Opened in 2022 with great fanfare, the Edmonds Neighborhood City Hall in the Aurora Marketplace strip mall on Highway 99 closed its doors Jan. 1, a victim of the latest round of budget cuts aimed at closing the city’s $13 million shortfall.
The city didn’t waste a moment moving out, removing the signage and papering over the windows, leaving the former city outpost at 23632 Highway 99 like any other vacant storefront.
According to city spokesperson Kelsey Foster, the facility cost $172,105 to run in 2024. This included the salary of the facility’s administrator, which was also eliminated in the budget cuts. The cost for the space is $5,027 per month, and this expense will continue until the lease expires in March.
“Since we departed the space in January, there is little time to market and get a new tenant in the space before our lease ends,” Foster explained. “We’ve asked the property owner to market the property and have expressed our desire for a new tenant to occupy the space as soon as possible.”
Originally envisioned to bring city services to an underserved corner of the community, the Neighborhood City Hall provided a location for the city’s community court, an ongoing police presence and the office for the police department’s community engagement coordinator (although this person was relocated back to the downtown police station in 2023).
With the impending closure and when no suitable location could be found in the Highway 99 area, Municipal Court Judge Neil Weiss returned the community court to downtown Edmonds in mid-December.
“Community Court means a lot more than just a different or non-traditional court space,” he explained. “Our Community Court excels at connecting those in need with service providers. While the Neighborhood City Hall provided a particularly accessible venue, there remain many opportunities to facilitate warm handoffs and connections between court participants and service providers, even without the added convenience of that site.
“That said, I am considering some important structural changes to our Community Court,” he continued. “The decision to return to our regular court location during this interim period was made to ensure operations continue as smoothly as possible while we focus on these broader improvements to the Community Court program.”
Additional functions provided at the Neighborhood City Hall included free cell phone distribution events, on-site mental health services and access to 2-1-1 support to help connect people with the services they need. The city is actively seeking alternatives to maintain these.
“Other efforts to bridge the gap include working with community partners including Verdant, the Edmonds Food Bank and the Waterfront Center where programs like free cell phones and the mobile DSHS unit can be provided to Edmonds residents in need,” explained Foster, who went on to add that the city continues to have an embedded social worker in the police department. “Regardless of the closing of the Neighborhood City Hall, the city will continue to prioritize connecting residents in need to resources and services,” she said.
Mayor Rosen also stressed his personal commitment to continuing to provide these services to the community.
“Our current budget challenges required us to make difficult decisions for cuts,” Rosen explained. “One such cut was the Neighborhood City Hall. And while that location provided an opportunity to reach and help residents, these important programs for our community will continue. We are continuing our active exploration of opportunities to partner with other agencies which is an exciting prospect that holds great potential.”
— By Larry Vogel
Is there a report where we can see where all of our tax money went? The threat now is, well we don’t have enough to keep our police force or fire without substantial increases to the tax payers. So tax payers, where did our money go.? Let’s see a report mailed out to every citizen, for citizen to decide, if we need to shrink government, services and slow down population growth since we can’t afford what we have now.
Yes city of edmonds as all cities need, not should, publish a city budget with line items. The detail would identify where the tax payer money is outgoing and where the funds are incoming from.
If you measure success by the reduction of rampant and consistent crime within proximity the Neighborhood City Hall, then it was a complete failure.
Thats right Brian, just take a look at the most recent Police Blotter and the amount of crime at that location or drive by and see the people sitting & sleeping in front of the shuttered City Hall and wandering the parking lot. I had high hopes for the project, so disappointing.
Sad but inevitable. Edmonds structural policy of underinvestment and neglect-by-design along the SR99 district is back in full force even at a time where it finds itself scrambling for revenue. So while shoreline develops commercial and residential properties along its area to great success, even syphoning sales from Edmonds, our weak council and Major double down on the policy. I suppose we’ll see further decline in this area and increase Police costs until new leadership can be voted in.
Mr. Ventresca, the City of Edmonds is investing millions in the SR99 corridor, most recently with two miles of new landscaped median. The result is improved safety for vehicles and pedestrians, not to mention the aesthetics. The City’s legislative agenda requests additional funding to continue improving this state highway corridor.
City Hall has opened the door to area redevelopment. The current General Commercial zoning allows a wide variety of commercial, residential, and mixed-use buildings up to 7 stories tall. The City is advancing a Community Renewal plan to stimulate needed redevelopment.
Whatever the City’s faults in the SR99 corridor, “neglect by design” is not one of them. If you truly believe Shoreline is somehow siphoning sales from Edmonds, please show us the numbers.
What it could’ve been. And not being a math whiz, but when 52% of “Police Blotter” calls are from a four block stretch of Hwy. 99, that’s just a poor choice of usage and I can’t count how many encamped visitors chose that exact spot to take a little nap. Please Edmonds, make some wiser choices with our dollars.
Having gotten acquainted with some staffmembers of the Neighborhood City Hall; and seeing firsthand the work they performed, this is indeed disappointing! I hope Edmonds can continue some of these services downtown. We have to use the taxpayer’s money more wisely.
What would make some sense, if we had any money available for doing it, would be to move all our Municipal Government buildings (city hall and public safety complex) out of the high valued dirt downtown area to the center of town somewhere, like five corners perhaps? Get the police and fire closer to where more of the problems are and make the Mayor and Council more accessible to a larger cross section of the public they are supposed to be serving. Of course this would make it a little less convenient for our Mayors to roam around downtown looking important, shaking hands and kissing babies or hanging out at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday, but I think they could probably accept the change for the good of the cause. Actually, when you look at land values in general, we might be able to pull off such a thing without spending lots of additional money we don’t have. But, this would involve having some actual independent thinkers and educated in Economics people on the Council and we do not have that, nor are we ever likely to when we almost always get our officials from special interest power broker political groups.