After following the issues related to the Everett Performing Arts Center, which has suffered some deep financial woes, I was concerned about history repeating itself with a new hockey arena. Then I was concerned about the sense and feasibility of placing an arena so close to downtown for non-NHL hockey and trade shows. I think back to the days when I attended Thunderbird Hockey night games in Seattle and what I did before and after. Picture the kind of businesses that would thrive off a group like that. Now they want to put a structure resembling a ship in the downtown – white and big and unspeakably ugly – with a new hotel to be built next to it. This, when we are not even occupying the current hotel space in Everett.
It was just last year that the county staff was contemplating a move to Paine Field due to the demands for space. If there were a project to improve downtown, money might be better spent on developing a comprehensive plan that would build and rebuild county and city structures aimed at accommodating future needs while granting people some common space. Why was it such a bad idea to place an arena by the new transit facility off Pacific near the highway and existing hotels?
Successful planning downtown consists of public action that produces a sustained and widespread private sector reaction. If an arena is built on Hewitt, it will not be a justifiable use of public money unless it helps to transform the area around it.
The building as proposed is in the wrong place, will not attract the kind of business that will enhance our community and decidedly resembles nothing, historical or otherwise, in Everett. On a similar note, I just read that the city of Lynnwood has written into law some stringent design codes for new buildings. Judging from some recently built atrocities here in town, perhaps we could develop a standard as well.
Everett
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