By REBEKAH DENN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

A McDonald's restaurant is one of the smaller amenities in the fast-growing Stanwood-Camano Village Shopping Center, which will have 300,000 square feet of retail and office space when finished.

Already, it includes a 60,000-square-foot, 24-hour grocery store; an athletic club with what the developer calls the only indoor tennis courts between Everett and Bellingham; an arcade; and the movie theater. Three new restaurants are scheduled to open soon.

Developer Sol Baron of the Stanwood-based Lindstrom Development Group says his father, who had owned a summer home on Camano Island, saw the need for a shopping center as the entire area began shifting from summer to full-time homes.

A survey before the center opened in 1995 showed that 80 percent of residents' dollars were being spent outside the area, Baron says.

"It's ridiculous, if you live on Camano Island, to have to drive to Everett or Mount Vernon to buy your stuff."

The mall is unremarkable from the outside but unmistakably Stanwood on the inside, with local-themed murals by Camano Island artist Jack Gunter in progress in the theater lobby. The main mural recreates the streetscape and storefronts of the historic downtown.

Downtown still exists as a walkable mix of practicality and pleasure: restaurants and antique shops and knicknacks; furniture and banks and hardware supplies.

"When this became available, it was like a dream," says Chris Satterlund, new co-owner of the Snow Goose Bookstore, an independent bookstore brimming with personality.

Several businesspeople, such as Westside Antiques owner Kevin Brown, have taken pains to keep their buildings historically sound.

Brown, whose stately brick storefront still bears the sign of the bank it once was, says he fell in love with the building before he even knew what business he would have there. He avoided any renovations that would mar its authenticity or charm.