Lynnwood Public Facilities District — Convention Center

In August 1999, the city of Lynnwood created the South Snohomish County Public Facilities District, an entity charged with developing a convention center for the area – a project to serve the community as well as act as an economic catalyst.

Four years later, the PFD has a new name, the Lynnwood Public Facilities District, and a new executive director, Grant Dull, who in September took over for Bill Evans.

A site has been selected, at the northwest corner of 196th Street SW and 37th Avenue SW; construction drawings are 60 percent complete; and a purchase agreement has been reached on the last parcel of land, the Video Only site.

The PFD’s new name, instated in April of this year, better reflects the origin of the revenue stream, which will be coming strictly from within the city of Lynnwood, Dull said.

The funding of the proposed center consists of the 0.033 percent sales-tax rebate authorized through the state PFD legislation, local hotel/motel tax revenues and rents paid by tenants of existing businesses on the site, which includes the Alderwood Village Shopping Center. No new taxes will be created to finance the center’s development, according to the PFD.

Plans for the center call for a two-story, brick-and-glass building with 63,975 square feet of total floor space and just under 40,000 square feet of flexible, rentable space, Dull said.

“None of the local hotels have meeting space this large, so we won’t be taking convention business away from local hotels,” he said. “In fact, it’s just the opposite. ... The larger conventions that wouldn’t normally come to Lynnwood now will, and they’ll stay at local hotels.”

A rough estimate for the cost of the project, including land purchase and building construction, is about $30 million, Dull said.

Construction designs are expected to be fully complete by later this fall, with on-site demolition of the Bucky’s Muffler building and an old movie theater coming before the end of the year, he said. Building construction is expected to start in 2004 and be completed by the second quarter of 2005, Dull said.

“I think we’re fortunate to be building during a time when the building industry is being under-utilized,” he said. “It does give us good value. It’s a good time to be putting people to work.”