Volume 31 • Issue 09 • September 2006

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At the center of the valley
Growth brings challenges, opportunities to Mount Vernon

by Stephen Howie


Megan O’Bryan, who manages Scott’s Bookstore in downtown Mount Vernon, remembers a time when the city was surrounded by farmland and major issues more often related to weather than the mounting pressures of growth and expansion.
“It was quiet,” O’Bryan said. “There was one stoplight, not very many stop signs and a lot of fields.”
The fact that O’Bryan is not yet 40 (she’s 36) speaks to how rapidly the City of Mount Vernon has transformed into a major hub between Seattle and Vancouver along the Interstate 5 corridor.
Between 1990 and 2000, the population increased by 50 percent. And the numbers aren’t expected to level off anytime soon. In fact, by 2020, the population of Mount Vernon is expected to double. The latest count puts the city at 26,000-plus, making it the largest in Skagit County and poised to more closely resemble Bellingham than Burlington in the years to come.
The city’s economy reflects both the pressures and payoffs of rapid growth. In the first seven months of 2006, sales tax revenues were up 16 percent compared to the same period in 2005. Last year, new construction was assessed at $89 million, about 40 percent more than in 2004.
O’Bryan said Mount Vernon is at a crucial juncture in its transformation from the small town where she grew up to something more.
“It’s growing by leaps and bounds,” O’Bryan said. “It’s a good time to be thinking about preserving some of the character.”

The residential squeeze
While growing pains are not unique to Mount Vernon, the city faces a challenge trying to offset abundant residential growth with an equal amount of industrial and commercial developments to keep the city tax base strong.
“We have a very large urban growth area to accommodate residential growth,” said Jana Hanson, the city’s community and economic development director. “One of our greatest challenges is to make sure we have a healthy balance between commercial/industrial and residential.”
Maintaining that balance could prove difficult. During the next 20 years, Mount Vernon and Sedro-Woolley are expected to absorb two-thirds of the residential growth in Skagit County.
To the north of Mount Vernon across the Skagit River, Burlington is bordered by farmland and has little room for additional expansion. Burlington also sports a healthy array of shopping outlets, big-box retailers and the Cascade Mall.
“They have a healthy commercial growth pattern, which has benefited them drastically from a tax standpoint,” said Mount Vernon Mayor Bud Norris.
In contrast, Mount Vernon faces the prospect of added residential growth without an equal amount of accompanying commercial expansion. Recent developments, including the 850-home Skagit Highlands development in east Mount Vernon, threaten to strain city services.

Balancing growth
In an effort to balance the city’s growth, in 2004, Mount Vernon annexed 500 acres to the south of town, adding needed commercial- and industrial-zoned space.
Last year, the city imposed a six-month moratorium on planned unit developments, such as Skagit Highlands, so city officials could adjust development rules to better promote balanced, gradual residential growth.
Kristen Whitener, Chamber of Commerce president and CEO, credited the city with looking down the road and realizing Mount Vernon had reached a decisive moment.
“People have been forward thinking and really looked at what’s going to benefit the community in terms of growth,” Whitener said. “We don’t want to become another blip on the I-5 map.”
In terms of commercial growth to the north, Hanson said developers have expressed increased interest in buying and revamping stores along College Way and Riverside Avenue, an area that features numerous strip malls, restaurants and grocery outlets.
A new 42,000-square-foot G.I. Joe’s Sports and Auto Store opened in 2005 just east of I-5 on College Way. Within the next year, Hanson said Wal-Mart is planning to move to a new location on the west side of the interstate and open an expanded “superstore.”
South of College Way, Skagit Valley Hospital is in the midst of an $88 million expansion that will double its current size. When construction is completed in the fall of 2007, the new 220,000-square-foot hospital building will include an emergency room and trauma unit, a family birth center with 21 private labor and delivery rooms and a critical-care unit for terminally ill patients.
The expanded hospital also will add needed jobs for city residents and tax money for city coffers.

