Where's the city's heart? It depends on whom you ask

By JOHN IWASAKI
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The subject of Lynnwood's soul, or heart, sparks discussion when talk turns to the history and future of the city.

"Walk up and down the street and ask people, 'Where's the center of Lynnwood?' You'll get a different answer, depending on how they relate to the city," says Marie Little, a founder of the Alderwood Manor Heritage Association.

Little tends to think of the city's heart as the Civic Center, a wooded area that includes the City Hall complex, library and recreation center.

Mayor Tina Roberts says it's 196th Street between Highway 99 and 44th Avenue, a car-clogged, business-lined street and the major east-west route through Lynnwood.

Others see Alderwood Mall, with its 130 shops and remodeled food court, as the center of Lynnwood, a thought that makes some blanch.

For Ginger Jordan, president of the Parent Faculty Club at Spruce Primary School, a place where 52 of the 600 students do not speak English as a native language, schools form the heart of the community.

For the Rev. Mark Reitan, whose Trinity Lutheran Church is often used for community organ concerts and English classes for immigrants, "the (city) center is related to where people work, live and worship."

"Lynnwood has kind of a non-center," says Martin, the Alderwood teacher. "It doesn't have a heart. It's kind of a place where you pass by."

Mike Caldwell, interim president of the South Snohomish County Chamber of Commerce, pooh-poohs the "sentimental" notion that Lynnwood suffers from the lack of a downtown.

The downtown businesses in many other cities are struggling as shoppers head for outlying malls, says Caldwell, who was an aide to former longtime Lynnwood Mayor M.J. "Herk" Hrdlicka.

"Lynnwood's lucky," he says. "Lynnwood hasn't had to spend a dime on restoring a Main Street."

In the absence of a downtown, Martin, Little and others who have studied local history argue that the true heart of the city is the area founded in 1917 as Alderwood Manor near the convergence of 196th Street and what became I-5.

First page:

• This city has lots of shops and lots of soul