2018/08/08 Council Agenda Packet

IF Skotdal " T 425 252 5400 2707 Colby Avenue,Suite 1200 F 425 258 2473 Post Office Box 5267 www.skotdal.com Everett Washington 98206 REAL ESTATE July 30, 2018 Everett City Council 2930 Wetmore Avenue,Suite 9-A Everett,WA 98201 Re: Metro Everett Plan—Social Services&Clinics Dear Everett City Council: As one of the largest property owners in downtown Everett, we lease office and retail space to a wide variety of customers, including social service agencies and clinics such as Evergreen Recovery Centers. We value our relationship with each of them and understand the important role they play in serving our community. While we seek to build partnerships and attract many different kinds of working professionals to the heart of downtown, we cannot ignore the deleterious effect on public safety that has been caused by such an intense concentration of clinics and social services in Everett's urban center. The civic harm outweighs the benefits. As you prepare to enact the Metro Plan, we strongly encourage you to maintain restrictions on new clinics in the proposed Urban Mixed zone. While this poses some loss of business opportunity,we believe it is absolutely necessary to create an enterprise district that can successfully attract new businesses, entrepreneurs, and investors. Public confidence is a fragile commodity that hinges on seemingly small interactions that customers,visitors, residents, and employees experience every day. A Funko employee being accosted on the street; a shop owner cleaning up human feces from their front entrance; a parent steering their child around someone experiencing a mental health crisis—these are the stories that matter. If the Metro Plan is to have any chance of success,we must change the narrative. We must recognize the severe disparity in siting social services in Everett's urban core, and take measurable, concrete steps to restore the balance. That work begins by extending the existing restriction on new clinics in the Central Business District to the proposed Urban Mixed zone in the Metro Plan. Without that safety mechanism in place, new businesses and investors can never have assurance that the City is committed to changing the adverse environment and creating a district where residents, employees, and entrepreneurs can thrive.Along the same lines, existing stakeholders won't have confidence that their efforts are truly supported. Our company recently purchased the Opus Bank Building at 2828 Colby Avenue, a 52,500 SF office building that has been largely unoccupied for years. We are making a major investment in overhauling the exterior and interior of the building to prepare the property for new tenants. Additionally, we have begun design development for a new 75-unit apartment building at 2721 Wetmore Avenue, directly across the street from the Everett Performing Arts Center. We have DOWNTOWN EVERETT I DISCOVER THE URBAN IN YOU