Stanwood’s quest for a civic campus

In the 1990s, the police department moved from its quarters in City Hall to its current location in an old bank building on Main Street at 88th Avenue.

Staff cubicles filled the council meeting chamber after meetings were moved elsewhere.

The search begins

In 2014, under the leadership of Mayor Leonard Kelley, the council started looking for options. With a $21,000 grant to fund a study of potential new City Hall sites, they considered 15 locations, but none panned out.

Meanwhile, stricter FEMA Flood requirements made businesses think hard about establishing in the floodplain. Rules for funding required that emergency services like police departments be out of disaster zones. 

• October 2017 — Council planned to build a new City Hall and police station together in a civic campus, out of the downtown floodplain. The state approved a grant to help purchase 1.25 acres on 72nd Avenue NW, south of Church Creek Park.

• December 2018 — After a feasibility study, the city bought the property for about $579,000 from Vine Street Group — with the state grant of $291,000 covering more than half. VSG (now called West Edge Development) proposed improving traffic by moving 268th Street (Stanwood-Bryant Road), away from the intersection of Highway 532 and 72nd Avenue to improve traffic. The new street would run past the new civic campus property and align with a high school driveway on 72nd Avenue.

• June 2019 — Council approved $287,896 for Mackenzie’s design work, surveying and engineering. Mackenzie is a regional design firm with a Seattle office that specializes in structural engineering, land-use planning, interior design and architecture. Public feedback was sought via an open house and survey.

• January 2020 — Council chose the “Community Porch” design, with room for city and police administrations and council chambers where the community could also meet. It featured building accents with wood features, a plaza with seating and a walkway to the adjacent Church Creek Park. Cost estimate at the time: $13.4 million.

• February 2020 — Council members discussed how to pay for it and whether voters would approve bonds.

Then-council member Elizabeth Callaghan wanted to buy one more acre at $600,000 since it would be just a “drop in the bucket” compared to the overall cost.

Director of Finance David Hammond, hired in 2017, advocated spending incoming one-time funds on one-time expenses — sales tax from high school construction for the civic center. This would increase Stanwood’s credit rating and decrease the loan needed for the civic campus, he said.

Hitting the brakes

• March 2020 — COVID-19 stopped everything. Under pandemic conditions, the city closed City Hall to the public and increased online services with city staff partially working from home.

• July 2020 — Mayor Kelley resigned, and Callaghan was appointed mayor.

• February 2021 — Mayor Callaghan asked the council — with new members, Sid Roberts, Darren Robb and Steve Shepro — to rethink the project. “It sends the wrong message for the city to move out,” council member Shepro said.

“On one hand, we’re paying millions to reduce flooding downtown … and we have a downtown revitalization plan,” Robb said. “We have a running history of apparent intent to keep the city downtown, then the next year we buy property (on the hill).”

Council member Timothy Pearce thought the new civic campus would be overshadowed by the new high school. He’s the only current council member with institutional memory on this project. He has bounced between the council and the planning commission since 2003 and has been on the council from 2015 to the present.

Council member Rob Johnson, a former FEMA floodplain manager, wanted to get City Hall out of the liquefaction and earthquake zone.

“We did go through a long process to find property that was practical. It was specific for a new City Hall,” Johnson said. “If we go to the feds or state for assistance with those (floodplain) structures, we’ll get zero. Grants would be helpful.”

Council member Judy Williams wondered why the council was going through all this again and noted that interest rates were historically low, but not for long.

• April 2021 — Mackenzie reported that building just the police station with council chambers on the hill would cost $10.1 million, and renovating the old City Hall building would be $672,000. Building a new place for council chambers on a city-owned lot west of the old City Hall was cost-prohibitive.

By then, the cost to build the original plan rose from $13.4 million to $15.4 million due to higher prices and the cost of an additional acre.

The council then considered other locations, the best of which was the Stanwood Swim & Fitness Club building at 9612 270th St. NW, east of Skagit Regional Clinic.

The council contracted Mackenzie and others up to $150,000 to assess what it would cost to renovate the building and parking lot.

• May 2021 — Council approved another $80,400 for Mackenzie to further assess the athletic club building. Council member Dianne White protested that she was against this location, which the YMCA had already found unsuitable. Even so, she agreed to finish the evaluation.

• August 2021 — Mackenzie shared its findings including geotechnical recommendations and cost estimates. The building needed a new roof and a parking lot renovation. Also, the building was built at a seismic risk level 2 — suitable for offices, but the police department needed risk level 4.

Mackenzie offered two options: Build a new police station on the same lot and renovate the existing building for City Hall for $16.3 million plus land acquisition. Or upgrade the existing building to seismic standards for police and City Hall for $20.7 million plus more to buy the property — price unknown; it wasn’t listed for sale.

Compared to the original $15.4 million plan, the alternatives cost more than the council wanted to spend.

Council members Johnson and White favored the original plan on the hill, as did Williams, who saw traffic issues. White saw Church Creek Park next door as an asset. Delinquency problems in the park could be solved by a police presence there.

But Mayor Callaghan and other council members wanted to find a place in the historic lower Stanwood for City Hall. Shepro and Pearce wanted the new civic center to be a landmark — not overshadowed by the new Stanwood High School building towering across the street. Council member Roberts was concerned about highway traffic problems.

The city can sell the property by May 2029 — and purchase another property for the same purpose. Otherwise, it will need to pay back the $291,000 grant with interest, Community Development Director Patricia Love said.

• 2022 — The city got appraisals for work on the existing City Hall and police buildings and started design work for remodeling. The council approved funding in the 2023-34 budget.

Looking ahead

Roberts became mayor in November 2021. Council members Johnson, White and Williams have been replaced by Andreena Bergquist, Dani Johnson and Tim Schmitt, who took office in January 2021. Only Pearce has been on board the entire journey.

The city still owns the property on the hill but has no alternatives in the historic part of town, just the unsolved problem — where to put City Hall and the police station and how to convince voters to support the financing.

Having decided the timing isn’t right for building a civic campus, the city for now will make do with remodeling the buildings it has.