Down by the river
In search of a way to keep Mount Vernon’s character alive and to set the city apart, city and business leaders are turning their attention downtown, pondering how to better take advantage of the city’s location on the banks of the Skagit River.
Mount Vernon grew up along the river. The Skagit was a source of commerce and a means of transportation for people, logs and just about everything else. Now city leaders are re-envisioning ways the city center could better co-exist with the Skagit and utilize the river as a tourist attraction.
As it stands, the river runs by downtown Mount Vernon virtually unnoticed by many visitors. Downtown businesses are separated from the water by an expansive parking lot on top of a concrete revetment. At the far edge of the lot, a boardwalk runs along the river, but it attracts only limited foot traffic and is often empty, even on sunny days.
The chamber’s Whitener imagines a time when people will have lunch by the river and then take a quiet stroll down a more inviting boardwalk atop a new levy.
“It’s exciting to see the possibilities,” she said.
But before the city can contemplate a revitalized waterfront, city leaders have another aspect of being by the river to consider – flooding.
During the most recent Skagit River flood, in 2003, water lapped up onto the revetment and halfway across the downtown parking lot. An army of volunteers and countless sandbags kept the rising river from flooding stores and streets, but it was very close.
At Scott’s Bookstore, O’Bryan remembers the 1990 flood when levies upstream from her store were breached and downtown business owners were not so lucky. The flood caused $160 million in damage.
“We actually did have water coming down our street,” O’Bryan said.

Flood concerns
O’Bryan and other business leaders say downtown development has been restricted for years by the potential damage from flooding.
“Developers don’t want to put a lot of money into a building that might flood,” O’Bryan said. “Once we know the downtown is protected, you’ll see a lot of redevelopment and revitalization.”
If something is not done, development restrictions could get even worse. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is revising Skagit County flood maps, a move that could increase the “basic elevation” level in downtown Mount Vernon by 8.5 feet, according to Mayor Norris.
“New construction has to be one foot above basic elevation,” Norris said. “You couldn’t do any substantial remodel or renovations downtown without having buildings on stilts.”
The city is considering a number of possible options to offer downtown flood protection, including a new levy that would run a quarter mile between Lions Park and the city’s wastewater treatment plant. Norris said he anticipates the flood control efforts will cost around $30 million and take three years to complete.
One day, Norris said visitors should be able to sit in a restaurant or stroll through a shop in downtown Mount Vernon and look out the window at the Skagit River.
“That’s one of our primary objectives – to gain views and access to the river,” he said. “It’s a tremendous natural endowment that we’ve basically turned our back on for years.”

Tulips and tartans
While city officials ponder ways to encourage development downtown, Mount Vernon’s stable of annual events continues to grow and thrive, drawing thousands of visitors from across the state and around the world.
The biggest of these annual draws by far is the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The event, recently expanded to run for the entire month of April, brings in an estimated $14 million in tourism dollars and attracts between 300,000 and 400,000 visitors every year.
Since the Tulip Festival began in 1984, it has blossomed into one of the premier destination events in the Northwest, according to Executive Director Cindy Verge. It is now the biggest tulip festival in the United States and was recently named one of the top 100 events by the American Bus Association.
“It is one of the most positive things that I’ve ever been involved with,” Verge said. “The people who come here want to enjoy something beautiful.”
In July, Mount Vernon turns its attention to all things Scottish during the Skagit Valley Highland Games & Celtic Festival, a weekend event that takes place at Edgewater Park along the banks of the Skagit River across the bridge from downtown Mount Vernon.
Burly men in kilts toss cabers, pitch rocks and play Scottish tunes on bagpipes and drums while similarly clad women and men contend for the title in the Northern United States Open dance championships.
Ten-thousand visitors a year take in the games and enjoy shows by some of the top Celtic performers in the world.

Artistic revival
Even if it’s not Tulip time or the Highland Games weekend, Mount Vernon has two major venues for everything from an evening at the symphony to knee-slapping North Carolina bluegrass.
At the northeast edge of town, McIntyre Hall rises above the hilltop campus of Skagit Valley College like a cultural lighthouse.
The state-of-the-art $18 million performing arts and conference center opened its doors in November 2004. Inside the spacious auditorium, McIntyre Hall feels like a big city theater. Sleek cherry paneling lines the walls and ceiling and 700 midnight-blue seats curve around the stage. The stage itself is adjustable to accommodate musicals, drama or dance, and can seat an orchestra of up to 90 musicians.
Outside the auditorium, the 12,000-square-foot lobby that wraps around the front of the building can be converted into a conference center for 700 people, or a banquet hall seating 400. Banquets can be catered by students from Skagit Valley College’s renowned culinary arts program.

