Lake Stevens pursues plan for its downtown

LAKE STEVENS — Your friends have come to town and they’re staying at an inn on the lake. You join them for a movie, then dinner at a lakefront restaurant, enjoy a concert along the shore, then stroll through downtown for an ice cream cone.

In Lake Stevens?

That could be possible in the future if the city and the Greater Lake Stevens Chamber of Commerce can find a way to finance the Lake Stevens Towncenter plan, the result of a $15,000 study by Perteet Engineering Inc. on what can be done to improve the city’s downtown core.

The City Council and the chamber presented the study Monday to the library board, parks board and planning commission to gauge their responses, which were overwhelmingly positive.

Now the city has to decide how to present the plan to the public and how to pay for it.

"It will be easier to sell the idea if people have more of an idea where the money is coming from," planning commission member Joyce Bell said. "I think it would be wonderful if we could figure out how to do it."

Chamber member Bob Craven said the plan is still in the early stages.

"People like what they see here now," he said. "But they’d like to have more alternatives. It would be great to be able to stroll down to the lake and rent a paddle boat and get an ice cream."

After looking at what was planned in the past to improve the downtown, as well as considering residents’ comments at public meetings, the chamber wanted the study to:

  • Preserve the small-town character of downtown Lake Stevens.

  • Provide more services, but on a small scale — not national chains or big-box stores. Services favored include medical offices, a movie theater, an ice cream parlor, a small inn and a lakeside restaurant.

  • Improve the parking options, as well as public access to downtown and the lake.

    The plan calls for the city to build several new public buildings, and businesses to underwrite most of the rest, which would include apartments above retail shops.

    "Now there are only about six places where the public has access to the lake, and some are not very good," said Leland Adams, chairman of the parks board. "We don’t want the city to give up access to the lake."

    "That’s an absolute must," Mayor Lynn Walty added.

    The plan would require some public buildings to move, including City Hall, the police station and the library. The city just purchased land for a new police station, which currently is housed in a small remodeled house on the lakeshore. For now, city officials are unable to put a price tag on the plan.

    "Dollars, dollars, dollars," Walty said. "That’s one of the things we’ll have to be looking at. You have to make sure you have enough money to do it, and that it will pay for itself."

    Parks board member Marlene Sweet endorsed the plan.

    "It seems to me if we get things going, people will say, ‘Look at this up-and-coming town,’" she said.

    City Councilwoman Karen Alessi, who heads the chamber’s Downtown Economic Committee with Craven, said similar plans have worked in other small towns, and committee members have visited those places.

    Now that the city boards have indicated their approval of the concept, the City Council must next decide how to proceed.

    Reporter Cathy Logg: 425-339-3437 or logg@heraldnet.com.

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