Mukilteo's Waterfront Redevelopment Just Restarted. Here's Why It Won't Move Fast.

Statements of qualifications for Mukilteo's waterfront Lot 5 are due this Wednesday, September 9, at 4 p.m. The city released the Request for Qualifications on July 29, inviting development teams to compete for a long-term ground lease on 1.19 acres sitting between the Washington State Ferry terminal and the 1906 lighthouse. If you've been watching this stretch of shoreline for any length of time, the instinct is to read this deadline as the start of something. It isn't. It's the latest entry in a process that's been circling this same acre and a half since before most current Mukilteo homeowners bought their houses.

That distinction matters if you're trying to figure out what this means for property near the water. The RFQ is real, and it's moving. But the structure the city has chosen, and the paperwork that still isn't finished underneath it, tell a more useful story than the headline does.

What's Actually Due This Week

The RFQ is phase one of a two-step process. Teams that qualify move to a Request for Proposals phase, where the city will evaluate actual design concepts before choosing a development partner. There's no public timeline yet for how long that second phase will take. So the September 9 deadline isn't a groundbreaking date. It's a filter, the first of at least two, before anyone picks up a shovel.

Lot 5 itself is a 1.19-acre city-owned parcel, one small piece of a roughly 26-acre waterfront corridor stretching from Lighthouse Park to Edgewater Beach. That corridor currently sits under about 10 different owners: the city, the Port of Everett, private interests, tribal stakeholders, and the state. Even a fully successful outcome on Lot 5 doesn't unlock the rest of the shoreline. It unlocks one lot.

Why Twenty Years, Not Two

The site's history explains the caution. The land was a U.S. Air Force fuel storage facility from the early 1950s until it was decommissioned in 1990. Cleanup followed, and the Washington State Department of Ecology issued a No Further Action determination in 2006. The Port of Everett finished acquiring the property from the Air Force in 2013, after what the Port itself describes as a nearly 20-year effort. Portions were conveyed to the city in 2016 as part of a larger promenade vision.

Then it sat.

• 1990 – Air Force tank farm decommissioned after decades of fuel storage on the site
• 2006 – Department of Ecology issues No Further Action determination following cleanup
• 2013 – Port of Everett completes acquisition of the former tank farm property
• 2016 – City drafts a waterfront master plan envisioning a park at the Lot 5 site
• 2021 – NOAA scraps plans for a research facility on an adjacent parcel, citing cost
• February 2026 – NOAA's 1.1-acre site reverts to Port ownership via finalized quitclaim deed
• March 2026 – Mukilteo City Council votes 5-2 against selling Lot 5 outright
• July 2026 – RFQ formally issued for a long-term ground lease on Lot 5

Each step took years, and each one only cleared the way for the next agency to act. That pace is the pattern, not the exception.

The Choice That Tells You the Most

The single most revealing decision in this whole saga happened quietly, in March, and it wasn't the RFQ. It was a City Council vote, 5-2, against surplussing Lot 5 for potential sale. The council chose instead to pursue a long-term ground lease, keeping the land in public hands while collecting rent from whoever eventually builds there.

That's not a neutral choice. Selling the land outright would have handed the city a lump sum and handed a developer full control over pace and design. Leasing it does the opposite: slower cash today, but the city keeps leverage over what gets built, how it fits the waterfront's public-facing vision, and how long the process takes. Mayor Joe Marine put the intent plainly when the RFQ went out:

"We want people to come here and never want to leave."

That's a statement about character, not speed. A city holding onto land for the long term has less incentive to rush a deal just to get something built. If you're an investor looking at this corridor expecting a fast flip once a partner is named, the ground-lease structure is your first signal that this isn't that kind of project.

The Zoning Gap Nobody's Talking About

Here's the detail that gets lost in most coverage of the RFQ: Lot 5 isn't even zoned for the mixed-use development the city is soliciting proposals for. The parcel currently carries an Open Space designation under Mukilteo's comprehensive plan. A rezone to Waterfront Mixed Use, the same designation already covering the neighboring Lots 2 and 3, is expected by November 2026, roughly two months after teams submit their qualifications.

