A Cleaner Everett, a Fair Deal: Evan Reed on Stadium Funding and Neighborhood Investment

April 27, 2026 - Everett, WA

Evan Reed sitting in Wetmore Theater Plaza

It started with one soda can.

In October 2023, Evan Reed was walking through downtown Everett when he noticed he kept kicking the same can on the same stretch of sidewalk, day after day. One afternoon, he picked it up. Then he picked up the next one. And the next. Within weeks, what began as a personal habit had turned into something bigger - and by the end of that year, with a nudge from a graduate school assignment that asked him to design a nonprofit, Reed had founded one for real.

That nonprofit, the Bunker Arts Collective, has since become a quiet fixture of Everett. In a little over two years, Reed and his volunteers have cleared more than 20 tons of trash across nearly 80 cleanup sites, painted murals over recurring vandalism on small business storefronts, and turned weekend cleanups into a civic campaign. A typical event draws ten to fifteen volunteers, working stretches of north and south Everett that residents have flagged as neglected. The collective's annual operating budget sits at roughly $10,000, and the City of Everett has supported the work with about $9,000 in grant funding.

Their next project, near Voyager Middle School, will invite students and parents to help create a mural and clean up vandalism in the surrounding area - the kind of hands-on programming that has earned Bunker Arts recognition from city leadership. Mayor Cassie Franklin and councilmembers including Paula Rhyne and Liz Vogeli have publicly praised the collective's contributions to Everett's vibrancy, and Reed has consistently described his relationships at City Hall as collaborative.

Which is why his recent comments on the proposed downtown AquaSox stadium are worth listening to carefully. They are the words of someone who spends his weekends seeing, up close, what happens in the parts of the city that don't make the renderings. Reed is quick to say that the stadium project, in the abstract, has real appeal. The renderings look good. A revitalized downtown is a worthy goal. He is not asking the city to halt the project, and he holds no animosity toward the officials moving it forward.

But he has watched over the past two years, how pressure on the city's budget shows up at street level - fewer eyes on parks, more illegal dumping in tucked-away corners, persistent gang vandalism in the Casino Road and Lions Park neighborhoods and along the 4th Avenue corridor. His organization exists, in part, because those gaps exist.

"I have a difficult time understanding how that's investing in the community."

The AquaSox push for a new or renovated facility is being driven by Major League Baseball's 2021 facility standards which the team must meet to remain affiliated. The city's response has been to assemble a financing package that, under current plans, leans heavily on municipal bonds backed by stadium revenue, with the AquaSox ownership contributing roughly nine percent of the project cost.

City staff have been clear that the plan, as currently structured, does not raise taxes or pull from the general fund. Reed takes them at their word. But he says that framing misses something. "That's not the point," he says. "The current financial model where residents shoulder the financial burden - without city officials really pushing back in negotiations - I have a difficult time understanding how that's investing in the community."

"This is a private baseball team, owned by a group in California. This isn't a local mom-and-pop."

Reed's question is less about whether the stadium should be built and more about what the city should be asking for in return. He points to other municipalities that have negotiated stronger community benefits agreements when public dollars underwrote private sports facilities: affordable housing commitments, neighborhood reinvestment funds, dedicated revenue-sharing for parks and public services in areas outside the stadium footprint. He believes Everett is in a position to ask for similar terms, and he urges residents to read up on how those deals have worked elsewhere.

The concern he keeps returning to is geographic: that a downtown investment of this scale, paired with a tightening municipal budget, risks pulling resources and attention away from neighborhoods that already feel underserved. Reed is not arguing that the stadium causes these problems. He is arguing that residents deserve a clear-eyed conversation about how a major capital project interacts with the parts of the city that are already stretched thin.

"If none of our services were cut, and our downtown and south Everett were thriving, then by all means, I wouldn't ask for a community investment fund from this project. But clearly it's needed."

What Reed is asking for, more than anything, is informed civic engagement. He wants residents to understand the financing structure, to ask what community benefits are on the table, and to weigh in with their elected representatives - not to oppose the project, but to make sure it works well for the whole city.

Everett residents who want to find their City Council representative can do so at https://everettwa.gov, where district maps, contact information, and public comment sign-up forms are available. The council comprises five district representatives and two at-large positions, and meetings are held most Wednesdays.

For Reed, the connection from soda cans to stadium financing is simpler than it might sound. Civic life, from his perspective, is the sum of small acts of ownership: picking up the trash on your block, showing up to a council meeting, asking a hard question respectfully. The Bunker Arts Collective is built on the premise that residents can take responsibility for the places they live. He thinks the city, in negotiating a project of this size, deserves to make the same kind of demand on its private partners.

"I just want to demand more from these private investments that are ultimately using majority public dollars," he says. "There's a way for this to be great for everyone. I want us to find it."

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