An Oregon-based business is just months away from a huge renovation in a North Puget Sound city. McMenamins let our cameras on their construction site to get the first shots inside a new hotel project in Bothell.
The mostly vacant 1930s-built Andersen School is just months away from becoming a 72-room hotel, bar, restaurant, movie theater and more.
"We'll have a brewery on site, a ten bale brewery," explains McMenamins founder Brian McMenamin.
But why here?
"Part of thing was the building attracted us to it, but also the commitment of the community and the city in their whole changing the whole downtown," McMenamin says.
McMenamins is just one developer the city of Bothell recruited for what's essentially the urbanization of what used to a sleepy North Sound town.
"The city has ignited the development by introducing $150 million of infrastructure in the last few years, which is significant for a city the size of Bothell," explains City Manager Bob Stowe.
Stowe says a new City Hall, new pedestrian-friendly walkways and 25 acres of downtown space the city bought and sold for new business is attracting a new crowd. The city has 1,400 new housing units either recently completed or in the works.
Demand is so high they even come with rising rents -- the fastest-rising in the greater Seattle area. But cityleaders say it's still a less expensive alternative to Seattle and the goal, they say, is to make it just as appealing.
"Now we're introducing a whole new host of amenities downtown," Stowe concludes.
Both the new 53,000-square-foot City Hall and the McMenamins project are slated for completion in October.
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