Published February 2002

South-county PFD ready
to take plans to public

By Kimberly Hilden
Herald Business Journal Assistant Editor

For about 10 years, the Lynnwood community has talked about building a convention center, city Finance Director Mike Bailey said — a place that could be used by area civic and service groups as well as attract regional associations, corporations and the like. But it wasn’t until 1999 that things really got cooking.

That’s the year state lawmakers passed legislation providing for the creation of public facilities districts, along with the right to use 0.033 percent of the state sales tax generated within the region it serves to finance a convention center/events facility, provided construction begins by January 2003.

“Financing has always been a challenge, and when the PFD legislation got passed, that really opened the door,” Bailey said.

And the city ran through that door, creating the South Snohomish County Public Facilities District that summer — one of the first of the new PFDs in the state.

Now, more than two years later, the south county PFD has a $32 million project proposal, is in the midst of acquiring land for that project and expects to break ground sometime this spring.

Before that happens, though, officials want to get the public involved.

“It will be available for community use and whatnot, and so we really want to get the word out about what it is, what it can be,” Bailey said. “As we’re involved with design, we want a lot of community input.”

What it is
The project, known as Phase I of the South Snohomish County Regional Convention Center, includes the acquisition of 17 acres of property located between 36th and 40th Avenues West, running north of 196th Street SW.

It also includes construction of a convention center that can serve as many as 950 people in an auditorium setting, 300 for multi-day events and 575 to 860 for single-event banquets.

Space parameters include:

• Flexible meeting space that can be used separately or combined in sizes ranging from 500 to 12,960 square feet.
• Two separate breakout rooms: one 1,270 square feet, the other 1,740 square feet.
• Three separate 500-square-foot meeting rooms.
• Complete kitchen facilities.
• A finely finished, pre-function concourse, which can be used for limited exhibition space and/or receptions.

Before coming up with the center proposal, the PFD board ran through a number of other options, including a performing arts center, which “was $20 million more than the PFD could afford,” said Mike Echelbarger, Chairman of the PFD board.

An arena proposal also didn’t pan out.

“We didn’t think there was a market for two arenas within 10 miles,” he said, referring to the planned Everett special-events facility.

Cost of the proposed convention center project is estimated at $32 million and will be financed through existing city and county hotel/motel taxes and the sales-tax rebate from the south county PFD as well as the Snohomish County PFD, which was created last year to help finance event/convention centers being built in the county. No new taxes will be levied for the Phase I project, Bailey said.

The PFD already has acquired the Alderwood Village shopping center and has come to sales terms with the owners of the veterinary clinic located on the 17 acres, Bailey said. The last parcel of land, the former Alderwood Cadillac dealership property, owned by Olympic Capital Group, is proceeding along a condemnation process.

In January, a Snohomish County judge granted an order of public use and necessity, allowing for the condemnation of the property, he said, with the next stage set to take place in early April, with the value of the property being set by the court.

“The discussion has gotten hung up over the sales price,” Bailey said, “so the condemnation process is there to help resolve these kinds of disputes.”

Officials at Olympic Capital Group were not available for comment.

Currently, there are two plans on the table for Phase I, said Project Director Sarah Spence, a consultant hired in June to work with the south county PFD.

One is converting the Cadillac dealership into a convention center; the other is building a convention center from the ground up in a different location within the 17-acre site.

“We’re still weighing the alternatives to see which one is in the best interests of the community,” she said.

To ascertain what it is the community wants, public workshops are in the works and should begin during the first quarter of this year, Spence said.

“We’re about ripe for it now. It was premature before,” she said. “Until you have something to go to them (the public) with, to begin to talk about, you’re just kind of chasing your tail.

“Now, we’ve got something we can get our arms around: we’ve identified the site; we’ve got the feasibility study; we’ve had a peer review of the feasibility study; and now we can go to the community,” she said.

What it can be
Once the convention center’s doors open, either late in 2003 or into 2004, “and gets properly marketed and managed and all those kinds of things, good things will begin to happen,” Bailey said. Chief among those “good things” is the money such a center will inject into the surrounding business community.

According to a feasibility study performed by PKF Consulting of San Francisco, the direct and indirect economic benefits of the center total almost $9 million a year in additional hotel room nights, hotel/motel and sales taxes, and wage and employment impacts, among others.

Add to that the work being done by the city, the PFD and the South Snohomish to develop a city center on land near the 17-acre convention center site, and the PFD project becomes “a real gem,” Spence said.

“It will be a real gateway project. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted it designed (with) an award-winning firm in the driver’s seat,” she said, referring to the collaboration of George Robertson Associates Inc. of Seattle and the Zervas Group Architects of Bellingham.

As for the center’s future growth, only time will tell what is needed and how best to finance it.

Phase I financing already is accounted for, and the 17 acres acquired during the phase is more than is needed for just that project, Bailey said. There’s the possibility, down the road, of expanding the convention center to add an exhibition hall and/or ballroom space.

“The board is not wanting to regret later on not having the foresight to have a big enough space (for future uses),” he said.

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