Anacortes Streetscapes

Anacortes, Washington | 2025-2026

A Fresh Face for a Downtown That Already Works

Downtown Anacortes already has many of the ingredients of a great place: historic buildings, local businesses, walkable streets, mature trees, and a strong sense of community. The opportunity wasn’t to reinvent it, but to give it a thoughtful facelift—building on what people already love while making the downtown more comfortable, cohesive, inviting, and connected.

The Place Guide focuses on targeted improvements to Commercial Avenue and the surrounding streets, from storefronts, lighting, seating, and landscaping to safer crossings, gathering spaces, and stronger connections to the waterfront. Together, these relatively focused changes can refresh the downtown experience while preserving the character that makes Anacortes feel distinctly its own.

A Strong Foundation to Build On

Historic buildings, local businesses, mature trees, bike lanes, and a strong community identity are some of the elements that already work well. The plan builds on these strengths while improving connections to the waterfront, pedestrian and bicycle safety, streetscape consistency, and opportunities to activate storefronts and underused spaces.

Turning Community Priorities into a Downtown Vision

Community engagement made one thing clear: people want Downtown Anacortes to remain authentic while becoming more vibrant, welcoming, walkable, family-friendly, and connected to the waterfront. Those priorities became a vision centered on strengthening Commercial Avenue as the heart of downtown, creating more places to gather, and connecting destinations through a Downtown Loop and Crosstown Connections.

Designing the First Forty Feet

The plan looks at downtown from the building face outward: the First Forty Feet Up, including storefronts and building edges, and the First Forty Feet Out, including sidewalks, furnishings, planting, lighting, parklets, crossings, and the street itself. Coordinating both creates a more comfortable, active, and memorable public realm while supporting the businesses and destinations that give downtown its character.

Reinvesting in Downtown Storefronts

Buildings and storefronts shape the everyday experience of Commercial Avenue. The Place Guide recommends strengthening the Downtown Anacortes Alliance’s façade improvement program to help property and business owners make targeted investments in façades, signage, lighting, canopies, windows, accessibility, and other improvements that reinforce downtown’s historic character and make businesses more visible and inviting.