There goes the neighborhood: 23 homes for sale

LYNNWOOD — In a rare move, dozens of families living in a suburban oasis near I-5 are simultaneously putting their homes up for sale.

The homeowners aren’t looking for anyone to move in.

With a mixture of heartache, excitement and resignation, these families are looking to make a date with a bulldozer and a builder.

About two-thirds of the property owners in the Oak Knoll neighborhood have banded together to jointly sell at least 11.5 acres. Others still are considering whether to join in.

Together, they hope to attract a big-time builder who can pay top dollar for their land and build hundreds of condos in six- to eight-story buildings.

Otherwise, they fear they’ll be forced to watch their beloved neighborhood painfully carved up piecemeal for townhouses. And if that happens, they fear their chances for selling their land will plummet.

“The only choice we had was to come together as a neighborhood, to help each other, protect each other,” said Terry Quick, who helped organize his neighbors. “That’s our only defense.”

So far, at least 23 of 32 properties inside the Oak Knoll neighborhood have teamed up, plus a handful more on the edge of the neighborhood.

The asking price for the land: $24.1 million and rising with each additional property posted. The price tag could go as high as $30 million for about 30 properties, said Steve Canter, a Home Realty sales manager who is coordinating the deal.

If a sale goes through, property owners will be paid based on the square footage of their land, Canter said.

The strategy, and its scale, are unique, some developers said.

“I’ve not heard of a whole neighborhood assembling itself and seeking out a developer,” said David Toyer, a vice-president for home builder Barclays North Inc. “Traditionally, a builder goes out and assembles property.”

Most residents said they feel they had little choice but to agree to sell.

‘Writing on the wall’

The fate of the Oak Knoll neighborhood was set more than a decade ago when the county ambiguously dubbed the area at I-5 and 164th Street an “urban center.”

By 2003, county officials made it clear they expect the area to become a mixture of dense townhouses or apartments and businesses.

That’s in stark contrast to the Oak Knoll neighborhood’s 2,000-square-foot homes on large properties.

As a sign of things to come, Newberry Square looms above the neighborhood. The apartments and businesses built there in 2004 make up the county’s first urban center demonstration project.

“That was the beginning of the end,” Quick said.

The homes closest to Newberry Square have to look at a building that rises about 60 feet above their back yards.

Ever since the project was completed, developers have been buying up nearby land and redeveloping it.

Neighbors have watched bulldozers mow down trees and homes just like theirs in recent years.

“I kind of thought we were immune, a dead-end off the beaten path. I was wrong,” said Dale Wilson, a hospital nurse who has lived in the neighborhood 19 years. His first inclination was that his neighbors were, well, nuts.

He’s since changed his mind.

“Honestly, the writing is on the wall,” he said. “Eventually it’s going to happen, whether it happens this year or next year. It’s time to get out of Dodge.”

Wilson was drawn to the neighborhood for its peace and quiet. It’s next to protected wetlands flanking Swamp Creek and yet conveniently close to I-5 and I-405.

He and his wife, Cameron, spent years and thousands of dollars building a tropical garden ringed in bamboo fencing.

“We like the seclusion, the quiet,” Dale Wilson said. “It ain’t going to be here. It’s clear that each little piece will be eaten up, bit by bit.”

Time to tear down?

The homes were built in the late 1970s, are well-kept and sit on roughly half-acre properties. Homes have an assessed value of $300,000 to more than $400,000.

“We’re not talking about old homes here,” Quick said. “That’s the sad part of the whole thing. It’s just crazy.”

The tear-down trend sweeping the country has mostly claimed midcentury homes, said Glenn Crellin, director of Washington Center for Real Estate Research at Washington State University.

He said he was surprised to hear that homes built as recently as the 1970s would face redevelopment.

“Clearly, communities go through life cycles at different speeds,” he said.

It is hard to imagine the homes disappearing, Cameron Wilson said.

“Nobody is talking about their houses anymore, except to bemoan how much work they’ve done,” she said. One neighbor has a new $40,000 kitchen, she said.

Not everybody was on the same page when Quick and real estate agent Steve Canter made their pitch.

Even now, some in the neighborhood are skeptical and are uneasy about the idea.

“It felt funny to us,” said Holli Schippers, who is not selling her home. She’s lived in the neighborhood 15 years. “We didn’t want to be part of that mass panic. It felt like a mass attempt to cash in on everybody’s panic and their homes.”

The Wilsons said they talked about it a lot and eventually came around. They feared being the last house in a neighborhood and surrounded by new development.

“You either go with it or end up in the middle of it,” Dale Wilson said.

Thin end of the wedge

Newberry Square and townhouses on Ash Way are proof that change has come, Quick said. But those projects were outside the neighborhood.

Now, inside the neighborhood, Quick points to a sign: A 1979 split-level is proposed to be demolished for a nine-plex townhouse and two duplexes.

Gloria Aquino lives next door to the proposed project and doesn’t look forward to having 13 new neighbors looking into her back yard.

“We feel so bad about it,” she said. “We planned for this to be our retirement home, with Thanksgivings and Christmases.

“This is like an American dream. We are all comfortable and happy where we are.”

Still, she signed on to sell her land. “We want to get the maximum amount we can,” she said.

The latest spate of construction near Ash Way and Oak Knoll has been at a surprising pace, said Ryan Countryman, a senior county planner.

“It is changing the character of the neighborhood,” Countryman said. “It historically has been one-house-on-a-big-lot type of suburban neighborhood. It’s becoming more urban, where there’s a lot more variety of housing, and shops and retail and a few offices.”

The county has planned for several years for the Oak Knoll area to become a “transit pedestrian village,” where people would live in dense housing above businesses and walk to the nearby park-and-ride to catch a bus.

A builder with enough bucks could construct an eight-story building climbing 90 feet, something that requires more costly concrete. A more typical builder using wood construction might favor a five- or six-story building, Countryman said.

What is built depends on how much land is available, Countryman said.

“The real question mark is whether or not it develops one lot at a time or gets assembled and changes in a much larger way,” Countryman said.

The Wiants have lived in Oak Knoll for 10 years. They’ve marked big milestones in the home, including the graduations of their daughters and a wedding shower.

“Progress is OK, but we’d prefer to stay here,” Randy Wiant said. Even so, they are selling their house. “Sometimes you’ve got to make some tough choices, and that’s kind of where we’re at.”

Their three-bedroom home has always been a retreat, said Kristi Wiant, who teaches piano and flute at home.

The high-vaulted ceilings let the music breathe, she said. And at Christmastime, the family always gets a 14-foot tree.

“The whole idea of change took us a little by surprise. You have to realize that’s inevitable,” Kristi Wiant said.

“A home is where people are,” Randy Wiant added. “We’ll find ourselves someplace else to make a home.”

Reporter Jeff Switzer: 425-339-3452 or jswitzer@heraldnet.com.