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Donovan cites downtown investments, floodwall and code changes as path to more housing
Summary
Mayor Donovan reviewed a decades-long downtown master plan, a $30 million floodwall, a new library/community center with 300 parking spaces, and early comprehensive-plan and code changes that correspond with a rise in housing permits in 2025.
Mayor Donovan said the city’s downtown master plan, completed in 2008, plus recent infrastructure investments and code updates are intended to catalyze private investment and increase housing availability in Mount Vernon’s downtown and commercial corridors.
The mayor described the library and community center project under the audience as the largest public-infrastructure investment in Skagit County history, with a $30 million floodwall completed earlier to remove downtown from FEMA’s 100-year floodplain and about 300 new parking spaces created overhead to support future riverfront development. He said those actions were intended to protect and enable waterfront investment.
Mayor Donovan said the city has begun opening its comprehensive plan (the 20-year comp plan that is normally updated about every 10 years) and will pursue code changes aimed at allowing more residential development in commercial corridors such as College Way, Riverside and Urban Avenue. He said that between 2021 and 2024 the city averaged about 59 final permitted dwelling units per year (roughly five units a month) but that in 2025, after initial code changes, the city had already recorded 75 final housing permits and was on pace for about 15 units a month.
The mayor framed these code and planning actions as steps to attract housing and hospitality investment — hotels, condos and restaurants — and to support a more vibrant downtown. He said the city will invite public input as it reopens the downtown subarea and comprehensive-plan updates.
Mayor Donovan said the downtown master plan began in 2008 and emphasized that successive administrations and councils have “held fast to that plan.” He described the floodwall as a $30,000,000 infrastructure project that lifted the downtown out of the FEMA hundred-year floodplain.
The mayor said more code changes will appear in the next 12 months and that residents will be invited to comment on zoning and housing proposals.
