SNOHOMISH — When Mike Bickford started work at Bickford Motors in 1983, cows munched in nearby fields and trees blanketed the area.
Even a decade ago, the area north of town around the automotive dealership remained largely rural.
That’s changing fast.
The city is having a growth spurt and the only place left to grow is north.
“Snohomish needs to have a commercial core where businesses can expand,” said Bickford, now the dealership’s general manager.
City leaders think so, too.
The city is encouraging more growth — especially retail and commercial — along the two-lane road that juts off U.S. 2 and runs into the heart of Snohomish, said Debbie Emge, the city’s economic development manager.
Snohomish Station, a 400,000-square-foot retail center, already opened last year.
Nearly a dozen other major projects are planned, under construction or just completed.
Projects include Snohomish Station Residential, a 92-unit condominium project at 1900 Bickford Ave.; Snohomish Depot, 2610 Bickford Ave., a 9,600-square-foot retail and office building; and Bickford Business Park, retail, office and warehouse space and apartments at 1800 Bickford Ave.
About 8.5 acres owned by Bickford Motors just across the street from its lot has been cleared of trees, and the business plans to move and expand its trailer and commercial vehicle sales into the area — maybe this summer or the next, Bickford said.
H.B. Jaeger Co., a wholesale utility products supply company, is building a warehouse and new office just off Bickford Avenue on 16th Street. The company, now on Airport Way, considered several other locations, including Clearview and Maltby. Neither offered the access or price of this choice, said Herb Braicks, a managing partner. Snohomish, he said, is the crossroads to everywhere.
“The city needs to change with the times,” he said. “We need a commercial core for business to expand and to attract new businesses as well.”
City officials have talked about property just off Bickford Avenue that used to serve as the Snohomish County public works yard as a possible site for a mixed-use project. The county still owns the land at 1201 Bonneville Ave., but the yard has been vacated and the buildings are being torn down.
Hemmed in by two rivers and two highways, Snohomish doesn’t have anywhere to grow but north, said Larry Bauman, city manager.
“It makes development extremely difficult,” he said.
The area around Bickford Avenue isn’t ideal, either. A portion of the land around is riddled with wetlands. The land around Cemetery Creek is divided into long, skinny strips bisected by the creek — a configuration that makes developing roads and access nearly impossible.
For example, the space the new Snohomish Station occupies is a former quarry. It was the best location for development in that area, Bauman said.
The city has steadily stretched its borders to include more than 500 acres in the last decade — most of it along Bickford Avenue and west of Highway 9.
Just this month, the city gobbled up another 53 acres off 87th Avenue SE that includes a mix of businesses, homes and vacant land. The city also annexed a little less than two acres next to the Wilkshire Lane neighborhood.
City leaders have good reason to cheer on development: It helps pay the bills.
Sales tax revenue from new construction and retail sales pays for nearly half of budget basics such as city employee salaries, police services, supplies and equipment.
Some business owners downtown did grumble that all the development along Bickford might mean lost dollars for established businesses, said Josh Scott, the former president of Historic Downtown Snohomish Business Association.
“I definitely heard that,” he said.
He and others point out that development along Bickford Avenue could enhance downtown business by giving visitors another reason to stop and by giving local people a place to buy staples they might not find elsewhere in town.
“What we always said was instead of having to bring people 15 miles into town, now we may have to bring them a mile farther downtown,” he said.
Debra Smith: 425-339-3197, dsmith@heraldnet.com.
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