Published April 2001

Everett Station expected
to boost downtown growth

By John Wolcott
Herald Business Journal Editor

The steel frame of the four-story, $33 million Everett Station already is rising above its Pacific Avenue site adjacent to the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe’s main line through town.

Nearby, workmen are pouring concrete columns that will support the new five-lane Pacific Avenue overpass, a $10 million project that will include a ramp for traffic between Pacific and the new transit facility, and another ramp into the Lowe’s hardware parking lot.

By December, the station should be ready to use, about a month after the overpass project is completed. Around that time, Greyhound buses, taxis and Community Transit and Everett Transit buses will begin service at the new station.

Due to Sound Transit delays, however, the first Sounder commuter trains won’t be arriving until late 2002 rather than next February as originally planned.

Construction of the Everett Station is expected to revitalize a lot more than the transportation network in this growing community of 84,000.

City officials expect the project to become the cornerstone for development of new commercial enterprises in and around the 10-acre site on Pacific Avenue, in a neglected area only blocks from the downtown core.

To the north of the Everett Station is the Snohomish County Public Utility District headquarters; to the east is a giant Lowe’s hardware and garden center, small commercial enterprises and blocks of older homes.

West of the center are small retail businesses and trucking firms, along with commercial development and fast-food restaurants along Broadway. To the south are more businesses and, farther south, Everett’s proposed 200-acre Riverfront Business Park.

As a transportation facility that combines several compatible uses, Everett Station is expected to become a national model. Along with transportation ticketing and baggage facilities, the center will include a restaurant, a career development center, conference rooms and a computer network hub, plus about 4,200 square feet for other tenants.

“Originally, we saw the building as smaller until we learned of the potential interest in education … and other uses,” Everett Mayor Ed Hansen said.

One of the biggest attractions will be the university-level education center, with its high-tech computer and interactive television facilities. The education center will be operated by a consortium of eight state colleges and universities, said Larry Marrs, Executive Director of the Higher Education Consortium that will provide the degree programs.

Also, the state Department of Employment Security will operate a career development center at the station. The new WorkSource center will involve 17 partner agencies, including Edmonds and Everett community colleges, the Job Corps, Volunteers of America and the Tulalip Tribes.

Inside the station, $300,000 worth of artwork will be displayed, including the giant Kenneth Callahan oil-paint murals of the lumber industry that was Everett’s past claim to fame.

The murals, painted in 1944, once decorated the cafeteria walls of the Weyerhaeuser Co.’s Mill “B” administration building in north Everett. They have been in storage since the mill closed many years ago.

One of the most appealing artwork contributions to the station is expected to be Stanwood artist Rick Wesley’s 9-foot-high, stainless-steel clock, surrounded by a 25-foot square window of art glass by Camano Island artist Jack Archibald, sparkling with prisms, bevels and iridescent glass.

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