More parking for bus riders at Northgate

Metro Transit plans to soon open its section of the new Northgate Mall parking garage to transit riders.

The garage is located to the north of Metro’s Northgate Transit Center at Northeast 103rd Street and Second Avenue Northeast. Metro is leasing 280 spaces in the garage – which was built by the mall owners – to be used as park-and-ride stalls.

Metro’s spaces are located on floors 1 and 2. They are marked "Reserved for Park-and-Ride Customers Monday through Friday." Mall shoppers can use any of the spaces left available after 9 a.m.

With the new spaces in the garage, Metro will now have more than 900 parking stalls available for transit customers using the Northgate Transit Center. The transit center is served by 13 Metro routes and two Sound Transit routes. Overall, there are 130 park-and-ride lots throughout King County. The lots have a total capacity of 23,687 parking spaces.

The new Northgate garage is just one of several projects in a four-way partnership to create a transit-oriented urban center at the Northgate shopping mall. The projects will turn Northgate into a major urban center with transit, housing, commercial space, enhanced pedestrian pathways, and environmental and recreational amenities. In addition to the county, the other key partners in redeveloping Northgate include the city of Seattle, mall developer Simon Properties, and Lorig Associates, developer of a future mixed-use residential project.