Behind Sea Mar Community Health Center’s building on Cordata Parkway in Bellingham, part of a winding dirt road called Columbine Drive served as an overflow parking lot for employees.
During the Pacific Northwest’s rainy seasons, the area would be a muddy, mucky mess overgrown with weeds and tall grass.
However, that was then. Today, the area looks much different.
Custom Concrete Contracting was hired to install concrete curbing, sidewalks, gutters and more on the land behind the Sea Mar property in Bellingham’s Cordata neighborhood. The concrete installation work was part of an overall project to provide additional parking lots and stormwater facilities to serve the existing Sea Mar facility and potential future housing to be built on nearby land.
The result of Custom Concrete Contracting’s work in the area is a beautiful, functional parking lot with roughly 100 parking spaces, enough room to serve Sea Mar employees and clients and even help provide for proposed housing in the area in the future. The proposed housing is planned to abut the eastern edge of the newly constructed parking lot, behind the existing PeaceHealth building.
Included in the project was the addition of roughly 15 parking spaces to the east side of the Sea Mar building, across from PeaceHealth. Custom Concrete’s flatwork crews also installed a wide sidewalk that curves along the southwest side of the new back parking area, providing easy and safe pedestrian access to Sea Mar.
On one side of the new parking area, which extends to the western property boundary, is a new water detention pond. On the other side are enhanced and expanded wetlands. The construction zone is in Area 9 of the Cordata neighborhood, along with PeaceHealth Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics, Silverado Bellingham Memory Care Community and more. As noted in the City of Bellingham’s Cordata Neighborhood Plan, the entire area, which is zoned for institutional use, features wetlands along its western edge that serve as a buffer from the residential homes in Area 8.
This parking lot construction project should provide wonderful use for the community for decades to come. It’s one of many public and private large-scale projects that Custom Concrete Contracting has been proud to help with in Whatcom and Skagit counties in recent months.