A grand convergence of factors is promising to revitalize the Totem Lake area. But - instead of the stars aligning just right - the private and public sectors are teaming up in a way that will change the neighborhood for the better, according to city officials.
The biggest and probably the most significant news is that the careworn Totem Lake Mall was sold for an undisclosed price in late January. But Evergreen Hospital has also announced plans for a major expansion of its campus, and the city is working on an upzone of the neighborhood that will create "a dense, compact community with a mix of business, commercial and residential uses, and a high level of transit and pedestrian activity," according to the Department of Planning and Community Development.
The mall
The new owners of the Totem Lake Mall are Ohio-based Developers Diversified Realty (DDR) and New York City-based Coventry Real Estate Advisors, and "a large-scale redevelopment," is the goal, according to a DDR press release.
"We specialize in open-air, community shopping centers," said DDR spokesman Scott Schroeder. DDR currently owns and manages roughly 360 retail operations in 44 states, and the partnership with Coventry focuses on acquiring property "ripe for redevelopment," he said. "They're usually malls that don't work in the mall format anymore."
Totem Lake Mall could be a poster child for such retail doldrums. About a quarter of the retail space is currently vacant in the 290,000-square-foot shopping center, and key to redevelopment efforts is finding new businesses to take over the empty storefronts.
"We are talking to tenants who might be interested," Schroeder said. The businesses cut across all retail categories and uses, but DDR is not yet ready to announce who they might be, he said in March. "Hopefully, we'll have something to announce soon."
A revitalized Totem Lake Mall will be good news for the city, according to Finance Director Marilynne Beard. "We really know that is a real key component for the city's economic base," she said.
That's important because the city is facing an estimated $1.2 million budget deficit for 2004, and sales tax is a significant source of revenue for Kirkland coffers.
The effect on the local economy will depend on how quickly the mall is redeveloped, Beard cautioned, and on the mix of new businesses that could open up shop there. "I can't imagine it getting any worse," she said of the long-struggling shopping center.
"I think this has a very important role in the redevelopment of other areas of Totem Lake," added Craig Jones, a lawyer from Seattle-based Graham & Dunn, which is representing DDR and Coventry.
Rx for Evergreen
The board of directors of Evergreen Hospital announced in March that the medical center plans to start work on an eight-story building and a new emergency department next to it in 2005.
Money for the expansion will come from a 20-year, $120 million bond measure that will be up for a vote on May 18, said Evergreen spokeswoman Amy Gepner. Voters on the bond live in the hospital district, which includes Kirkland, Redmond, Woodinville, Kenmore, Bothell, Duvall and Carnation, she said.
The bond calls for an increase in property tax of 27 cents per $1,000 of assessed value. That works out to be an $81 bump in taxes a year for the owner of a home worth $300,000, Gepner said.
Evergreen is currently licensed for 244 beds, and the state requires a so-called Certificate of Need before those numbers could increase, Gepner said. The hospital might apply for the certificate as early as next year, but initial plans call for moving beds out of the existing hospital into the new building, instead of adding new ones, she said.
"We have about 190 beds in the old portion of the hospital," Gepner said, adding that those rooms are too small to hold new medical equipment that didn't exist when the rooms were added in the early 1970s. "It's more expensive to renovate them than to move them," she said. The older rooms will be converted to other uses such as patient-support services.
The new patient rooms will be located on the second through fifth floors of the new building. The ground floor will become a new hospital lobby, and the top three floors will be used as the
need arises, Gepner said. The eight-story building will also be able to accommodate up to six large operating rooms, according to a press release from Evergreen.
The new, 40,000-square-foot emergency center will also meet a very real need, according to Gepner. Originally designed to handle around 28,000 patients a year, the old ER treated more than 50,000 people last year, she said.
The change represents about a 10-percent jump in growth each year. "We don't expect that to slow down," Gepner said. The higher numbers reflect a demographic trend that saw a 26 percent jump in Hospital District population from 1993 to 2003, she explained.
"This expansion will allow us to address critical space issues and allow patients to receive more specialty services closer to home," according to Evergreen CEO, Steve Brown.
In the zone
"Three major (Totem Lake) developments are in play," said Eric Shields, Kirkland's Planning Director. The mall and the hospital are two, but a mixed-use area west of the hospital is another, he said. "What we're doing is implementing the neighborhood plan."
It's not easy. "This is the first area, and the most complex area to rewrite zoning codes," Shields said. The changes also include design guidelines for redevelopment, and those guidelines include elements such as a call for creating more open space.
"It's really very good timing," he said of the mall's sale and the hospital's expansion. "We did complete regulations for the hospital last year," Shields added.
"The hospital clearly has growth potential," he said, speculating that the growth might include new medical offices on mall property. And representatives from the new owners of the mall will be working with the design-review board this spring on redevelopment plans, Shields added.
"For the community as a whole, this will re-energize the area," he said of all the development plans that have cropped up lately.
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at (206)461-1309 or rzabel@nwlink.com.[[In-content Ad]]
