LAKE STEVENS – Since he retired from the Boeing Co. last year, Mayor Lynn Walty has enjoyed not having to get up at 4:30 weekday mornings and head off to work.
But today, he plans to rise early again to be at the new Lake Stevens Transit Center by 5 a.m. for the inaugural bus runs.
About 150 people gathered in the cold Tuesday to celebrate the grand opening of the new $5 million Community Transit center and park-and-ride lot, the first of its kind east of Everett.
The long-awaited center is a boon for many.
“To go to Seattle without transfers will be great,” said Beryl Neff, 87, of Lake Stevens, who currently uses Dial-A-Ride Transit.
“We do take DART, and once in a while we ride the bus,” said her friend Katsy Furseth, 88. “It might be a little easier now to get places when we’re not on DART.”
The celebration theme, Time to Get Rolling, highlighted the feelings of city, state and federal officials who showed up to open the new transit center at 9414 Fourth St. SE, near the Target store in the Frontier Village area west of the city.
Built by Strider Construction, the new center provides 208 parking spaces, two passenger-loading platforms with custom shelters and six bus bays.
It’s lighted and landscaped, monitored by security cameras, and includes a wall with about 40 tiles made by Lake Stevens High School’s design class. The tiles depict the students’ view of transportation in the area in the next 50 years.
Julia Bertash, 16, a junior, used her nickname (Bumble Bee) to fashion a flying Volkswagen Beetle painted like a bumble bee with curling wheels and white wings, flying above a garden of flowers and driven and surrounded by little bees.
“I ride the bus when I don’t have a ride,” Bertash said. “It’s fun to go with your friends on the bus and hang out at the (Everett) mall.”
Community Transit provided the tiles and the students submitted about 80, teacher Jennifer Penn said. A committee chose those that were installed in the wall.
The colorful tiles depict everything from a person with a jet pack to a jet car, a bus that looks like a large cat, rocket ships, space cars, a pair of high-top sneakers with wings, even vehicles that go from the lake to the mountains and into the air.
“In virtually every (Snohomish County) city we’ve seen tremendous growth,” county Executive Aaron Reardon said. “Lake Stevens is one of those growing communities with many changes and challenges. This is a little more than just a facility to get people out of their cars and onto a bus.”
The new center will help bring people from the Seattle area to work at Lake Stevens and help diversify the economy, he said.
The center will be a hub for connecting service to Lake Stevens, Granite Falls, Marysville, Everett and Seattle, said Joyce Olsen, CT’s chief executive officer.
Seattle’s Uptown, Lowdown Jazz Band provided music for the ceremony, and Cookies by Design made cookies that depicted the students’ tiles.
“Lake Stevens is proud to have the first transit center in eastern Snohomish County,” said Walty, CT’s vice chairman. “I’m looking forward to more of them.”
Reporter Cathy Logg: 425-339-3437 or logg@heraldnet.com.
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