Lynnwood is reinventing itself — again

Lynnwood is searching for a new identity.

Again.

This city of 35,000 gets props from residents for its affordable midcentury housing, its growing diversity, and its convenient location near the intersections of Interstates 5 and 405.

But Lynnwood has found it hard to shake off its 1980s image as the home of sprawl, strip malls and aging rockers.

As a hair salon owner told The Seattle Times in 1999, "When people think of Lynnwood, it's got a lot to do with big hair. Big hair and eye shadow. It's a place where a lot of the rockers migrated to after the '80s."

Now the city is spending $80,000 on a consultant to develop a new brand and market itself to prospective businesses, tourists and residents.

"All communities evolve," said David Kleitsch, Lynnwood's economic-development director. "If we don't define ourselves, people who don't know about us are going to get it wrong."

City officials point out the new branding effort costs $40,000 less than they paid a decade ago when a consultant came up with the slogan "Quality, Convenience, Value," which current city officials now admit failed to distinguish the city from its neighbors, or even from a drugstore chain.

Another slogan, "Start Here," accompanied the opening of the Lynnwood Convention Center in 2004. And although it helped attract visitors to the city's hotels, it carried the unintended suggestion that Lynnwood might not be a place where you wanted to end up.

Those earlier efforts were aimed at tourists, Kleitsch said. What sets this branding campaign apart, he said, is extensive community involvement.

Over the past two years, the city has hosted almost 30 community meetings and gathered input from more than 400 residents along with business people and civic groups on what they value about Lynnwood today and where they want to see the city in 20 years.

Points for pragmatism

Lynnwood Mayor Don Gough directed city staff to record residents' comments in a pure and unedited form. That led to 4,000 responses, now listed on the city Web site, including some unique perspectives on what makes Lynnwood special. One participant said, "above sea level." Another said, "birds." A third suggested "the community shredding event." A selling point for another resident was the location of the city sewage-treatment center — in Edmonds.

Among the hopes residents voiced for the future was, "no war in the Middle East."

The entire undertaking was called "Visioning Lynnwood," and in a glossy, 30-page color brochure distributed to city volunteers and civic groups, the mayor explained that "a city is a journey of ideas and values — made real or not."

Residents who participated, however, said they just ignored the "visioning" label and welcomed the opportunity to share their views of the city's strengths and to make suggestions about what it could do better.

"What surprised me was how pragmatic people were," said Bob Larsen, a 20-year resident who served on the Citizens Visioning Task Force and attended 19 of the 29 community meetings.

The people who participated, he said, "didn't choose to live here because of an image. They like the convenient location, they like the diversity. It really became the people's ideas about what they wanted to see in Lynnwood and how that could be achieved."

Larsen said several themes emerged. People wanted a city they could get around easily, and not necessarily by car. They wanted a city that was welcoming and inclusive. They wanted quality development with a recognizable city center.

Another longtime resident, Beth Woolley, who also served on the task force, praised her hometown for its economic activity, its parks and green spaces and its location as a transportation hub. Woolley, who does branding strategy for a living, said hiring a professional consultant gives the city the opportunity to put all its assets together and project a more vibrant image.

"Branding goes deeper than a slogan or a logo. It captures the spirit of the city and the city's vision for the future," she said.

Project too expensive?

Some critics of the city visioning project question the expense. Greg Noack, whose father was the Lynnwood finance officer for 25 years, thinks it's a terrible time to be spending money on marketing.

"Put the money into a senior center. Put it into the police or fire department. Maybe, with the economy the way it is, don't even spend it," he said.

The consulting firm hired by Lynnwood, Tennessee-based North Star Destination Strategies, has worked with more than 200 cities in 25 states. It's not an advertising firm, executives emphasize, and the product isn't a city motto, but a strategy about how to shape Lynnwood's image.

"We're helping them develop their most competitive identity," North Star CEO Don McEachern said.

He pointed to another city with which the firm worked, Santa Rosa, Calif., which settled on the brand, "Where the wine country celebrates the harvest." McEachern said the idea was to evoke a land of plenty, and among the city initiatives that resulted from the branding process was a large new food bank.

"It's not a slogan or an ad. It's something they are doing with their time and energy, and it's connected to the underlying strategy," he said.

North Star estimates it will deliver an initial "platform strategy" to Lynnwood in early 2010.

New city center planned

Kleitsch notes Lynnwood is already becoming the city it wants to be. It's finalizing plans for a new city center that will allow buildings up to 30 stories tall adjacent to I-5. It's starting a $25 million renovation to its recreation center to add a second swimming pool and water slides. It's attracted satellite offices for Pemco Insurance and the electrical-engineering firm Sparling, which want to give their employees an alternative to what Kleitsch calls the "I-5 slog" to Seattle.

Kleitsch acknowledges no story about Lynnwood's image is complete without a reference to the famous "Almost Live" skit about the Lynnwood Beauty Academy with its parody of big hair and industrial-sized vats of blue eye shadow.

But Kleitsch said, it's time to "get over the '80s."

And all those aging rockers?

"They moved to South Everett," he said.

Lynn Thompson: 206-464-8305 or lthompson@seattletimes.com