Signs of Life at Totem Lake - A New Redevelopment Site Plan

It’s been more than two years now since we’ve heard much of anything regarding the proposed redevelopment at Totem Lake Mall.  The last time the City of Kirkland website for the mall redevelopment was updated was back in early 2006, and nothing new has been submitted to the city since that time.  This has led some people (myself included) to wonder if the Totem Lake Mall redevelopment had stalled out.  Finally after a long wait, there are signs of life on the Totem Lake Mall redevelopment project, with a new site plan posted at DDR’s webpage for the mall.  The site plan (in PDF format) can be found here.  I cannot be entirely certain of when this new site plan was actually published to the DDR website, but the plan itself bears a date of February 28th, 2008 on it, which makes it a lot newer than any of the existing information we have on this project.  Quite a bit has changed compared to what was presented to the City of Kirkland design review board in 2006 (the only other publicly available information on the redevelopment that I am aware of right now.)  After the jump,  a look at the site plan, and some of the clues it might hold to what the new Totem Lake Mall might look like.

Totem Lake Mall Research Update - A Map of the Lower Mall from 1973

 

First of all, I’d like to welcome the influx of visitors that has arrived at my original profile of the Totem Lake Mall via deadmalls.com. Although I am a transplant to this area, and have only been around here for about 13 1/2 years, I have stil seen much of this particular mall’s decline to its current state.  In order to show what it was like in better days, I have undertaken a project to document some of its early history.  So far, much of my information has come from contemporary newspapers from 1973 and 1974 (especially the East Side Journal,) although I have also found out a number of things from comments made to the original post.  Previously, I put together a brief info dump on some of the things that I have been able to determine so far, but since then I have continued to do more research an have been able to fill in some of the blanks, and I think I’ve got a mostly complete picture of what was in the lower mall when it opened.  After the jump, a closer look at what stores were in (and around) the lower mall in 1973, when it opened.

Totem Lake Mall: An Update and Info Dump

 Update:  Yeah, it’s still empty.  The fly-by-night ink store in the lower mall shut down and it looks like a small closeout store is currently occupying the former Grab Bag location for the time being, but there’s not much to report.  The City of Kirkland hasn’t reported anything  new with regards to the redevelopment plans, and the DDR webpage for the mall hasn’t even bothered to update to reflect the closing of the CompUSA store more than a year ago. 

With that out of the way, I would like to go ahead and give a quick summary of what I have been able to learn so far with regards to the history of this mall.  When I originally wrote my Totem Lake Mall profile, just about all I had to work with was a mostly empty mall sitting in the middle of Kirkland and a few random facts from a Wikipedia article.  Since I wrote that post, it has become one of the more popular ones on my Blog, since information on this mall seems to be rather scarce on the Web.  Since then, I have begun doing some research into the mall and its history in order to show the mall in better days, and give some more insight into how the property has reached its present state.  I intend to do the same with the other malls in the area (I am trying to collect info on the history of Crossroads now, although I haven’t found a lot there yet.  Factoria Mall and Bellevue Square will come later.)  Most of what I have found so far has come from some (admittedly brief) searching in microfilm archives from the East Side Journal, which was a weekly newspaper based out of Kirkland at the time.  The summary can be found after the jump.

Retail Wasteland - A Tour of the Totem Lake Mall

Update 5/26/08:  If you’re looking for something slightly less depressing to read about, I have just posted the first part of a 4-part series of posts on Crossroads Mall in Bellevue, a small mall which was brought back from the brink of failure in the mid Eighties to be transformed into what is now a thriving neighborhood mall and a popular gathering place for the community.

Also be sure to check out details of a new site plan for the redevelopment of this mall here, and the most recent post on my research into the history of this mall here.

One of the things you learn from spending time on the Internet is that no matter how obscure a hobby you engage in might be, there’s a good chance you’ll find a number of other people with similar interests.  For some reason, I’ve always had an interest in malls, not so much because I like shopping, but because I find it interesting to watch them over time and see how things change.  Some malls thrive, while others decline, and end up abandoned.  There are whole websites (and blogs) devoted to documenting some of these declining and defunct malls.  Over the course of the next few months, I intend to make a series of posts about some of the region’s malls, from those that are thriving to those that are failing.

One such mall is the Totem Lake Mall in Kirkland.  Originally built in 1973, The mall is split down the middle by a road, separating it into two halves (hence the name “Totem Lake Malls” as seen on the signs.)  The mall has faced a long, slow decline since the late 1990s, accelerated by the recent loss of three of its major anchor stores, leaving most of the enclosed mall portion of the property vacant.   The owner of the mall has submitted preliminary plans to the City of Kirkland for a major redevelopment of the property, although no new documents have been submitted since last January.  These plans seem to indicate that a majority of the existing property will be demolished and rebuilt.  Although (as you will see) this is badly needed,  After the jump, a tour of the desolation that is the Totem Lake Mall,