Lynnwood city staff celebrate safer street upgrades at College Place Elementary

“Do you know why the asphalt road had to break up with the gravel road? The relationship was too rocky,” Public Works Director Jared Bond said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the completed 204th St. SW & College Place Improvements project north of College Place Elementary.

What used to be a row of trees and a gravel road that split the school campus and the residential houses is now a paved, two-way road. 204th Street has sidewalks that connect to 76th Avenue West. Construction began in the summer of 2024 and ended in May 2025.

“It was the last gravel road in the city,” Bond said. “I remember every year our street crew would come by. They would grade it, they would dump some more gravel on it and it would degrade. And we’d have to come back and [fix] it. It didn’t have a sidewalk, either, right next to the school.”

The $3 million project – funded partly by the Washington State Department of Transportation Safe Routes to School Grant and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) – addressed safety concerns, particularly for school children and emergency responders. It also involved community engagement, public feedback and collaboration with the Edmonds School District and local fire departments. In addition, the project included drainage improvements, sewer line relocations and ADA-compliant ramps.

A new signal at the intersection of 76th Avenue and 204th Street was installed, including a crosswalk on the north side of the intersection and rapid rectangular flashing beacons across 208th Street Southwest. A new driveway was built to give a dropoff point for children attending College Place Elementary.

Lynnwood Mayor Christine Frizzell thanked those who contributed to the project, including former Lynnwood Councilmember Jim Smith, Perteet Inc., OMA Construction and the Edmonds School District. “It takes a lot of money, but most of all, it takes people, it gets their hands dirty and makes this thing happen,” Frizzell said. “Safety is paramount for our city and our community members. You want and deserve to feel safe in your community.”

City Engineer David Mach said that traffic and safety issues near the school were “chaotic,” with dropoffs and pickups, creating confusion and blocking local residents’ driveways. 

In addition to city and ARPA funding, the project received money from Lynnwood’s Transportation Benefit District, which is funded by vehicle tabs and some sales tax. 

“Here you see 400 feet of pipe under the ground,” Mach said, sweeping his arm behind him toward 204th Street. “Underneath here there’s a huge hole that they had to build to put pipes in the ground, and that’s for stormwater detention and water quality. When the rains come, it’ll flow into the creeks, and we try to slow that flow down so it doesn’t erode out the streets.”

The idea for the project came from Lynnwood resident Emily Cornish after she and her husband moved to a house at the corner of 204th Street and 76th Avenue in 2017. She said that driving on the gravel road was like going on the Indiana Jones ride in Disneyland because of the mud and potholes.

Another resident said that his elderly neighbor, who has been living in the neighborhood since there were horses around, called it “the bumpy road.”

“It was just really annoying,” Cornish said. “It was always dusty in the summer, just a huge muddy mess for the other nine months of the year, and it was unsafe. People leaving the school didn’t realize it was an actual street, so it looked more like an alley. So they would take a sharp turn to go right, but people would try to turn into this [driveway], and I saw two or three near accidents because you couldn’t really see that it was a street.”

In late 2018, Cornish contacted former Councilmember Jim Smith, who invited her to bring this up at a council meeting.“Despite my fear of public speaking, I did go and say, ‘We need to pave this road for safety, and, you know, time to get rid of the last gravel road’,” Cornish said.