Bracing for light rail, Lynnwood City Council grapples with growth
LYNNWOOD — Over a decade ago, Lisa Utter and her fellow former city council members set out to make the city center the “heart” of Lynnwood.
Instead, they found the downtown core was more like a “pomegranate,” she said.
“It has no heart and it has no skin,” said Utter, who served from 1998 to 2009. “When I was knocking on doors, I would have people say to me: ‘I really just sleep here. I don’t pay any attention to what goes on in Lynnwood. There’s the mall and that’s it.’”
Back then, city council members began priming the 250-acre city center “sub-area” for growth, as the city made then-distant plans to become a transit hub with a new light rail station by 2024. They raised building height limits. They approved streetscape plans to be more pedestrian-friendly. And in 2012, the council adopted a planned action ordinance — speeding up the process to approve roughly 3,000 new homes within the city center.
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/bracing-for-light-rail-lynnwood-city-council-grapples-with-growth/