Agency says convention center needs hotel

LYNNWOOD — If you think it’s tough finding hotel rooms for a family of eight this summer, try finding several hundred rooms for a convention.

The Lynnwood Convention Center is having difficulty securing large blocks of hotel rooms within the walking distance necessary to accommodate multiple-day conventions.

To meet the demand, the public agency that runs the Lynnwood Convention Center is looking for a company to build and operate a new, full-service hotel and parking structure on public land next to the center.

The Lynnwood Public Facilities District is offering a long-term lease on the roughly 12-acre site at I-5 and 196th Street Southwest, where the convention center is located. Proposals are due at noon Friday, Aug. 18.

The district, which owns the land, did not specify how large or exactly where the hotel would be situated in the request for proposal, which was released on Monday.

“We are missing business opportunities,” said Grant Dull, executive director of the Lynnwood Public Facilities District. “The convention center needs those multiple-day events to fulfill its mission — to attract people from outside of Lynnwood who stay in hotels, shop in stores, eat in restaurants, leave their money in Lynnwood and then go home.”

Market demands are forcing the district to act, said Mike Echelbarger, chair of the district’s board of directors.

The district started planning for a new parking structure, convention center expansion and opportunities to lease land to complementary businesses to be built in a few years.

During preliminary discussions for the planning, two hotel companies expressed interest in leasing the land and building a hotel right now. The companies are KVC Development of Spokane and 360 Hotel Group, formerly known as Northgate Hotels.

“It is gratifying that people are interested,” said Echelbarger. “I wish they would have waited until our planning was done. When opportunity knocks you have to respond to it and I guess that is what the board will do.”

The district’s board of directors will review the proposals and could make a decision as early as Aug. 25.

The board members are: Chair Mike Echelbarger, president of Echelbarger Properties; Robert Fuller, who works at AG Edwards in Edmonds; George Sherwin, senior vice president of land development for Quadrant Homes Corp.; Liz Wilson, senior vice president at Washington Banker Association and Andy Olsen, co-founder of the Chambers Group, a hotel management consultant company.

It is unclear how the Lynnwood Public Facilities District’s recent action will effect a developer’s effort to buy Edmonds School District property south of the convention center to build a hotel and condominiums.

Inland Group of Spokane is poised to buy from the school district the roughly 4-acre plot located across 196th Street from the convention center for $6.4 million. Inland Group and the district tentatively agreed to close the deal by Aug. 10, but the developer can still walk away before that date.

“We think it can sustain two hotels, but everything is so premature,” Echelbarger said. “We are not trying to go out and compete against the school district. It all gets a little bit tricky. We have to make sure we do it by the book. The district has a valuable piece of property whether it is used for a hotel or another use.”

The school district would not comment on the specifics of the Lynnwood Public Facilities District’s effort, said Marla Miller, executive director of business and operations for the district.

“We are all expecting with the change in the city center zoning that there will be new and more development in the downtown city center area of Lynnwood and that is just exciting news,” she said.

The City Council approved on July 10 mixed-use, urban zoning in the city center area, located northwest of Interstate 5, south of 194th Street Southwest and east of 44th Avenue West. as well as properties immediately west of 44th Avenue West. City officials said the zoning should take effect this week.

With the city center zoning, a developer can build a project with commercial and residential uses on the 4-acre school district property on 196th Street. The buildings can be up to 350 feet tall and can cover the entire lot.

Under the previous zoning, the school district land could not be used for residential development and buildings could only cover 35 percent of the lot.