Recently, the Bothell City Council voted to sell surplus land to create yet another great development in our downtown, this time the anchor tenant will be a specialty grocer that citizens have been demanding for years.

This is great news for our city. It also comes on the heels of the exciting news that McMenamins will be opening on Oct. 15 of this year. The McMenamins development will include the first movie theater in Bothell in decades, restaurants, pubs, a spa and a 73 room hotel. For the last several years, our citizens have come together and envisioned what they wanted our downtown to be and, now, that vision is coming to life. We are cleaning up contaminated properties, preserving historic structures and creating a vibrant downtown.

Thank you to our city council, Mayor Joshua Freed and Bothell city staff for implementing what we asked for! There’s still more to be done and I’m sure that more discussions will be held to work out yet more details of the proposed developments. Not everyone will get what they want (it’s called democracy), but we will all benefit.

Michael P. Challenger, Bothell