Many childhood memories were made at the family amusement center at 220th Street Southwest and Highway 99, but the area is now designated for an eco-friendly compilation of 405 luxury apartments, personal storage and ground-level commercial space known as Edmonds Village.
Located on the border of Edmonds and Mountlake Terrace, the space for years operated as Funtasia — home to numerous kids’ birthday parties, go-kart racing, bumper boats and laser tag — and later became the Family Fun Center. After the Family Fun Center closed, the building — which was undergoing interior remodeling to be used as a church — was struck by numerous fires.
According to the project narrative submitted by architecture firm Clark Barnes to the City of Edmonds, Edmonds Village apartments “will be a transit-oriented urban village,” with residents, business workers and visitors able to enjoy commutes via bicycle, bus, car and the new light rail station nearby.
The Behar Co. project’s north and south buildings are connected by a large underground parking structure that includes east-facing, double-height, town home-style residential units. There’s a large residential courtyard and a central plaza, connecting the project to existing adjacent retail (including Happy Lemon and Woods Coffee) to the west and the Interurban Trail to the east.
“The currently unoccupied Family Fun Center site will be dramatically improved by the proposed development, which responds to the current housing needs in the region,” the narrative said.
— By Teresa Wippel
That area is already clogged up as hell with the level of traffic. Homes there are going to make it a nightmare.
Well 404 is a real good start for our mandated housing requirements. I don’t know but I would think the Interurban trail will be vastly improved and a nice area for the residents to walk and bicycle and all of that too. It’s a good idea to have parking for cars as well as bicyclists and walkers and public transit users too. Will there be other retail in that bottom floor? I know the Casino across the street on 220th and 99 is Mount Lake Terrace. OR IT was. But this is an Edmonds address, right? It should actually even increase business for the Casino. Possibly some night life there. I don’t know who owns that Casino anymore, but I think that is sort of interesting for some commerce for MLT. $$$$. I always wondered why Edmonds was so resistant to having Casino Card Rooms I thought it was sort of silly since so many from Edmonds were in that casino +. I worked there as an assistant in the human resources and hiring etc. dept I left after the Casino opened as I didn’t want to cage or deal. I wanted the office job It was fun. The owner and 99 % of the staff were very nice to me and very appreciative of my hard work and contributing to opening on time. Hello.
220th..nightmare × 2
Nice to add housing, though “luxury” isn’t exactly the affordable housing we seem to need most. What will this do to traffic on 220th heading towards the freeway?
Exactly Margaret! Well said. It’s not exactly a “luxury” area so it has the potential to be more of a “citadel” IMO. Affordable would be SO welcomed & what is needed. Nicely designed with green spaces. Still, 400 units in that area does raise questions about traffic, ingress, egress. As soon as I saw “luxury”, I felt disappointed. We need more housing for the majority of folks who don’t have “luxury” income.
Luxury??? Why not affordable for regular families??? I don’t see luxury apatrments usually near a Winco and car dealerships in the same location. No offense to Winco…I shop there often.
It saddens me that we keep losing places to have fun at. Your already traffic nightmare will now be worse. But I am sure that improving roads and infrastructure will not be part of the plan. Why luxury apartments and not ones that regular people can afford?
Great location for bicycle commuters going north or south from location but east -west 220th St SW traffic will increase
What we need is AFFORDABLE HOUSING, not luxury. And who considers living on Hwy 99 and 220th a luxurious neighborhood? This area is such a traffic nightmare. Let’s add another 405 units and see what that does to the area.
Yikes, I can’t imagine how 220th will handle the increased traffic from 400 additional homes. I’m very much in support of building apartments there but 400 seems like a number that will make a messy intersection even worse.
Thank you for the article. Maybe it’s just me (it usually is), but I can’t get a good understanding of how this is going to look. The article says there will be “double height town home style residential units.” Does that mean there will be two separate units stacked on each other? If so, that isn’t my understanding of a town home, which are usually single unit, stand alones. If the artistic rendering accurately represents the future building, well, it looks like another rather ugly, boiler plate five story building, with flourishes on the facade that try to make it look modern. I wish the architects of our future would place more emphasis on aesthetics and less on maximizing. Also, I can’t read the blueprint even by enlarging it and wearing reading glasses. As for traffic, I agree. I already look for workarounds rather than getting on 220th. Finally, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the nearest light rail station going to be in Mountlake Terrace ? It is not in easy walking distance. The bus schedule will be configured appropriately, or people will need to drive to get to transit center parking, so how much slack will the light rail take up in terms of traffic in the area? And yes, why “luxury” when “affordable” is what we are told we need.
The 119 bus goes along 220th directly to the MLT transit center/light rail. There is a stop at 72nd and 220th across from Premera. I ride it often. They are increasing frequency.
I live in this neighborhood and am very excited that I’ll no longer walk by a burnt out shell of a building twice a day on the Interurban to and from the bus stop. There is also a new private school (Bloom Academy expansion) opening in the old dental lab building on 224th just off the Interurban, which will also enhance the neighborhood. We can afford some other areas in Edmonds but prefer to live on the east side of 99 because of the diversity and upcoming light rail and welcome these and other changes. Hopefully there will be more retail (a drugstore would be great now that the Rite Aid has closed).
Luxury apartments, next to a busy highway, in a neighborhood that is mostly strip malls: who can afford and wants such luxury?
Luxury apartments ? What does that mean? What will these luxury apartments be going for ?
We need affordable housing.
