Light rail is helping Mountlake Terrace find its heart

Mountlake Terrace used to be a spread-out place full of small houses with lawns.

Light rail is changing all that.

A five minute walk from Mountlake Terrace Station, there's a trampoline business called Sky Zone. It's full of bouncing kids.

Staci Chavez’s kids are jumping around inside. She takes a moment to look around at the new neighborhood that sprung up here, seemingly overnight.

“There’s exponentially more people here than there was before," she said.

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The neighborhood is full of five story apartment buildings, with over a thousand people living inside. On the street level, there's a brand new pizza restaurant, a newly built Montessori preschool.

It's all very different from the spread-out homes with lawns that have dominated this bedroom community since the 1950s. The new stuff is more urban than it is suburban.

How does all that development make Chavez feel?

“Shocked," she said. "It’s crazy, it’s cool.”

Why is she shocked?

“Because it used to be trees?" she jokes. "I think the biggest thing is shock that something like this could fit in this space.”

Light rail makes this kind of dense development possible, because when people get off the train, they're on foot. So, this neighborhood is built for walking. Why climb into a car if your home is just a five minute walk down a pleasant street?

One of the newest apartment buildings is called Traxx, with two x’s. It has an entry designed to look like a London Underground subway stop.

Apartment manager Zara Bensouda said she's setting up a booth at the light rail station on opening day. She expects to have all the apartments leased out by the end of the weekend.

“So most of our demographic is moving from Seattle and, you know, just with the commute, it's been hard to go from north to Seattle," Bensouda said. "But with the light rail opening up it's been exciting for a lot of people.”

Bensouda said other residents are moving from out of state, or are Boeing workers in Everett.

Madelyn Blais and Jacob Dicks recently moved into Traxx. They come from Mount Vernon and Brier (the next town east), respectively. They plan to take light rail into Seattle often, and to patronize the businesses just downstairs from their apartment.

"Yeah, we went to Zeek's literally last night," Dicks said. "It's very convenient if we're feeling lazy and you want to go catch a beer or go get dinner."

It's so close that someone with no shame could attend the restaurant in their pajamas.

The presence of so many customers living nearby, and more customers exiting the light rail station, is inspiring businesses to move into the town center, too.

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Sky Zone (the trampoline place) said families in the apartments above and across the street are buying monthly passes and using it as a neighborhood playground for their kids.

Dr. Kathryn Jagow moved her dentist office here.

“I think that for patients, it's really a buzzing area that people want to be at," she said.

Mark Dunford moved his Hemlock State Brewing Company out of his garage and into a new space just three blocks from light rail. He said he's been half-joking about brewing a Light Rail Light Pale for customers later this year.

“We felt like we were getting in on the ground floor of what the city wanted to do and really what the neighbors wanted for their city.”

What many neighbors want, and what Mountlake Terrace officials have been trying to create, is a town center for the city’s spread-out residents to enjoy. The idea is to put lots of goods and services in one convenient neighborhood.

It’s an example of what all the cities in this corridor are trying to do, to varying degrees.

“Light rail is really fundamental in making that happen,” said Christy Osborn, Mountlake Terrace's Community and Economic Development Director.

Osborn said her city's Town Center includes two nodes: the development just south of the station next to I-5, and an older center a few blocks east.

That older area is also sprouting new apartment buildings, after years of economic stagnation following a couple of major arsons.

Osborn said residents have asked for a grocery store in this town center, but the city hasn't been able to make that happen yet.

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“So in community development, residential leads retail," Osborn said. "And so you need the people here in order for those businesses to locate here to be successful. So we're trying to up the densities in that core area to get those people. And when we have those people, then the grocery stores and those other goods and services come here to the community.”

To achieve the kind of population density that attracts grocery stores means this compact little neighborhood around light rail must grow. Dozens of tiny cinderblock homes will have to be torn down to make way for more apartment buildings, between the two nodes in the town center.

Dennis Buskeness lives in one of those homes.

“I've been here for about 35 years,” he said, as he stacked firewood outside his front door in preparation for winter.

Buskeness said he loves his neighborhood. It's convenient, and he loves the businesses popping up a short walk from his home. And yet, he's planning to sell out to a developer and move away.

“Well, I guess you can't stop progress," he said.

Buskeness has had some offers, but he's holding out for one that truly impresses him.

"You know, when someone offers you a price that's above what you're trying to get, it makes it hard to turn it down.”

He said his brother recently sold his home, and is now sitting pretty in a retirement home he pays for out of the profits.

You can’t stop progress, but making a million dollars on a home he once bought for $50,000 takes the sting out of it.