EVERETT — Snohomish County hosted its first open house session on Thursday for the public to learn about and provide feedback on the county’s planned Food and Farming Center in McCollum Park.
The center, which the county hopes to start constructing at the end of 2026, will be a centralized hub for Snohomish, Whatcom, Skagit and King counties’ farmers to process, aggregate, distribute and sell products.
The facility will include a production area for washing, freezing, cutting or otherwise processing food, as well as a warehouse for storing products. Office spaces and a commercial kitchen will reside behind an indoor farmers market, providing agriculturists with a way to sell year-round.
Snohomish County Agricultural Coordinator Linda Neunzig and Park Planning Supervisor Rachel Dotson gave a presentation to community members on Thursday at the Northwest Stream Center, explaining the motivation behind the $60 million project and laying out details of the multifaceted planned space.
“Let’s say you want to sell into the school district … I have carrots and Rachel has carrots, but neither one of us have enough to meet that order with the Seattle school district for carrots, plus they want them washed and cut into coins and bagged up,” Neunzig said to the crowd.
But with the farmers’ hub, smaller, individual farms could team up to fulfill larger orders, bringing their produce to the same place to be combined and washed and processed together for delivery, she said.
“We don’t have access, as farmers, to a facility like that right now,” Neunzig said. “Just imagine how much local food we could get into school districts, hospitals, grocery stores by being able to do this.”
The county deemed McCollum Park as the ideal place for the center due to its proximity to I-5, established public transit lines and a variety of park activities and uses already drawing community members to the area, Dotson said.
“Imagine if we’ve got the farmers market on a Sunday morning, and people can come here and do their shopping and while they’re here, they can see the cricket players playing,” she said. “There’s a lot of synergy between the park and the market, and we want to build out this project to really emphasize that connection.”
Because of the closed landfill the park covers and North Creek running through the south end of the park, the county dealt with numerous constraints while determining the exact location of the center, which was ultimately decided to replace the pool in the northwest part of the park.
The 50-year-old pool needed $7 million in repairs, and with the facility only used in summer months, it was unjustifiable compared to other existing improvements and the added benefits of the farming hub, the county website stated. Additionally, the location will be outward-facing to 128th street, attracting community members and also having access to the already existing parking lots, Dotson said.
After finishing the presentation, Neunzig and Dotson took questions from the audience, who asked who would staff the processing area (whoever was utilizing it), if the office spaces and farmer market area would be available for community members to rent if the space wasn’t being used (yes) and how many days a week the farmers market would be open (2-3 days to start with.)
Vickie Sawade, a resident who lives right behind McCollum Park, said that while she’s not opposed to the center, she wants the county to consider the traffic hazards that she suspects will come with adding more cars entering and exiting the park from 128th Street.
“The highway is always a bottleneck. There are people who do try to turn left, even though it says right turn only, because there’s nothing to stop them right except crashing into people,” she said, referencing cars that exit the park onto 128th Street.
Until Nov. 10, the county encourages people to submit an online survey, asking in part if the participant regularly visits McCollum Park and, if the county builds the center in stages, what aspects would they want built first.
The survey can be accessed at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Q7MQSPB. To learn more about the project visit https://snohomishcountywa.gov/6043/Food-and-Farming-Center.
Eliza Aronson: 425-339-3434; eliza.aronson@heraldnet.com; X: @ElizaAronson.
Eliza’s stories are supported by the Herald’s Environmental and Climate Reporting Fund.
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