Layer onto that a 2013 environmental covenant tied to the tank farm remediation that currently prohibits residential use on the site. Subsurface contamination remains present, though manageable, and the surface itself is clean. But modifying that covenant to permit housing would require additional investigation and approvals that could take up to three years, with no guarantee the modification gets approved at all.

Put together: the city is soliciting development teams for a mixed-use vision on land that isn't zoned for mixed use yet, with a potential path to housing that could take three more years to even clear. Any serious development partner will be pricing that timeline into their proposal. So should anyone watching this corridor as a real estate signal rather than a news story.

What the Water Already Costs

Here's the part that should temper any "buy now before the boom" instinct. The premium for being near Mukilteo's waterfront isn't waiting for this redevelopment to arrive. It's already priced in.

Ask different sources for Mukilteo's median home price this year and you'll get different numbers depending on the month and the metric. Movoto put the citywide median list price at $877,000 in July 2026, roughly flat year over year, with homes spending a median of 28 days on market. Redfin's most recent snapshot showed the average sale price around $860,000, down about 4.9% from a year earlier, in a market it still scores as competitive. Looking at a slightly earlier window, the three months ending May 2026 put Mukilteo's median sale price closer to $949,000, compared with a county-wide median near $758,000 over the same stretch, with homes here selling in about a week versus roughly twelve days countywide.

Those figures don't agree on an exact number. What they agree on is the shape: Mukilteo trades at a real premium to Snohomish County as a whole, and it moves faster than the county average. That premium exists today, before Lot 5 has a tenant, before the zoning is finalized, before anyone breaks ground. The ferry terminal alone moves roughly 10,000 people through the waterfront every day and carries about 3.7 million riders a year on the Whidbey Island route, one of the three busiest crossings in the state ferry system. Demand for this pocket of Snohomish County isn't contingent on a promenade getting built. It's already here.

That's worth sitting with if you're evaluating land or homes near this corridor as an investment. The redevelopment, when it eventually arrives, is more likely to stabilize and formalize a premium that already exists than to create a sudden new one. The upside case isn't "buy now, sell high once towers go up." It's "buy into a market that already commands a premium, with a long-term public project working in the background to reduce uncertainty over the next several years."

What This Means If You're Watching This Land

If you own property in Old Town Mukilteo or near the waterfront corridor, the practical takeaway is patience paired with attention. The Ivar's Mukilteo Landing site, a 0.55-acre parcel with a 9,637-square-foot building, is being folded into the Port's side of the plan with the restaurant's long-term lease staying intact, which suggests the city and Port are trying to preserve existing anchors rather than clear the slate entirely. That's a meaningfully different posture than a wholesale redevelopment push, and it's worth watching how the RFQ responses treat that kind of continuity.

If you're a land-minded buyer or small investor drawn to this corridor because of the RFQ headline, the honest read is that this is a multi-year horizon, not a multi-month one. The zoning has to catch up. The environmental covenant question, if it's ever pursued for residential use, could run another three years on its own. And even a selected development partner still has to clear an RFP phase before anything is finalized.

None of that makes the waterfront less worth watching. It makes it worth watching correctly, on a timeline measured in years, with the understanding that the market here has already been pricing in Mukilteo's fundamentals long before this particular process picked back up.

If you're weighing a purchase near this corridor, or you're sitting on property that could be affected by how this plays out over the next few years, I'd be glad to walk through what I'm seeing on the ground. You can reach out through Bruce Overstreet's Windermere site any time.

A Few Direct Questions

Is Lot 5 zoned for the development the city is soliciting? Not yet. It currently carries an Open Space designation. A rezone to Waterfront Mixed Use, matching neighboring Lots 2 and 3, is expected by November 2026.

Can housing be built on the site? Not immediately. A 2013 environmental covenant tied to the former tank farm currently prohibits residential use. Modifying it would require further investigation and approvals that could take up to three years, with no guaranteed outcome.

What happens to Ivar's Mukilteo Landing? The Port of Everett is acquiring the 0.55-acre parcel while keeping the restaurant's existing long-term lease in place, so it's expected to remain operating through the transition.

When will something actually get built on the waterfront? There's no public date. The current RFQ only closes phase one of a two-phase selection process, and the zoning and environmental questions run on their own separate timelines that extend into 2027 and beyond in some scenarios.