EVERETT – Good things, the saying goes, come in threes. A trio of Everett visionaries are on the cusp of creating a new, welcoming gateway to the city with a mural art project at the Pacific Avenue exit off Northbound I-5. It’s combining art, ocean and ingenuity.
The idea germinated with C.J. Ebert, who sees his hometown through a real estate lens. Ebert tells EverettPost.com, “My thrust on this is having lived around here, I’d like to see something for the community that’s feel good.”
Ebert grew up in Everett, graduated from Everett High School. “I lived here pretty much most of my life. Got out of the University of Washington. Got married. Went into the construction business. I’ve been in the real estate business, pretty much all my life. And things I’ve done around Everett–a lot of renovation,” he says ticking off waterfront projects like Port Gardner Landing and the former Weyerhaeuser site plus the former Asarco smelter area that over-looks the water on the north end of the city.
“I’m a real estate guy.” Ebert, who owns Harbor Mountain Development, elaborates from his Hewitt Avenue office, just two blocks from the planned site of the mural. “I’ve always felt, you need a gateway—a good front door to greet people. And when I did the waterfront project back in the late 1990s, It was amazing to me how few people knew Everett even had a waterfront.”
“You know, there are a couple hundred thousand cars a day that go by I-5. (There) Is not one sign that says waterfront, city center.” Ebert lamented.
“So, I was at a cocktail party a couple of years ago. I ran into Sean Kennedy,” Ebert recalls. Kennedy is a management consultant who has worked with local governments on complex business problems to manage large, multi-year initiatives—including projects involving river, fishery, and water quality resources.
“And we started talking,” Ebert says of the association with Kennedy. “Alan got into the mix. And we decided that we would put forth a proposal, raise some money to do some kind of a gateway, welcoming to the city of Everett. And that’s two years ago,” Ebert adds.
Alan is Alan Mizuta of BUiLT Design in Everett. The trio all brought their complimentary expertise to the vision of the gateway mural.
Kennedy shares, “Alan owns a design build firm, so designing—half of the time when you’re out raising money, you need visualizations (graphics, illustrations, something tangible to show people what the project will look like). And Alan does that in spades and even drive-bys, you know—here’s what it’ll look like in your car going by–which just helps propel it forward.”
Ebert itemizes more of the group synergy, “We needed somebody to kind of manage the deal. So, Sean’s been our good manager and logistics person with the city and the state. Alan’s done a lot of the design.”
The gateway mural will transform a drab, gray concrete wall under the lanes of I-5 on Pacific Avenue between Maple Street to the west and Walnut Street to the east into a 165-foot, sprawling, 3-D painting depicting an octopus.
CJ Ebert, “I think our idea here is we just want when you come into Everett, we want to go ‘hello’. “
The idea is rooted in a long-running concern: too many people pass Everett without realizing what is waiting just beyond I-5. “It’s a mile from I-5 to downtown (Everett), and it’s another mile to get to the waterfront,” Ebert said. “In between, you need to have some kind of connectivity. One of the reasons that the Everett Event Center was built downtown was to try to draw people downtown.”
Kennedy chimes in, “And if it’s the gateway to your city is, can we do a little something to make that a connector because you’re going to be connecting now to the new stadium (in the planning phase off Broadway at Pacific and Hewitt). It goes directly to the Waterfront from there, and we do that.”
The work has also underscored the perception gap about Everett the group hopes to address. Everett is surrounded by water, but its waterfront can still feel hidden from people who know the city only from the freeway.
“I just came up from Seattle (for this news interview) and told them I’m coming here, and I said, ‘The waterfront’s beautiful,’ and they said, ‘What waterfront?’” Kennedy conveyed about Everett neophytes. “You’re up there on Colby (Avenue)” he says, “you can look at the Cascades or the Olympics — you have a waterfront.”
Mizuta reminds, “We had a (Naval) carrier sitting right out there (and now Destroyers based on homeport changes). We have the largest (publicly owned) marina on the West Coast. The beach, Jetty island (seasonal ferry service begins July 8)”
Mizuta said that perception issue makes the gateway part of a larger branding effort for Everett.
“In many respects, we’re kind of working on a brand package for the city at a private level,” Mizuta said. “The city doesn’t necessarily have the wherewithal to pull that off at this moment. They have a lot of great talent and certainly have the ambition, but I understand they don’t have the resources.”
What sounded like a straightforward beautification project soon became a lesson in jurisdiction. The planned canvas is concrete buttress holding up an I-5 freeway overpass, which puts the structure under the domain of the Washington State Department of Transportation. The ground below the overpass is owned by the city of Everett. The result, the trio says, is a public-private partnership that has required patience, permits and coordination.
“Washington State Department of Transportation owns the overpass, so basically anything that’s off the ground is theirs,” Mizuta said. “We have to have permission from them. The ground that C.J. was mentioning is actually the city of Everett’s responsibility. They fully endorsed this project, but they can’t give us permission to do the painting itself. It’s a complex public-private partnership.”
