Neighbor News
Get to Know Mercer Island's Downtown Community - Part 2: Architecture
This is the second in a series of blog posts about the Downtown Mercer Island community. Part 1 discussed the reasons for redevelopment
The renaissance of Mercer Island’s downtown community was instigated by the Growth Management Act(GMA) of 1990 and a State-issued requirement that Mercer Island plan to accommodate 3,000 additional residents. Because Mercer Island was essentially built-out at the time with single family homes, downtown was the only place to build high-occupancy buildings that would provide 1,437 new housing units by 2022. Implementation of the plan brings significant change to the once-sleepy downtown area. The most obvious change is in the architecture of the new buildings.
Empty parking lots, aging buildings and familiar traffic patterns are being replaced by mid-rise apartment and condominium buildings with office and retail space on the first floor or two. These new buildings are changing the appearance of the downtown area and occupying the space previously available for parking and altering familiar traffic patterns. When fully implemented, the redevelopment plan will add more than 80,000 square feet of retail space, 24 condos, and at least 700 apartments.
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