LYNNWOOD — Two years from now, a typical Saturday afternoon outing at Alderwood Mall could include more than just shopping and browsing through stores and grabbing a bite at the food court.
Instead, it could include tugging on a pair of climbing boots and trying them out on a simulated mountain wall, eating dinner at an upscale Asian restaurant, or watching a movie in a theater with the latest stadium seating and sound systems.
All those things will come as part of Alderwood Mall’s ambitious expansion.
In the simplest terms, the continuing construction at the mall represents no more than the natural growth of a successful business.
But no other single retail business in Snohomish County casts an economic shadow as large as the Lynnwood mall. And few other retail businesses invest $50 million to $100 million in their expansion, which is the estimated cost of the mall’s project.
The expanded mall is expected to create hundreds of additional jobs and put another $1 million in sales tax revenue into the city’s coffers starting in 2005. The mall already brings in about $1 million in sales tax to the city, said David Kleitsch, Lynnwood’s economic development director.
Even though Lynnwood’s municipal officials are working to have the city known for other things than being the "home of Alderwood Mall," they realize it’s an economic powerhouse.
"The mall and the shopping areas around it generate significant tax. It allows us to keep the tax rates low for our residents. So it’s definitely an important part of our economic base," Kleitsch said.
The opening of the new Nordstrom store this morning is the first of several milestones in the mall’s expansion.
"This is the completion of the first phase, with the new store and most of the mall’s interior renovation done," said Tamera Wachter, spokeswoman for Alderwood.
Also officially opening today is the mall’s first parking garage, which includes a sky bridge into the new Nordstrom store.
A second garage, at the southwest corner of the mall, is to open in mid-November, just in time for the holiday shopping season, Wachter said. The two garages will contain about 1,500 parking spaces, she said.
Also between now and Christmas, a new entrance to the mall will open on the southeast corner, close to Sears.
The next new part of the mall to open will be portions of The Terraces, the collection of restaurants and other businesses extending outdoors from the existing food court. Those will begin opening next spring.
Then, by fall 2004, the rest of The Terraces and The Village shopping area will be open. While a planned 16-screen cinema might not be completed by then, everything else will be.
In the end, the mall will have 50 new stores and restaurants spread over 180,000 square feet. That will bring the mall’s total size to 1.3 million square feet, making it the second largest in the state.
Additionally, JC Penney and Sears are using the expansion and renovation of the mall as a time to make cosmetic changes.
Ashley Rogers of Lynnwood, who has been shopping at the mall for 15 years, is optimistic about the expansion.
"The larger it is, the more it seems to draw people in. It’s becoming more of an ideal one-stop shopping place," she said.
Rogers has a more vested interest in the mall’s future; she’s now the manager of the Alderwood location of NuVo International, a West Coast-based chain of clinics that offer laser hair removal, Botox treatments and other skin care services. The business opened this week.
New services such as salons, along with the sit-down restaurants that are coming, are important to the strategy behind the bigger mall. Past studies found a notable number of Snohomish County shoppers traveling to Bellevue Square or Seattle’s University Village. The mall’s directors hope that the bigger collection of upscale stores and restaurants will bring those dollars back to Alderwood.
Annual spending per square foot of space at Alderwood Mall hovered at around $450 as of last year. The expansion project and improvements in the existing mall could increase that figure closer to $600 per square foot, the level of sales generated by Bellevue Square, according to Alderwood’s owner, General Growth Properties.
Jeff Coate, chairman of the South Snohomish Chamber of Commerce, said he thinks that greater spending will ripple throughout Lynnwood’s shopping district.
"It’s already, north of Seattle, the premier mall," said Coate, who managed the JC Penney store at Alderwood for several years. "I think its expansion will bode well for the entire sector around there."
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
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