Historic theater’s future in doubt?
While the new hall on the hill is thriving, some say the future of downtown Mount Vernon’s historic Lincoln Theatre is less secure.
The theater, built in 1926, recently completed a $1 million facelift that restored the marquee to its original grandeur and transformed the theater inside and out.
The Lincoln now has comfy red velvet seats and a retractable movie screen to show independent and foreign films. Concerts are piped through a new sound system and local plays and performances are brought to life by a new state-of-the-art lighting system.
But just a year after the theater’s grand re-opening, the Mount Vernon City Council is considering a measure that could be the first step toward selling the Lincoln building and its adjoining shops. The city has owned the building for five years.
Downtown business leaders worry that the city could lose an important asset that has greatly expanded Mount Vernon’s cultural offerings and brought more people downtown for concerts, independent films and arts and education programs.
Bookstore manager O’Bryan, who also serves as executive director of the Downtown Business Community, said the loss of the Lincoln would be devastating.
“We don’t have anything else like that in Skagit Valley,” she said. “We would just lose a lot of movies and events that would have no other home.”
In response to the possible sale, the nonprofit foundation that operates the Lincoln polled its 1,200 members in July about the future options for the theater. According to Executive Director Carol Hays, the response was very strongly in favor of keeping the situation the way it is – with the city owning the building and the foundation running the theater.
“There are a lot of concerned people in the community who want to know that the future of the theater is secured,” Hays said.
Those people have nothing to worry about, according to Mayor Norris, who says fears of the Lincoln being bought by the highest bidder are unfounded.
Norris said the council was considering surplussing the theater building, the first step toward a potential sale, in hopes that the nonprofit Lincoln Foundation would buy it. He said few developers would purchase the Lincoln when the foundation has a 50-year, $12 a year lease attached to the theater portion of the building. He said he was trying to do the foundation a favor by giving it a chance to buy the theater and adjacent shops at a reasonable price.
“They could basically name their own terms on the purchase of the retail portion if we surplus the theater and retail portion,” Norris said. “They could buy it and have some cash flow (from shop rental payments) to stabilize their nonprofit.”
The flipside of the offer is that Norris and several council members believe the city should not be in the business of owning and renting property.
“We have no business being in the commercial real estate business,” Norris said. “That’s not what the city was designed to do.”

Growing diversity
In recent years, the Lincoln Theatre has dedicated increasing attention and programming to Mount Vernon’s growing Latino community. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Latinos accounted for 25 percent of the city’s population.
The Lincoln hosts an annual tribute to Latina legend Selena that packs the house. Mount Vernon businesses also have begun to tap into the growing Latino market. Some grocery stores in the city have sections devoted exclusively to Mexican food and produce sections have been expanded to include an assortment of peppers rarely seen north of the border.
The community radio station, KSVR, offers almost 12 hours of Spanish programming every day, and a free weekly paper is published exclusively in Spanish. A year ago, the city launched a new Spanish-language television station, TV26, that airs public service announcements and programming focused on the needs of the Latino population.
The annual Cinco de Mayo parade downtown grows and expands every year, as does the annual farmworkers’ march, highlighting the needs and collective voice of farmworkers in the Skagit Valley.
While Mount Vernon grows, and grows more diverse, Chamber President Whitener says the city has retained its small-town charm.
“Our location is wonderful. The people here are wonderful,” she said. “It’s just a special place.”


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Mount Baker is visible on the horizon above Mount Vernon and the Skagit River in the foreground. The city’s population is expected to double in the next 20 years. Photo courtesy of Mount Vernon Chamber of Commerce.







McIntyre Hall rises above the campus of Skagit Valley College in northeast Mount Vernon. The $18 million performing arts and conference center is named for the Jack and Shirley McIntyre family of Sedro-Woolley, who contributed $6 million. The hall opened in November 2004.






As Mount Vernon grows by “leaps and bounds,” Scott’s Bookstore Manager Megan O’Bryan says, “It’s a good time to be thinking about preserving some of the character.”