Smokey Point, Washington
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Smokey Point is a community and former
census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...
in northern
Snohomish County, Washington Snohomish County () is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. With a population of 827,957 as of the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous county in Washington, after nearby King and Pierce counties, and the 72nd-most populo ...
. The area, developed as a suburban
bedroom community A commuter town is a populated area that is primarily residential rather than commercial or industrial. Routine travel from home to work and back is called commuting, which is where the term comes from. A commuter town may be called by many o ...
in the late 20th century, was annexed into the nearby cities of
Arlington Arlington most often refers to: *Arlington, Virginia **Arlington National Cemetery, a United States military cemetery *Arlington, Texas Arlington may also refer to: Places Australia *Arlington light rail station, on the Inner West Light Rail in S ...
and Marysville in the 1990s and 2000s.


History

Smokey Point was settled in the early 20th century and was originally known as “Hild’s Corner”, then later referred to as Rex’s Corner, named in the 1930s after Rex and Mabel Zeek, the owners of a restaurant located at
U.S. Route 99 U.S. Route 99 (US 99) was a main north–south United States Numbered Highway on the West Coast of the United States until 1964, running from Calexico, California, on the Mexican border to Blaine, Washington, on the Canadian border. It w ...
and Lakewood Road (present-day Smokey Point Boulevard and 172nd Street NE, respective). The restaurant was sold to Eric and Pearl Shurstad in October 1946, who renovated it to a
barbecue Barbecue or barbeque (often shortened to BBQ worldwide; barbie or barby in Australia and New Zealand) is a term used with significant regional and national variations to describe various cooking methods that employ live fire and smoke to coo ...
restaurant and renamed it the "Smokey Point Café". U.S. Route 99 was bypassed by
Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway System, Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels thro ...
in the late 1960s, constructing an interchange at Smokey Point and creating the Gissberg Ponds (now Twin Lakes) out of a gravel excavation site. In 1966, the area was proposed as the location of a four-year public college, with offered by the city of Arlington. The state legislature decided to build the college instead in Olympia, becoming
The Evergreen State College The Evergreen State College is a public liberal arts college in Olympia, Washington. Founded in 1967, it offers a non-traditional undergraduate curriculum in which students have the option to design their own study towards a degree or follow a ...
. By 1977, the population of the unincorporated area between Arlington and Marysville, including Smokey Point, had increased to 16,000 people as the result of suburban development. The area's first
supermarket A supermarket is a self-service Retail#Types of outlets, shop offering a wide variety of food, Drink, beverages and Household goods, household products, organized into sections. Strictly speaking, a supermarket is larger and has a wider selecti ...
opened in 1978 alongside an
office park A business park or office park is a designated area of land in which many office buildings are grouped together. These types of developments are often located in suburban areas where land and building costs are more affordable, and are typically ...
and motel. In 1979, the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office established a
precinct Precinct may refer to: * An electoral precinct * A police precinct * A religious precinct * A shopping arcade or shopping mall ** A Pedestrian zone Places * A neighborhood, in Australia * A unit of public housing in Singapore * A former elector ...
in Smokey Point at an existing fire station. Smokey Point's largest retail center, a 15-store
strip mall A strip mall, strip center, strip plaza or simply plaza is a type of shopping mall, shopping center common in North America and Australia where the stores are arranged in a row, with a footpath in front. Strip malls are typically developed as a ...
with a
Safeway Safeway, Inc. is an American supermarket chain. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and a variety of specialty departments, such as bakery, delicatessen, floral and pharmacy, as well as Starbucks coffee shops, and veh ...
, opened in 1991. By the early 1990s, Smokey Point was rezoned to support industrial development to offset a regional shortage of affordable land for industrial use. After the opening of a new naval base in Everett in 1994, the U.S. Navy selected Smokey Point to house a support complex with a
commissary A commissary is a government official charged with oversight or an ecclesiastical official who exercises in special circumstances the jurisdiction of a bishop. In many countries, the term is used as an administrative or police title. It often c ...
, offices and a college. The support complex broke ground in 1993 and opened in 1995. The
Puget Sound Regional Council The Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) is a metropolitan planning organization that develops policies and makes decisions about transportation planning, economic development, and growth management throughout the four-county Seattle metropolitan ...
explored the expansion of Arlington Municipal Airport into a regional airport in the 1990s to relieve
Seattle–Tacoma International Airport Seattle–Tacoma International Airport is the primary international airport serving Seattle and its surrounding metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington. It is in the city of SeaTac, which was named after the airport's nickname Se ...
, but decided instead to build a third runway at Sea-Tac because of existing traffic and local opposition. In September 2004, Marysville won a bid to build a
NASCAR The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. It is considered to be one of the top ranked motorsports organizations in ...
racetrack (to be operated by the
International Speedway Corporation International Speedway Corporation (ISC) was a corporation whose primary business was the ownership and management of motorsports race tracks. ISC was founded by NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. in 1953 for the construction of Daytona International ...
) south of Smokey Point. The project was cancelled two months later after concerns about traffic impacts, environmental conditions, and $70 million in required transportation improvements arose. The NASCAR site was later pitched as a candidate for a new
University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...
satellite campus (known as UW North Sound) in the late 2000s, competing with downtown Everett, before the project was put on hold in 2008 and cancelled in 2011.


