On Main Street in downtown Bothell, a restaurant called Gallo De Oro closed in 2020 and never reopened. For six years the space sat empty, one storefront down from a Baskin-Robbins that kept scooping cones to whoever walked by. In June 2026, Bothell's City Council decided both properties belong to the city now. It bought them.
That single transaction tells you more about where downtown Bothell stands than any listing description will. The city is actively assembling land for the next phase of its downtown, block by block, parcel by parcel. What the city is not doing, at least not on the same schedule, is finishing the transit connection that a lot of the recent redevelopment narrative has been built around. If you're evaluating a home or a mixed-use investment near Main Street right now, the gap between those two clocks, the land clock and the transit clock, is the thing worth understanding before you write an offer.
The parcel the city just closed on
City Manager Kyle Stannert described the purchase of the Gallo De Oro site and the adjacent Baskin-Robbins property as a chance to shape growth around housing, local businesses, and public space, and to turn a long-vacant storefront into what he called an ideal canvas. The two parcels get folded into a bigger plan alongside the city-owned lot at Triangle Junction, the intersection where Bothell Way NE, Main Street, and Woodinville Drive meet. Triangle Junction already hosts Pop Shops on Main, a small-business incubator built from four prefabricated retail buildings that the city installed in 2021, with entrepreneurs cycling through in staggered two-year cohorts.
The purchase isn't happening in isolation. It's landing in the middle of an active Downtown Subarea Plan Update, the city's effort to rewrite the 2009 plan that first set downtown's transformation in motion. Bothell held an open house on July 22, 2026, so residents could review preliminary findings and weigh in through a body the city calls the Downtown Ambassador Committee. If you own or are buying near Main Street, that update, not the old 2009 rules, is the document that will eventually govern what can be built next to you.
The half of the story that's already true
It helps to separate what's already happened downtown from what's still promised, because the two get blended together in almost every conversation about Bothell's growth.
What's already happened is substantial. The 2016 fire that damaged about 20 downtown businesses and closed several more, breaking out in the historic Mercantile Building mid-conversion, has been fully absorbed. That building, known locally as the Merc, is finished and now holds 122 apartment homes directly on Main Street. The Junction, a six-story mixed-use project next to McMenamins Anderson School, added 130 more apartments along with 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and 30,000 square feet of Class A office space. Main Street itself restricted car access on the block between 101st and 102nd Avenue NE years ago, and in March 2026 the City Council voted to extend that pedestrian-only pilot for another two years. None of that required a train.
What hasn't happened yet, and is the piece most of the downtown-growth pitch actually leans on, is the regional transit connection that's supposed to tie Bothell into the rest of the Eastside and Seattle without a car.
The clock that hasn't kept pace
That connection is Stride S3, a bus rapid transit line funded through the Sound Transit 3 measure that Puget Sound voters approved in 2016. It's meant to run buses every 10 to 15 minutes between Bothell and the Shoreline South Link light rail station, giving downtown Bothell a real transfer point into the regional rail network for the first time.
For years, the public timeline for that line said service would start in 2026, with a companion line following in 2027. That's no longer the plan. Sound Transit's own project updates now describe a staggered rollout across 2028 and 2029, and the agency has acknowledged that its original 2024 opening target proved overly optimistic. Along the way, the project's cost estimate grew from an original range of $1.7 to $1.8 billion to a high-end figure of $2.7 billion, disclosed in 2023. Some of the newer delay sits upstream of Bothell entirely, in Lake Forest Park, where residents have pushed back on the property takings needed to widen the road for a dedicated bus lane, a dispute Sound Transit may still have to resolve in court.
Bothell has done its part on its end of the corridor. The city finished its Business Access and Transit lane construction within city limits and recently completed work on the NE 185th Street corridor to get ready for Stride. Sound Transit has also broken ground on a $274 million electric bus maintenance base in Bothell's Canyon Park, a 10-acre facility that will eventually house up to 120 buses. So there's real money and real dirt already committed to this project in Bothell. What isn't finished is the part riders actually experience: buses running on a schedule, and even after that starts, dedicated parking in downtown Bothell for the line isn't slated to arrive until 2034.
Here's how the promise compares with the current schedule:
| Originally promised | Currently scheduled | |
|---|---|---|
| Stride S3 passenger service | 2026-2027 | Staggered, 2028-2029 |
| Program-wide cost | $1.7-1.8 billion | Up to $2.7 billion |
| Dedicated downtown Bothell parking | Not specified | 2034 |
What this means if you're looking at Main Street right now
The land-assembly story and the transit story are running on different clocks, and it's worth pricing them separately rather than treating "downtown Bothell" as one bundled bet on future transit access.
Ask which plan governs the parcel you're considering. The Downtown Subarea Plan Update is actively rewriting the rules that shaped downtown since 2009. A property's zoning and allowed density could shift before construction ever starts nearby, and the city's Engage Bothell platform is the place to track that process directly.
Check whether the listing sits inside the pedestrian-only block. If it's between 101st and 102nd Avenue NE, on-site parking works differently, and the pilot's newly extended two-year window means that arrangement is locked in for a while, not a temporary experiment about to reverse.
Separate walkability you can use today from transit you can't yet. The Merc, the Junction, and Pop Shops on Main already exist and already function. Stride S3 does not, and its own delivery history suggests treating any posted opening year as a floor, not a guarantee.
If you're weighing a purchase partly on future rail access, model the 2028-2029 window, not sooner. And remember that even once buses start running, the city's own dedicated downtown parking for the line isn't expected until 2034, six years past the earliest realistic service start.
Watch the Gallo De Oro and Baskin-Robbins parcels as a signal, not a deadline. The city has announced intent, paired with Triangle Junction, but no construction start date has been attached to it. Treat nearby listings as adjacent to a site that will change eventually, not one that already has.
FAQ
When will Stride BRT actually start running through downtown Bothell? Sound Transit's current public timeline points to a staggered opening across 2028 and 2029, a shift from the 2026-2027 window the project carried for years.
Does the city buying the Gallo De Oro and Baskin-Robbins properties mean construction starts soon? The city has stated its intent to combine those parcels with the city-owned Triangle Junction lot for a future redevelopment, but no construction timeline was included with the purchase announcement.
Is downtown Bothell walkable without a car today? Within downtown itself, yes. The Main Street pedestrian pilot was extended in March 2026, and the Merc, the Junction, and Pop Shops on Main are already built and operating. Regional car-free commuting depends on Stride S3, which is still years from passenger service.
Downtown Bothell is genuinely becoming a different place. It's just becoming it on two different schedules, and only one of them has actually arrived. If you're weighing a purchase near Main Street and want a read on which fundamentals are real today versus which ones you'd be paying for in advance, Aimee Zhang can walk through a specific listing with you and help you separate the two before you write an offer.
