WTA Nearing Deal to Buy Former Public Market Site for New Downtown Transit Center

On Sunday afternoon, I was wandering back to Bellingham Station from Wander Brewing Co. and while walking by the former Bellingham Public Market site at Cornwall Avenue & York Street, I noticed that a “Sale Pending” banner had been recently added to the vacant building. While it’s no mystery that the Whatcom Transit Authority has been eyeing the sizable parcel on the northern periphery of Downtown Bellingham since last year, the new banner signals some significant progress toward the eventual creation of a new downtown transit center.  

On Tuesday, The Bellingham Herald reported that WTA is indeed moving closer toward a deal to acquire the site, formerly the home of the Lighthouse Mission Base Camp overnight shelter, with the WTA’s Board of Directors expected to consider a motion to authorize a $6.2 million purchase in October. 

As The Herald reports:

Assuming WTA does purchase the property, [WTA Director of Community and Government Relations Maureen] McCarthy said the agency’s first step will be to “activate” the property. “By making tenant improvements to the existing Public Market building, we’ll create needed office space for some of our own staff and have office space to rent to other tenants. Importantly, this will bring healthy activity to the site while we begin our project planning,” McCarthy said. 

McCarthy said WTA was months away from being able to provide specific details about the plans for the new station. But she said the agency would draw from the community feedback received in its 2022 visioning study.

Giving WTA Room to Grow

WTA has been looking to replace the existing Bellingham Station, located on a narrow parcel along Railroad Avenue between E. Champion Street and E. Holly Street, for many years. The transit center, where numerous WTA routes from across the City of Bellingham and Whatcom County terminate, is at capacity and the agency has to be creative in how it schedules buses serving the station’s 10 bus bays. To accommodate additional buses and more service, WTA needs a larger, more flexible transit center for its operations.

According to WTA’s Bellingham Station Expansion visioning study, published in 2023: 

Expansion of the station would allow WTA to avoid inefficient and confusing bus gate changes and continue to plan future services based on what is best for the community. Expansion of the station would also help WTA plan for future types of buses that may run through the station, such as electric buses and articulated buses, which still need to be added to WTA's transit fleet.

Since then, WTA has introduced Gillig battery electric buses to its fleet, which are charged at WTA’s Bakerview Spur maintenance facility. A new, expanded transit center creates an opportunity to accommodate some charging stations downtown, allowing some additional operational flexibility for WTA’s electric buses. 

The Bellingham Station Expansion visioning study assumed that a new transit center would likely take shape on the existing station footprint, anchoring transit-oriented development on adjacent parcels on Railroad Avenue, E. Champion Street, and E. Magnolia Street. The vacant Public Market site, one block north, would allow WTA to construct a new transit center with few disruptions to the existing station operations.

The new site, should it be acquired, allows WTA and the City of Bellingham to potentially rethink bus pathways serving a new downtown station, including some limited transit-priority lanes to aid buses heading to and from the station. Currently, buses enter and exit Bellingham Station from E. Champion Street and E. Magnolia Street. The new site, depending how it would be configured, could allow new entry and exit points for buses, including York Street, Cornwall Avenue, and Railroad Avenue.

A Catalyst for Downtown Revitalization

The previous Bellingham Station Expansion visioning study, which was informed by stakeholder interviews and related public outreach, didn’t settle on one particular concept for transit-oriented development anchored by a new station. But it’s clear that there’s a desire to include public amenities, community space, and housing while supporting local businesses in the vicinity of the station or that may be included in a mixed-use transit-oriented development.

McCarthy told the Herald: “When the Public Market property became available, our Board of Directors saw the opportunity to combine all of these uses in a true Transit Oriented Development project.”

It’s important to think of the new station as a gateway to Downtown Bellingham. The current station anchors the northern end of Railroad Avenue and is oriented in a way that points arriving passengers toward businesses and restaurants along Railroad Avenue. While Railroad’s commercial vitality is sometimes overwhelmed visually by an abundance of parked cars given the generous right-of-way, a new station development creates an opportunity for the City of Bellingham to rethink the way people engage with the street environment while heading to and from the downtown transit hub. Overhauling the parking environment along the entirety of Railroad Avenue may be a bitter pill to swallow for the city and downtown businesses, but if new housing or civic amenities rise someday on the footprint of the existing station, it may be wise to consider a full or partial pedestrianization of the 1400 block of Railroad Avenue, between E. Champion Street and E. Magnolia Street.  

Moving Bellingham Station one block north to Cornwall Avenue & York Street also creates opportunities for revitalization along Cornwall Avenue — historically, an important shopping-oriented thoroughfare in Downtown Bellingham — heading north out of the Central Business District. While some of the small parking craters at Cornwall & Champion, anchored by Jiffy Lube, unfortunately junk up the visual appeal of that intersection for pedestrians, it’s nonetheless an important entry point to the heart of Cornwall Avenue to the south and the Mount Baker Theatre area west of the new station site. There’s also an opportunity to revitalize Flora Street, leading west from Cornwall Avenue & York Street, as a gateway from the new station toward the Whatcom Museum, one of downtown’s most recognized landmarks. 

The opportunity to build a new downtown transit hub isn’t simply an exercise for WTA to improve local transit operations and conditions for passengers using buses as they go to and from Downtown Bellingham. It’s something that lays a foundation for new transit-oriented housing and civic amenities. But it’s also an opportunity for the City of Bellingham and downtown stakeholders, should they embrace it, to rethink and revitalize some of the corridors connecting a new Bellingham Station with different parts of the Central Business District and downtown cultural destinations.

A new Bellingham Station is, simply, more than a transit project. It's a smart catalyst for ongoing downtown revitalization efforts. 

Addendum: An Update on 12th & McKenzie

I updated a recent newsletter-blog post to include a comment from the City of Bellingham, which responded to my inquiry about the recently installed Rectangular Rapidly Flashing Beacons (RFFBs) at 12th Street & McKenzie Avenue in Fairhaven, one of which is partially blocked by a tree.

"We're currently working with the contractor to assess the sight distance for the RRFB. If it doesn't meet the current standard—meaning the RRFB should be visible from at least 155 ft upstream (south) of the crossing for northbound vehicles—then the tree will be trimmed to improve visibility," Riley Grant, communications and outreach manager for the City of Bellingham Public Works, said in an email.