By DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Downtown is the cherished core of Bothell. A great place for a stroll, Main Street features homey cafes and restaurants and some first-class furniture, clothing and antique stores. Locals and merchants know each other, thanks to regular trips to the barber shop, hair salon, bakery, craft and bike shops, massage clinic, pet store, doctor and dentist offices.

Topography limits large-scale development downtown; Main Street is bordered by the freeway, the river and residential hills. There is little room to go but up. Yet citizens and city officials say zoning for anything higher than 30 feet is unlikely.

Main Street is within walking distance of Bothell's historic landing, riverside trail and parks, the Northshore Senior Center as well as City Hall, school administration, library and other municipal buildings.

Bob and Reka Lee, owners of Town Hall Antique Mall in Country Village on the Bothell-Everett Highway, have lived and worked in Bothell for more than 20 years. They restored Bothell's oldest upscale house, an 1884 Victorian originally called Glenwood Castle.

It was built by a farmer who used horses to plow the land and sent horses by barge to the University of Washington to develop the Arboretum. The house was the first in Bothell to have electricity, Bob Lee says. The Lees later sold the house, which remains a private residence.

"(Downtown) Bothell's a sleeper. It hasn't changed -- yet," Reka Lee says. "In some ways, it looks like it always did. The changes have gone on around Bothell. But the growth is so close, you wonder. . . ."

Many are concerned about the shape of Bothell 10 years from now.

"The encroachment (of nearby growth) has already happened," says Alex Sidie, owner of Sidie Pharmacy, a Bothell fixture since 1954. "Almost all the surrounding territory is taken up now by developments, shopping centers and business parks."

Sidie isn't alone in saying the development, most of it east of Interstate 405, "makes us a nice, diversified community. We're going to be a well-rounded suburban area."

But like many other residents and merchants, Sidie wants to keep downtown economically vibrant.

"I'm concerned about Main Street," Sidie says. "We've lost a lot of the businesses like grocery stores because of the big center (mall) stores. . . . I like the atmosphere we have now. . . . Our downtown still has a small-town atmosphere, even though we're almost urban."

Yet at least one amenity is missing. With an exception of a Christian bookstore in a small plaza near Bothell Landing, downtown Bothell has no bookstores. The nearest is in Canyon Park Plaza north of the town center.

That may help business at the Bothell-King County Regional Library in downtown Bothell. One librarian notes, "We get a lot of business in here."

Continued:

• A logging and farm town yields to people and technology
• Careful planning eases growing pains
• Adapting to changing times
• Hometown sentiment prevails over glass towers