Lakepointe: Dream development or traffic nightmare?

By BRUCE RAMSEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

At the northeast end of Lake Washington is Kenmore Pre-Mix, the site of big things to come.

The 50-acre site, once a staging area for Alaska Pipeline barges, is now slated to become Lakepointe: 1,200 multifamily units, 200,000 square feet of office space plus enough commercial space for a supermarket, drug store, restaurants and possibly a cinema. It will also have a 52-slip marina.

Says Kenmore's mayor, Jack Crawford, "This Lakepointe thing is really a big deal for us."

The project has been under review for six years. Permits were issued last summer, but appealed.

The main concern is traffic. The project includes a privately funded road to bypass the intersection of Bothell Way and 68th Avenue Northeast, which can be a mess.

"It's a perfect site for it," says Cliff Foster, 75, a retired University of Washington professor who has lived in Kenmore since 1970. But he also recalls the rural atmosphere Kenmore once had, and does no longer.

And Pre-Mix isn't the only site for change. Across 68th is Plywood Supply, started by Ralph Swanson and three fraternity brothers in 1953. Swanson and son Don, 39, still run it. Kenmore has changed radically since Ralph Swanson bought 12 acres in the area in 1956, and LakePointe raises the possibility of redevelopment.

That's an option Swanson wants to keep open. Already he has put up several buildings close to the slough.

"It was more of a defensive move than anything else," he says. "If we were to do nothing, we could end up with a wetland and a wildlife area."

Swanson, who says his property was economically unable to be developed under the county's land-use regime, was a quiet force behind Kenmore's incorporation effort.

As for his land, he says, "Right now we're standing by to see what happens."