Within a mile of Shoreline North Station, about 1,700 homes have been built or planned since 2019.
When Sound Transit begins service on the Lynnwood Link extension on August 30th, the stations will directly serve three more cities in the Puget Sound. Shoreline will be receiving two of those stations and has prepared zoning and land use reforms allowing their station areas to transform into dense neighborhoods. The city primed its Shoreline North Station for a unique opportunity to create an urban band between two growing sectors of its city. (Note, we covered development around Shoreline South Station earlier this week.)
When The Urbanist covered Shoreline housing development in 2021, our project list included a densifying North City that is soon to be home to a new light rail station. The neighborhood has historically been a small commercial center in eastern Shoreline, but thoughtful planning spurred a gradual addition of multifamily residential to the neighborhood two decades ago.
North City makes the Shoreline North station area stand out on the 1 line extension by sandwiching the station between a growing neighborhood node and the Aurora corridor, which has also seen rapid growth recently. Development around the station will create a new dense linkage between the two urban sections of the neighborhood.
Looking at a half-mile radius, Shoreline South is the more built-out station area, expanding the radius to one mile, Shoreline North Station becomes the more built out area. A densifying Aurora and the North City neighborhood are within a mile of that station and they’ve both seen a handful of large apartment buildings completed in the past few years. A slow trickle of projects is also falling into place between these two development nodes by the light rail station.
Similar to Shoreline South, the main business districts are not in the immediate vicinity of the station, but rather along Aurora Avenue to the west or near 15th Avenue NE to the east. Mixed-use development and a few smaller business nodes have added some modest commercial activity closer to the station, but it will take more development to fill in the gaps and create a continuous urban district from Aurora to North City. The presence of the I-5 chasm in the middle of the station area creates a drag on urban redevelopment and walkability, but the City is hoping it’s not an insurmountable one.
North City node continues to grow toward the station
Our 2021 report on the station area found a batch of apartments had been completed in the commercial core of North City, which is about a 20-minute walk southeast from the station. A total of the 448 units across The Postmark, Green Leaf Shoreline, and Arabella Apartment Homes II developments had been built by 2021. Growth is continuing with Alta North City, which is under construction at 17712 15th Ave NE. The mixed-use building will have 228 housing units, around 220 parking stalls, and 3,900 square feet of retail space. Also nearby at 18008 12th Ave NE are 19 townhomes completed in 2023 and a dormant 28-unit project at 18005 12th Ave NE.
A few blocks away from this existing North City node are the planned developments directly around Shoreline North Station. Directly adjacent to the station are two under-construction mixed-use apartment buildings, the 240-unit, seven-story Kinect @ Shoreline and 299-unit, eight-story project at 18554 8th Ave NE. Nearby, a 197-unit, eight-story apartment building at 18910 8th Ave NE and a 17-unit mixed-use building at 731 NE 185th Street are in permitting.
A wave of townhouse construction has swept across the station area as well, with the 19 townhomes at 18008 12th Ave NE the largest example near Shoreline North Station. A quick look at new townhome platting on the King County Parcel Viewer shows that around 100 new townhomes have been built across a plethora of smaller townhome projects completed since 2019.
Echo Lake develops slowly up until Aurora
Many of those townhome projects are on the west side of I-5 from the station in the Echo Lake neighborhood, just across I-5 from the station. So far, the scale of projects on this side of the highway is along those lines, much lower than in North City. Only the Civitas Apartments at 2152 N 195th St has been completed in Echo Lake’s portion of the station area. It’s a small 22-unit, four-story multifamily building. Another small multifamily project is in permitting at 19232 5th Ave NE with three stories and 11 units.
The most notable project in Echo Lake falls closer to the Aurora corridor than the light rail station area. In fact, the 121-unit mixed-use building proposed at 1206 N 185th Street is a block away from Aurora Avenue. Many more projects are also occurring around Aurora, but we’ve only included those within a mile of the light rail station in this roundup.
What’s next for this emerging urban corridor
These projects consume very little of the zoned capacity along this North City to Aurora corridor. There are many more blocks for new multifamily and mixed-use projects to take root in, though much of it is actually held by the City of Shoreline or other public entities. Within a half mile of the station, Shoreline’s school district owns more than 48 acres of land. The lack of activity at these City-owned sites helps explain the slower growth of the immediate station area.
Altogether, the development pipeline at Shoreline North Station is relatively weak, and in contrast to the Shoreline South Station, most of the projects here have either been built or are under construction. In sum, around 1,700 homes have been built or are in development near Shoreline North since 2019. When you include all the smaller townhome developments, around 600 homes have been built since 2019. The three large under-construction buildings surpass that with 767 units that are under construction. Meanwhile, just 374 units are in the permitting and planning pipeline around Shoreline North.
This is very different from the Shoreline South Station, where just shy of 60% of the units in development — nearly 1,600 homes — have yet to break ground. For Shoreline North, the percentage yet to break ground is under 30%. If Shoreline South’s pipeline materializes, it’s going to far exceed the growth of its neighbor station to the north. Based on current plans, Shoreline North’s roughly 1,700 would be little over half of the nearly 3,100 units built since 2021 or in the pipeline around Shoreline South Station.
The contrast between the two station areas could be an indicator of development barriers in the Shoreline North station area. Beyond the school district holding much of the prime land, other barriers could include a combination of deed covenants forbidding redevelopment, difficulty assembling parcels large enough for multifamily projects, weaker market conditions, and insufficient zoned capacity. No planning efforts are underway to redevelop the school district land, which include district office space, a convention center, sports fields, and numerous other uses — though no public school.
More development capacity is on the way in 2031 via Phase 3 of the zoning changes scheduled when Shoreline approved its phased station area plan in 2015. Phase 2, which was triggered in 2021, extended 75-foot Mixed Use Residential (MUR-75) zoning farther north in the vicinity of Shoreline Park and expanded MUR-75 and MUR-45 across a few more blocks of North City. Phase 3 largely includes low-rise multifamily zoning (MUR-35 and MUR-45) in the farther out blocks of the station area.
Furthermore, the Shoreline City Council may choose to add additional development capacity via its comprehensive plan update due at the end of 2024. By next summer, new statewide middle housing standards will obligate Shoreline to phase out single family zoning and allow at least duplexes, with fourplexes as the base zoning near frequent transit.
Great opportunity exists in the Shoreline North station area for well-supported transit-oriented development (TOD). In addition to the new light rail station, bus restructures will also bolster service. This includes Community Transit’s extension of the Swift Blue line to the station from the Aurora Transit Center and King County Metro’s Lynnwood Link bus restructure, which will add new bus routes and increased frequency with Routes 345, 348, and 365. Route 348 will create crosstown service on N 185th Street, feeding the station. Hopefully, this transit boost will bolster new development and inspire Shoreline to act on its large swath of land and encourage new development with increased development capacity in the station area.
Building out the TOD Map of the Lynnwood Link Extension
Now that we’ve tallied up development at multiple station areas, we’ve started a Lynnwood Link Extension TOD map. We’ve now recorded more than 4,800 units built or in the pipeline around the Shoreline light rail stations. These additions are significant in a city of about 62,000 residents as of the state’s April 2024 estimates.
Check out our station area development roundups for Shoreline South and Mountlake Terrace.
The Urbanist staff occasionally teams up to cover breaking news or tackle large projects. See more about our team on the staff page.