Annexation dispute

In the early 1990s, after a controversial land-use was proposed for the area, several property owners began an effort to petition the City of Arlington to annex a large portion of the Smokey Point community. Around the same time, another group of property owners began an effort to annex much of the same territory into the City of Marysville. The group working on annexing into Arlington was able to reach the required 60% assessed value threshold first, enabling their annexation to move forward. The City of Marysville, having a vested interest by being the sewer and water utility provider for the area and having an interest in annexing Smokey Point, challenged the annexation, along with the residential community whose property was added to the annexation boundaries by the state Boundary Review Board for Snohomish County. At that time, there was a single Arlington-Smokey Point-Marysville Urban Growth Boundary, causing confusion as to what city could potentially annex which area of Smokey Point. After many meetings with
Snohomish County Snohomish County () is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. With a population of 827,957 as of the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous county in Washington, after nearby King and Pierce counties, and the 72nd-most popul ...
officials, the two cities ended up with separate urban growth boundaries for future annexation. Arlington was given the northeast portion of Smokey Point; Marysville was given the western and southern portions. However, when this proposal was presented to the local community, there was overwhelming opposition, as the community desired to have their entire community be annexed into one city, not split between two. The County Council had the final say and approved the territory divisions. To further complicate things, there was a little-known state law on the books that would have transitioned the annexed territory from the Lakewood School District that served Smokey Point to the school district of the annexing city. Being that nearly all of the commercial area of Smokey Point was petitioned to be annexed into Arlington, the loss of such a tax base would have been devastating to the Lakewood School District. Local residents in Smokey Point and Lakewood also circulated petitions to incorporate the area as a separate city to preserve the school district's taxing base. Because of these issues, local residents in the area formed a group called Save Our Community and Schools (SOCS). SOCS worked tirelessly with their local state representatives to change the law to protect the Lakewood School District. Those efforts were successful, and the Lakewood School District remains intact today. After receiving much input from the local community with the desire to keep their community intact, SOCS filed a Notice of Intent for Incorporation, which would create the City of Smokey Point-Lakewood. The proposal was put on hold, however, since state law mandated that incorporations cannot occur while an annexation involving land in the same area is still pending. After years of controversial court battles, lawsuits, redrawn boundaries, and strong opposition by the residential community, the annexation question was finally resolved in 1999, when the City of Arlington annexed the northeast portion of Smokey Point. The actual land annexed was but a small percentage of the originally-petitioned area, due to the redrawn urban growth boundaries. As a result of the annexation, the effort to keep the Smokey Point community intact ended, along with the hopes of incorporation. As expected, in the years since then, the southern and western portions of Smokey Point have been annexed into the City of Marysville.


Commercial growth

There has been substantial commercial growth in Smokey Point. The western side of Smokey Point (within the City of Marysville) has received much of this growth. In late 2006, the commercial area called "Lakewood Crossing" opened, just west of the
Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway System, Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels thro ...
exit to Smokey Point (exit 206). A stretch of Smokey Point Boulevard was developed into an
auto row An auto row or auto mall is a business cluster with multiple car dealerships in a single neighborhood or road. Auto rows are distinct from car supermarkets which are a single, large dealership. Economics Auto rows, like mall food courts, are an ...
in the late 2010s, with several car dealerships relocating from Marysville. Plans for a major industrial center in the neighborhood were formed in the 1990s and 2000s by the cities of Arlington and Marysville. The Cascade Industrial Center was established in 2019 and designates near Smokey Point for industrial and manufacturing uses. Several industrial warehouses were constructed in the early 2020s, including an
Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...
distribution center, a Tesla warehouse, and a
Frito-Lay Frito-Lay, Inc. (; ) is an American food company that manufactures, markets, and sells snack foods. It began in the early 1930s as two companies, Fritos, the Frito Company and Lay's, H.W. Lay & Company, that merged in 1961. Frito-Lay itself merg ...
distribution center.


Geography

Smokey Point is located at (48.145708, -122.194794). According to the
United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the Federal statistical system, U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and American economy, econ ...
, the CDP had a total area of . of it is land and of it (1.13%) is water.


Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 1,556 people, 628 households, and 425 families residing in the CDP. The population density was . There were 649 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the CDP was 87.15%
White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
, 1.41%
African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
, 0.77% Native American, 4.82% Asian, 0.32%
Pacific Islander Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the list of islands in the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Islands. As an ethnic group, ethnic/race (human categorization), racial term, it is used to describe th ...
, 1.35% from other races, and 4.18% from two or more races.
Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...
or Latino of any race were 5.78% of the population. There were 628 households, out of which 32.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 58.1% were married couples living together, 6.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.3% were non-families. 25.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.48 and the average family size was 2.99. In the CDP, the age distribution of the population shows 25.4% under the age of 18, 7.0% from 18 to 24, 30.7% from 25 to 44, 20.2% from 45 to 64, and 16.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 99.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.1 males. The median income for a household in the CDP was $46,202, and the median income for a family was $53,828. Males had a median income of $37,614 versus $30,250 for females. The
per capita income Per capita income (PCI) or average income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. In many countries, per capita income is determined using regular population surveys, such ...
for the CDP was $20,133. None of the families and 4.1% of the population were living below the
poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line, or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...
, including no under eighteens and 10.3% of those over 64.


Infrastructure


Transportation

There are several main arterials that pass through Smokey Point:
Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway System, Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels thro ...
, Smokey Point Boulevard, State Route 531 (also called 172nd Street NE), and 51st Avenue NE.


Healthcare

The nearest hospital is Cascade Valley Hospital in Arlington. Smokey Point has several clinics and specialty medical facilities that opened in the 2010s and 2020s. The Everett Clinic opened a two-story clinic and hub in 2012 that includes primary care, gynecology, orthopedics, cardiology, pediatrics, advance imaging, and laboratory services. A behavioral hospital with 115 beds opened in 2017.


Sports

The stadium at Lakewood High School is home to Snohomish County FC Steelheads, a semi-pro soccer team.


References


External links


Smokey Point Chamber of Commerce website
{{Snohomish County, Washington Former census-designated places in Washington (state) Geography of Snohomish County, Washington Arlington, Washington Marysville, Washington