See the article below, in this edition of MEN , on the rising costs of housing in western Washington.
I don’t see how 400 luxury apartments are going to help us meet our middle income housing needs..
A lot of these commentators are asking for “affordable housing” which probably means cheaply built, tiny sized, inadequate parking and MOST importantly it’s subsidized with other people’s money. If somebody wants to bring in market rate housing, and it improves the trajectory of the neighborhood I say bring it on.
Maybe it’s time to change the perception (and the design and construction) so that “affordable” doesn’t mean, tiny, cheap and ugly, but means nice–as in decent size, good looking design & reasonable construction so that folks with modest (or less than modest) income can live in pleasant surroundings, both inside their own home and outside. I realize that’s asking for a lot in the greedy society in which only a small percentage of people have the most. That type of housing will also improve the neighborhood and improve lives. Folks who can afford “luxury” housing have choices as to where to live – they have choices because they have the $ to afford luxury.
I’m open minded and willing to learn, I wish somebody explained to me how you get all those wonderful things in “affordable housing” without using other people money to subsidize it.
Brian, there are many things that U.S. citizens receive which are not paid for directly by “other people’s money” but yes, we pay taxes, if that’s what you mean by “other people’s money”. There are many articles on line to be read about “affordable” housing, “subsidized” housing, etc. I have put a link to just one of many articles below. What I mean by affordable is NOT luxury housing, but rentals that ordinary people might (but not necessarily) be able to pay. Other people may mean something else. Edmonds has luxury housing of all types (and even just normal family homes or apartments here have become out of reach financially for many people who otherwise do not qualify for subsidized or “affordable” housing) that some percentage (a small percentage) of the population can afford. It sounds like you are concerned that it is coming right out of your pocketbook. Every time I go to a store to buy goods, taxes come right out of my fixed income. As do income taxes. I don’t know what amount you are concerned is coming out of your money but it sounds like it is a great concern to you. Like I said, you can read up on the subject as well as find out how much of your own money might go towards housing for others.
https://housingforwardva.org/toolkits/affordable-housing-101/what-is-affordable-housing-v-subsidized-housing-v-workforce-housing/
As all those people living in tents and 20 year old motor homes on the street will tell you, any roof and four walls not on wheels or tent poles is “luxury housing” in today’s world and there is no such thing as “affordable” housing anymore, unless you want to live in Podunk South Dakota, Kansas or Nebraska. Real Estate agents will call this new 220th joint “Luxury Apts.” and the Edmonds City Council (with their new red light cameras at 220th and 99) will call them “fresh meat.”
The apartments are very likely not being built for a benevolent organization. Therefore they are proceeding with what they expect to be a good business decision for them.
Well said. We have other low income projects going up in Edmonds, most notably, Housing Hope, which is fantastic. There needs to be a mix of all types of housing, but for whatever reason with recent discourse, now everything has to be accessible to everyone. Why? Beyond that, we live in a free market and someone has purchased the property, is following the zoning rules, and is building what they think is most profitable. Not sure why that is bad, especially when you look at what is there currently. If you have a problem with the size of the building, take it up with the city.
As many have noted, Highway 99/220th is a major arterial route (heading north – south on 99, to and from I-5, and in future to the new public transit station), and any project of this size/on this site really has to have a traffic mitigation plan associated to it. Where is it?
It’s been a long wait for that property to be cleaned up and this project will improve that corner. I think the developer should be forced to immediately clean up all the graffiti on the Interurban Trail which undoubtedly came from the street people who moved into that derelict property years ago. They should have faced fines and penalties for abandoning that property to the criminals for so many years. Now they are cashing in, good for them I guess.
It is surprising how many critics are throwing stones at this planned project. Just to clarify for a few of the critics: the site is a moderate walk to the MLT light rail station on the Interurban Trail and Lakeview Trail. Also, the Swift bus on Hwy 99 is intended to be high capacity transit even though hardly anybody uses it. So these new apartments probably will turn out to be a good location for non-drivers and people who don’t own a car. I think that helps with the big picture of affordability.
The one item that none of the comments addressed is the level of crime in this area.
400+ units! 220th /99 can’t handle it – it is already a nightmare trying to get the I5 on 220th or to 99 from I 5
How will the traffic pattern change – don’t think you can add more lanes on 220th
I vote NO
Drive down 228th sw as fast as you want to I5 no cops
I follow the development projects in the Highway 99 subarea pretty closely and want to clear up some misimpressions in reader comments. 1) this property was not recently sold to a property developer. The same family -owned business that built and ran Funtasia is now redeveloping their property as apartments and a mini storage business. 2) this size of a development was approved by the City Council back in 2016 when they upzoned the highway 99 area. 8 years after the upzoning, this is only the 3rd large project ( Sage apartments on 236th and the Senior Living development called Anthology of Edmonds on 212th are the others). The City expected 3500 more apartments in the Highway 99 area, but high interest rates are slowing the property development industry (unless you borrowed money during the approx. 2 year period of time early in the pandemic era and built all the apartments in Shoreline and MLT.) 3) Edmonds Village has to give the City a traffic study as part of their permit application. They’ll estimate the number of peak hour car trips by the residents and the impact on the capacity of 220th to handle it. You can ask for a copy of that analysis.
Traffic already is jacked on 220th and 99 and this will make it even more special. Now that Edmond’s can’t afford the park at Burlington Coat Factory, maybe they can use the funds to improve the Interurban trail in this area and add a park?