Everett Council Calls Time Out On County Courthouse Parking Plan

The Everett City Council has tabled discussion on an agreement between the City of Everett and Snohomish County for parking arrangements around the new courthouse complex in downtown Everett. Late last year the City of Everett and Snohomish County explored jointly working on a parking facility that would serve the new courthouse complex as well as help with parking near Xfinity Arena. Those talks ended up going nowhere and in December the Everett City Council passed an emergency ordinance requiring any government building built in downtown Everett to provide one off street parking space for every 800 square feet. Since the first of the year the city and county have been working on an interim agreement to allow construction to move forward. Last week members of the city council got a look at the agreement and had questions regarding the number of parking spaces. Tonight the council got a briefing on the project.

The briefing started with a surprise as it was revealed for security reasons 10 parking spaces on Wall street would be permanently eliminated. That did not sit well with a couple of the council members. The math around how many parking spaces would be needed for the project also proved to be a puzzle for councilmembers who couldn’t seem to get a concrete answer on the number of parking spaces that would be lost on either a temporary basis during construction or permanently once the new courthouse was done.

There was also conflicting information on the number of parking spaces the county would be leasing in a proposed parking garage that the City of Everett or private party would build within a 250 – 500 square foot area near the new courthouse. That garage would have to be built within 15 years to gain county participation. Given all of the questions and no concrete answers, the city council voted to table discussion on the parking agreement until a later time.