howell said.
After its approval by the council, Howell said the BIA is now in an “activation” phase. It soon will form a ratepayer board to govern area decisions going forward, and future budgets will be subject to approval by the board and the city as well as an annual general meeting of ratepayers.
Riley Haun: 425-339-3192; riley.haun@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @RHaunID.
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