Plans described an ambitious, mixed-use, urban village linked by underground parking, walkways and open spaces, offering ground-floor retail, restaurant facilities on the four blocks between the Sound Transit Station, West Main Street and A Street Southeast.
Yes, Albert International’s Auburn Junction project generated considerable buzz in Auburn when Spencer Albert first proposed it in 2008.
“If the City adopts (the agreement), we are ready to roll up our sleeves and do our part to make a major contribution, with the city’s assistance, over the next few years in the redevelopment of downtown Auburn and its establishment as a vital urban center,” Alpert said at the time.
The City adopted that development agreement.
But Auburn Junction never happened.
And on Monday, the City Council scrapped the design guidelines Auburn’s former downtown development committee worked out to apply to the project, making official what everyone at City Hall already knew — Auburn Junction is history.
As Kevin Snyder, director of Community Development and Public Works, explained, the Auburn Junction standards were closely aligned with existing downtown design standards and guidelines.
And that was a problem.
“We do have this ongoing tension of having two sets of design standards in our downtown, with no real basis for that,” Snyder said. “So, after comparing the Auburn Junction design standards and the downtown standards, staff feels very confident that the downtown design standards that are in effect for the rest of downtown can adequately provide guidance and direction to meet the goals and aspirations of city councils both current and future.
“The downtown design guidelines and standards now in place will apply to the remaining two blocks that, hopefully, will be under redevelopment at some point in the future, and the goals and aspirations that the council has we believe will be more than adequately realized,” Snyder said.
Here is what Auburn Junction was to have been:
• Condominium housing – from smaller studios and one-bedroom units to units for families
• Lifestyle retail and entertainment – offering higher-profile restaurants, speciality retailers, and possibly a theater complex
• Flexible commercial space – commercial uses of office-flex space, lodging, educational settings and/or work-live potential on the ground floor and upper stories.
Plans also called for village green promenades to the north and northeast connecting to Main Street and Auburn Regional Medical Center and a green trail extending southeast to Safeway and south and west to the Sound Transit station.
An important feature was to have been a central open space called Auburn Junction plaza, with landscaped islands, a waterfall and a reflecting pool.
Meanwhile, Trek Apartments is already showing prospective tenants through its nearly completed apartment complex on the site of the former Cavanaugh block on East Main and Merrill Gardens breaks ground next week on its senior apartment complex on South Division Street.
