Lynnwood City Center has nearly 3,000 homes in development, but most wait on two megaprojects to finalize plans and break ground.
Sound Transit just launched Lynnwood Link service on Friday, with four new stations now directly serving three more cities in the Puget Sound. The terminus of this extension is now in Lynnwood at Snohomish County’s most connected transit center, which added Community Transit’s brand new Swift Orange Line earlier this year. Seeking to take advantage of the county’s biggest transit node, Lynnwood has been working to transform its City Center neighborhood.
Lynnwood’s station area stands out among the other stations on the extension, which we already reviewed: Shoreline South, Shoreline North, and Mountlake Terrace Station. The City of Lynnwood isn’t working with a single family neighborhood like the other cities have had to grapple with. Instead, light rail arrives at the edge of an older multifamily and suburban retail district. This means that there will be many large parcels for developers to reimagine and existing retail and services for new residents to enjoy.
The prevalence of strip mall parcels ripe for redevelopment and the existing commercial nucleus could smooth the path for an urban retrofit of suburbia, but obstacles remain as well. The large lots make for exciting master planned projects, but also take a big investment of capital to realize. In the meantime, Lynnwood City Center is a hodgepodge of parking craters and the strip malls, drive-thrus, and office parks attached to them.
Huge blocks and supersized roads intermixed with half-hearted sidewalk networks make walking around the City Center hardly a pleasurable affair — many sometimes dangerous, especially for those not ensconced in big metal boxes. Lynnwood opted to widen 196th Street SW to seven lanes ahead of the light rail opening, worsening the pedestrian environment and enlarging the obstacle between the northern section of the City Center and the light rail station. Sound Transit’s 1,670-stall parking garage next to its station attracts car traffic to the area.
