As KING 5 reported, Rosa Murillo started posting videos of a construction site at the corner of 164th Street SW and 13th Avenue W, across from a Starbucks and a Walmart, back in early December 2025. There was not much to film yet. She kept posting anyway, rain or shine, for more than 200 days. By the time Raising Cane's opened its doors on June 23, Murillo had camped outside since noon the day before to be part of the crowd, and the chain had noticed her feed enough to send her a PR package.
That is a lot of attention for a chicken finger restaurant. It is also the smallest of three stories that happened along Lynnwood's commercial corridors this year, and together they say something about this city that a single ribbon-cutting never could. Storefronts here are not staying empty. Whatever opens the gap, whether it is a bankrupt national pharmacy chain, a decade-old city policy, or a fried chicken market that already looked full, something moves in fast enough to make the vacancy feel temporary.
The chicken market wasn't actually empty
Lynnwood already had multiple Chick-fil-A locations and Ezell's Famous Chicken on 196th Street before Raising Cane's showed up. By most measures, quick-service fried chicken in this city was a settled category. Cane's opened anyway, as Snohomish County's first location and the first Raising Cane's anywhere in the Seattle area with a drive-thru, built with a double-lane system designed to handle volume that a single lane could not. The company is hiring more than 170 workers for one restaurant. That is not a business hedging its bets on a quiet suburb. It is a chain betting that demand in Lynnwood specifically was still underserved, chicken competitors or not.
The expansion pattern backs that read. Raising Cane's opened its first Washington location in Vancouver in 2024, added Spokane in 2025, then Seattle's University District in February 2026, and landed in Lynnwood four months later. A Renton location was scrapped in early 2025 so the company could focus elsewhere in the region, but Lynnwood made the cut. Whatever the chain's site selectors saw in the traffic counts at 164th and I-5, near Martha Lake, was strong enough to jump the queue ahead of a city closer to Seattle proper.
The pharmacy that became a discount outdoor store
A few miles away, at Alderwood Plaza, a different kind of gap closed. Rite Aid's bankruptcy left vacant boxes in shopping centers across the country, and Lynnwood's location was one of them. Sierra, the off-price outdoor retail banner owned by TJX (the parent company behind TJ Maxx and HomeGoods), took over the roughly 22,000-square-foot space and opened it on May 9, right next to Big 5 Sporting Goods and Albert Lee Major Appliances. It is Sierra's fifth store in Washington, joining locations in Bellingham, Federal Way, Silverdale, and Spokane Valley.
What is worth noticing here is not that a pharmacy closed. National pharmacy consolidation has been closing stores for years. It is how fast the replacement arrived. With Ross and HomeGoods nearby, the corridor's existing anchor mix did the marketing before Sierra ever opened.
Ten years of watching customers drive somewhere else
The most interesting of these three stories isn't a store. It's a policy.
Lynnwood held a ban on retail cannabis sales for a decade, even as legal shops opened in unincorporated pockets of Snohomish County just outside the city line. That detail matters more than it sounds. For ten years, anyone in Lynnwood who wanted a legal cannabis purchase simply drove a few minutes past the city boundary and spent their money there instead. The city collected none of the tax revenue on those sales. Washington generated roughly $20 million in cannabis tax revenue distributed to local governments in 2025 alone.
The ban lifted this spring, and Starbuds became the first licensed shop to open under the new rules, at 4028 196th Street SW, on April 20. Mayor George Hurst, who had been part of the conversation as a councilmember before taking office, was on hand for the ribbon-cutting.
As reported by KING 5, the shop's owner Kaden Sadis said, "It took a while to get open, but we are finally excited to get in here, get some local customers."
Up to four licensed shops are now allowed in designated commercial and mixed-use zones citywide. Starbuds sits on 196th Street alongside Starbucks and Wingstop, a placement that would have been unthinkable in Lynnwood a few years ago and barely registers as unusual now.
Lynnwood's corridors, three different kinds of empty
Line these three up and the pattern isn't about any single business category. It's about how little time a gap survives here before something fills it.
A bankrupt national chain leaves a box empty and a national value retailer claims it within the same season. A decade-old policy finally breaks and the first storefront opens on April 20, not months later. A quick-service category that already had multiple players still draws a line down the block and a fan who documents the build for more than 200 days. None of these are stories about scarcity. They're stories about a market that keeps absorbing whatever opens up almost as fast as it opens.
For anyone who has lived in Lynnwood for a while, this probably tracks with what the drive down 196th or the walk past Alderwood Plaza has felt like this year. Fewer boarded windows, more grand-opening banners, more of the small talk with neighbors starting with "did you see what's going in where the old Rite Aid was."
Where to find them
- Sierra: 18600-B 33rd Avenue W, inside Alderwood Plaza, next to Big 5 Sporting Goods
- Starbuds: 4028 196th Street SW, Suite 104
- Raising Cane's: 1232 164th Street SW, near Martha Lake, across from Starbucks and Walmart
None of these are destinations that require a trip across town. They sit inside the same few square miles of commercial corridor that most Lynnwood residents already drive through weekly, which is part of why the turnover has felt so noticeable this year. The changes aren't happening on the edge of town. They're happening on the route to work.
Whether the next vacant box on 196th or the next available cannabis license goes just as fast is impossible to predict from here. But nothing about this year's pattern suggests Lynnwood's commercial corridors are slowing down anytime soon.
If you're curious what a fast-changing corridor like this means for property values nearby, or you just want a local read on a specific block, Aimee Zhang knows this stretch of Snohomish County closely and is happy to talk through it. Reach out anytime for a free home valuation or to schedule a conversation.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
