New Book Chronicles Bothell's Changes Over the Past Century
September 2, 2008 — The City of Bothell's Landmark Preservation Board will celebrate the community's 2009 centennial with a new book chronicling the city's growth from a small crossroads community on the north edge of Lake Washington to a modern suburb. Scheduled for publication this fall, Bothell: Then & Now is a 160-page pictorial history of the city that started as lumber and shingle-making town which evolved into one of the fastest growing satellite cities of Seattle and Bellevue.
Bothell: Then & Now is the latest project of Bothell's Landmark Preservation program, which started in 1987. One of only a handful of King County cities with its own preservation program (18 cities have inter-local agreements with the King County Historic Preservation program), Bothell has inventoried more than 500 potentially historic properties within its boundaries. The city has 18 recognized national, state, and local landmark properties, which are documented in the book's seven chapters.
Despite the successes, older parts of the town are under increasing pressure from development policies that concentrate growth in the urban core. Bothell's preservation board is concerned about the future of Main Street, the site of about a dozen buildings constructed between 1911 and 1950, according to Brandi Barleycorn, the city's landmark preservation consultant.
Barleycorn says the board would like to create an historic district covering Main Street, but it faces a major hurdle. Unlike other cities' preservation ordinances, which require agreement from only 50 percent of a proposed district's property owners to create a district, Bothell's ordinance requires agreement from 100 percent of owners. Barleycorn says the board is slowly working toward that consensus. "It’s not something we're going to give up on," she says.
For more information on Bothell: Then & Now and the Bothell Landmark Preservation program, contact Brandi Barleycorn at 425-486-8152.
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