EVERETT — A few days before work on the new Snohomish County Courthouse was supposed to begin, a new wrinkle has appeared.
The new courthouse is to be built on a 135-space parking lot owned by the county. Losing those spaces raised alarm bells with the city of Everett, which subsequently held up the county’s permit unless the county also created 300 new parking spaces.
Now the staff and members of First Presbyterian Church, which is across Rockefeller Avenue from the site of the new building, are concerned that they’ll have no place to park.
First Presbyterian’s members often use that lot, with up to 150 people coming to church on Sundays, pastor Alan Dorway said, and a similar number midweek for large memorial services.
In April, Everett and the county struck a tentative deal that would meet the city’s parking requirement, and on July 22 the Everett City Council took up an agreement that codified the deal.
Then Dorway took the podium.
“This is a massive shell game,” Dorway said. “There is no parking being addressed. It’s moving square footage.”
Dorway was referring to the method the city used to calculate how many parking spaces were needed for the new building.
The 300 spaces the city required were based on the new courthouse’s 253,000 square feet of office space. It’s larger than the space used by the current courthouse and Mission building — 165,000 square feet total — but the same number of employees are expected to work there.
The city’s math works like this: The new courthouse will have 35 dedicated parking spaces, and the county will be required to move part of its fleet of vehicles that have been stored in the county parking garage, freeing up another 105 spaces.
Then the city calculated that the demolition of the current courthouse building reduces the need by another 146 spaces, and vacating the Mission building frees up another 50, for a grand total of 336 spaces, more than what was required.
But that accounting doesn’t represent reality, Dorway said.
“It’s not like those employees are losing their jobs, they’re just being transferred to a new building,” Dorway said.
“It’s just moving cars around,” he added. “There’s no added parking downtown.”
And those 135 parking spots in the lot across the street will soon be going away for good.
Snohomish County had hoped to start demolition in late July, but that timetable has been pushed back. Major work is on hold until at least mid-August, after the County Council votes on contracts related to the project.
Likewise, the City Council is scheduled to adopt the agreement between the city and county at its next regular meeting July 29.
Mayor Ray Stephanson told the council that, with the county relocating its fleet vehicles from its parking garage, there wouldn’t be any appreciable loss of parking during the construction period.
But there were enough questions about the plan that Councilman Ron Gipson asked for a briefing on the entire project before they take the vote Wednesday.
“I want to talk about the whole issue,” Gipson said.
The main requirement imposed on the county is that if the city builds a parking garage within 15 years of the opening of the new courthouse, the county will be required to rent 300 parking spaces in the garage, provided at least a portion of it is within 250 feet of the new courthouse.
The city has no obligation to build a parking garage, however.
The county also will be required to maintain a cap of 1,908 full-time employees on its campus, including in the new courthouse. The Mission building will have to remain vacant afterward in order to adhere to the city’s parking requirements.
The County Council also is considering a measure that will allow First Presbyterian to use the county parking garage for event parking at a flat rate of $2 per vehicle.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald. Noah Haglund contributed to this report.
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