Published January 2002

A transit hub — and more
With its classes, work development center and transportation offerings, Everett Station could spur nearby development, city officials say

By Kimberly Hilden
Herald Business Journal Assistant Editor

Looking out a fourth-floor window of Everett Station, Paul Kaftanski sees the possibilities as his gaze touches industrial buildings to the west.

The city project manager points to the nearby Milwaukee depot, which used to be a restaurant when the Milwaukee Railroad had a passenger service running through town.

“It’s vacant now, that restaurant has closed down,” he said, “but who knows what that building will be turned into once this is up and running.”

“This” being Everett Station, a four-story, 64,000-square-foot, multi-modal transit center that also will house a higher-education center, a career-development office and meeting space.

A year and a half ago, construction began on the $44 million project located between Pacific Avenue and 35th Street. In November, the $15 million Pacific Avenue overpass opened, and on Feb. 4, the station is scheduled to hold a grand opening.

Then things really start hopping.

Sound, Community and Everett transits are scheduled to begin operating from the station in early February, with Everett Transit offering a shuttle service to and from downtown, according to the city. There also will be taxi cabs, airport shuttles, and Greyhound and Trailways buses.

By July, Amtrak is expected to begin operating at Everett Station, with Sound Transit’s Sounder commuter rail to Seattle, Tacoma and, eventually, Lakewood to follow in 2003, Kaftanski said.

The transit operations alone should attract people during heavy commute hours in the morning and early evening, but Everett Station’s other tenants, such as the University Consortium and WorkSource Everett, will keep the place lively the rest of the day, with “activity from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m.,” Kaftanski said.

The consortium, which works with the five state universities as well as Edmonds, Everett and Skagit community colleges, will offer upper-level baccalaureate and master’s degree programs and certification programs at the station, said Larry Marrs, Executive Director of the North Snohomish-Island-Skagit Counties (NSIS) Higher Education Consortium.

Taking up the second floor and the north half of the third floor, the consortium will have classrooms, an interactive television studio, a computer lab, a lounge, a resource room and faculty offices.

Although there will be some individual course offerings as early as February, more will begin with the winter quarter in March, Marrs said, adding that a number of programs are in the works.

“Central Washington University is planning to offer its business administration courses (at the station), and Washington State University has quite an array of programs, mostly Web-based,” he said, adding that a master’s degree program for teachers, a Master of Education in Literacy, also is planned.

“One of the great things about Everett Station for distance education is if (students) don’t have the technology at home, they can use the computers and the Internet at the facility,” he said.

Another community resource, WorkSource Everett, is expected to bring in people as well when it starts up in April. The career-development center, to be housed on the north side of the first floor and a portion of the fourth floor, will include offices, conference rooms, a computer network hub and lab, and a resource center, according to the city.

Add to that a cafe that is scheduled to open in the spring and a 2,800-square-foot meeting room that can hold 144 seated for dinner, and there’s ample reason why the station could become a people place.

But the station’s use of art and its design — with its high ceiling, arches and large windows — could also get people pumped up about walking a few blocks to use the station’s facilities, Kaftanski said.

“Research shows that (if) you provide a more interesting environment that people can walk in, their willingness to walk farther increases,” Kaftanski said, noting the distance from the station’s entrance to Hoyt or Colby is about a half-mile.

To make the station inviting, the city looked to early 20th-century transit stations, with their gardens, their brick exteriors, their central clocks — and their charm — and integrated that into the building design and landscaping, which includes two gardens.

The city also allotted $330,000 of the construction budget to artwork, which can be seen in garden sculptures, on the terrazzo floor in the entrance and in the 9-foot clock that resides where the staircases to the second floor meet.

Kenneth Callahan’s Weyerhaeuser Murals, which once decorated the cafeteria walls of the Weyerhaeuser Co.’s Mill “B” administration building in north Everett, also have a presence along the walls facing the atrium and in the fourth-floor meeting room. The oil-paint murals, created in 1944, depict the lumber industry, once Everett’s claim to fame.

“What we’re trying to do is make this as friendly as possible, make it as attractive as possible, maximize people movement through here, and by doing that ... make this facility and the area around it successful and developed in a way that is very pedestrian attractive,” Kaftanski said.

Again, he sees the possibilities, referring to such development as a “secondary benefit” of the station, which could attract new neighborhood residential development and even commercial and light industrial high-tech businesses.

And he’s not the only one.

In the fall, Dave Koenig, Station Area Plan Project Manager, discussed the future of development surrounding Everett Station, which now is mostly commercial/industrial.

At an Everett Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Koenig said redevelopment most likely would be incremental, and he offered two plans for consideration.

One of the plans focuses on employment use only, such as office/industrial use, while the second plan looks at making the area mixed-use, with housing on the west side of the station and office/industrial on the east and west sides.

“It’s really exciting, what could happen,” Koenig said.

City Planning Director Paul Roberts, also at the luncheon, agreed.

“The one thing we’re sure of is the creation of Everett Station will change the nature of land uses around Everett Station,” he said. “So this plan is really to set the stage for some choices that our Planning Commission and, ultimately, our City Council will make as far as land use surrounding Everett Station.”

And, looking farther east, Roberts noted the potential for development along the Snohomish riverfront between Highway 2 and Rotary Park.

Not all of it is developable, due to environmental concerns, Roberts said, “but the development potential is there.”

And if that potential is realized, Everett Station’s location would make it “a linchpin between the riverfront and downtown,” he said.

Oh, the possibilities.

For more information on the station, visit the city of Everett’s Web site, www.everettwa.org. For more information on the University Consortium, call 425-252-9505.

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