More than 1,800 homes are under construction, recently completed, or planned near Mountlake Terrace Station, where light rail service will launch Friday.
When Sound Transit begins service on the Lynnwood Link extension on August 30, the stations will directly serve three more cities in the Puget Sound. Two of those stations will make Sound Transit’s light rail system a multi-county system, marking Snohomish County’s first direct connection to the regional light rail system. As the county’s southernmost city on the line, Mountlake Terrace will be the gateway to Snohomish County for light rail riders from King County.
The City of Mountlake Terrace, in anticipation for its first light rail station, prepared land use reforms needed to transform its station area into a dense urban neighborhood. This growth has been planned for the aptly named Town Center and Gateway neighborhoods to the northeast and southeast of the light rail station. No housing growth is planned on western walkshed of the station across I-5 due to the presence of the Nile Shrine Golf Course and Lake Ballinger — plus a decision to keep the single family zoning to the north.
A city of just four square miles mostly dominated by single family zoning, Mountlake Terrace had seen flat population levels since 1990, hovering around 20,000 residents. However, in the last few years, housing growth has picked up and the population has jumped, reaching 24,260 in the state’s last count in April. Planners expect Mountlake Terrace’s population to double, reaching 44,000 by 2044.
Like the two new Shoreline light rail stations, the surrounding areas have historically been and mostly remain as suburban neighborhoods that are now seeing multifamily and mixed-use developments retrofit them for light rail oriented land uses. Perhaps the most noticeable evidence of Mountlake Terrace’s suburban retrofit is the Terrace Station development.