Lighting beneath the over-pass presented another challenge. Ebert imparts “We wanted to light” the mural, “but Wash DOT did not like that. State (DOT) won’t allow us to put any sort of (lighting) bracket up in the girders. The city doesn’t want us to put anything in the ground (as a light fixture).”
Mizuta understands the prohibitions, “And, they’re of course, rightfully sensitive to it being a bridge (over-pass). And ‘what are you doing to our (WSDOT) bridge (over-pass)’?. So, its taken a little bit of hoop jumping.”
With the lighting plan scuttled, Ebert reports, “We’ve worked with the artist to work around the existing lighting that’s there. Now, maybe we can improve it with a little different fixture, but in the long run, you can’t always get what you want. “
The artist, Will Schlough, is unfazed, Mizuta says, “Will’s very supportive of it. He embraces the constraints with limited lighting.”
That limitation helped reinforce the mural theme of an octopus, Ebert remarks, “Octopuses are sort of interesting creatures. They like to live below things in the dark.”
Mizuta continues Ebert’s thought, “So we actually did a lot of study on it, you know, trying to understand the space for the artist. And even in selecting the design, I think the committee really kind of latched onto this octopus.”
A creature that fits naturally into shadows beneath a bridge could become memorable. Mizuta said the committee studied the space and considered how the mural would affect the ‘end user’, someone riding in a moving vehicle–particularly children.
“One of the specific litmus tests was, ‘Is it memorable for your six- or eight-year-old?’” Mizuta said. “What would your eight-year-old say when riding in the car as you pass the mural? They’d say, ‘Oh yeah, we’re at the ‘Octopus Exit.’ That iconic feature was really one of the draws of this design.”
The artist-selection process also grew larger than the organizers first expected. The group received about 150 responses, hired Overall Creative to help manage the process, narrowed the field to 30, then 11, then three finalists, and paid the finalists for their concepts before a selection committee chose the final design.
Ebert, “It’s been a real learning experience having to deal with the municipalities and the state. You know, you think it’d be a lot easier. I mean if we were just a couple of ‘wildcats’, we could go out there with some paint and get it done in a night,” choosing a facetiously short time span for the over-simplification before adding earnestly, “I think we all have a better respect for why it costs what it does.”
The two-year effort has drawn financial and in-kind support from local businesses, public partners and community donors. Major contributors listed by organizers include Kaiser Permanente, Everett City Councilmember Judy Tuohy, the Port of Everett, Skotdal Real Estate and Harbor Development. Other donors and in-kind supporters include City of Everett Tourism, Wrecking Ball Demolition, Crystalite Development Group, New Day Partners, Rucker Hill Holdings, Davis Sign Everett, Sherwin-Williams Everett, Herc Rental Everett, KLB Construction and Clean Happy Pressure Washing.
“It’s really the small-business local community that’s leaning into this thing,” Mizuta said. “We want to be proud of our city, and we want to be welcoming. It really is by and for the community.”
Ebert echoes, “It’s really a Grassroots.”
Mizuta notes, “We have people investing for their altruism, but also it’s a win-win.”
The public is invited to contribute to the mural as well and you can do so by clicking here.
Mizuta thinks this could be first of several gateway murals for Everett. “And the idea that this is one entrance is also maybe important because I think throughout this process. We’ve also talked quite a bit about. Obviously accomplishing this, and it can’t happen fast enough for any of the three of us. But the question is, what’s next? And so, what impact can we make somewhere else? And how do we do that? And we even talk about that when we’re soliciting funds. Because folks are writing some pretty handsome checks and saying, well, what if you have extra money? What do you do? And so, we haven’t replied with precision and certainty, saying this is the next project, but I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all three of us have envisioned a second project or even hopefully a third and fourth and address all the main entrances to Everett in some capacity.”
Ebert is quick to cite two locations that intrigue him, “Yeah, that entrance into (north) Everett off of Old State Route 99. Yeah, that’s really pretty. And that might be another spot where we could do something (a mural) like this. The other spot is 41st Street. Sure, you know, coming off there, and it would be really good to have something there as well”
The trio could leave a legacy of three (or more) gateway murals to beautify and benefit the city. They hope to start the mural painting underneath I-5 in July. “I’m still waiting for the WSDOT permit”, Kennedy quips about obtaining that final document of approval. They intend to have the mural finished by the end of summer.
Ebert, inching closer to his long-time vision unfurling like an octopus tentacle underneath I-5 says, “I’d have to say that it’s taken a lot of patience between three of us to work through the hoops. It’s something that I think the three of us really believe in. We believe in community.”
“It’s gotta feel good. It’s gotta have a good feel as you walk in the door, and to me,” Ebert attests, “that’s the front door to Everett.”
Editors note: EverettPost.com is owned by Skotdal Real Estate.