Grant Harrington moved into a new home at the Towns at Riverfront development nearly a decade ago. He remembers a patch of grass near his house, set aside for what the city called Eclipse Mill Park. He used to run past it. He still does. The grass looks about the same as it did the day he arrived.
That patch of grass is not a small detail. It is the clearest evidence of a pattern that matters if you are shopping for a home in Everett right now: two very different developments are using nearly identical language, "front," "waterfront," "riverfront," "upcoming town center," and only one of them has actually delivered on what it promised.
Two projects, one word, opposite outcomes
Everett has a Riverfront and a Waterfront. They are not the same place, and they are not run by the same kind of organization.
Riverfront Everett sits east of I-5 along the Snohomish River, on land that spent nearly six decades as a landfill before Bellevue-based Shelter Holdings began redeveloping it under a master plan the city first approved back in 2009. The Towns at Riverfront delivered its first 188 homes in 2017, with 74 more in a second phase. The Overlook at Riverfront followed with 235 homes completed in 2019. Both are attractive, well-built residential pockets with river access and walking trails, and both were sold to buyers with the promise of a coming commercial core: shops, a grocery store, a park, eventually a theater.
Waterfront Place is a different animal entirely. It sits downtown on Puget Sound, developed by the Port of Everett, a public port authority, not a private homebuilder. It anchors the Fisherman's Harbor district, home to condo buildings, a hotel, the port's own offices, and a restaurant corridor locals now call Restaurant Row.
Same word family. Same promise of a walkable, amenity-rich lifestyle. Very different track records.
What Riverfront actually delivered, and when
In 2019, the city signed development agreements with Shelter Holdings that set a hard deadline: a grocery store open by July 1, 2025. That deadline came and went. The city council granted a five-year extension, pushing the requirement to 2030, after the developer told the city that grocery operators want to see more rooftops before committing to the site.
Eclipse Mill Park tells a similar story. The city originally expected it to open in 2022. As of this year, only a portion of the city's piece of the park is targeted for completion by fall 2026, and that's just the city's share of the work. The full three-acre park, including Shelter Holdings' remaining phases, is still years out.
Shannon Affholter, who teaches real estate courses at the University of Washington and previously served on the Everett City Council, put the underlying problem plainly when HeraldNet asked him about the stalled retail:
"The location is a challenge for retail. It's not easy to get in or get out of there."
MLS activity backs that up in a quiet way. As of May 2026, the Overlook at Riverfront had just four homes listed for sale, in a neighborhood that typically sees only about nine sales a year. That's not a broken neighborhood. It's a small one, and a small neighborhood is exactly what makes it hard to convince a grocery chain to sign a lease.
What Waterfront Place actually delivered, and when
Contrast that with the Port of Everett's record on Waterfront Place. Over roughly a decade and a half, the port has put more than $350 million into the site, according to Cascadia Daily News reporting from May 2026. That's public investment with public accountability, not a private developer's promise sitting in a brochure.
The proof is in the tenant list, and it reads like a neighborhood that already exists rather than one still being marketed. Rustic Cork Wine Bar and The Net Shed Fresh Fish Market & Kitchen opened in December 2025. Tapped Public House opened its doors on March 2, 2026, with a ribbon cutting that drew more than 100 people and a rooftop deck the port says is the largest on the waterfront in Snohomish County. Menchie's at the Marina had also opened by that point. As of the port's spring 2026 update, Marina Azul Cocina & Cantina was expected to open shortly after, leaving just one remaining space in the new buildings, which the port was actively marketing to a breakfast and brunch concept.
Here's the timeline side by side:
| Promise | Original Target | Status as of 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Riverfront grocery store | Open by July 2025 | Deadline extended to 2030 |
| Eclipse Mill Park (Riverfront) | Open 2022 | Partial city portion targeted for fall 2026; full buildout years further out |
| Waterfront Place Restaurant Row | Six new dining spaces, phased 2025-2026 | Four spaces open, a fifth expected imminently, one space still being leased (as of spring 2026) |
That is not a subtle gap. One project moved a public deadline back five years. The other filled four of six storefronts on schedule, has a fifth on the way, and is still shopping only one.
What this means for price, and what it doesn't
Look at the rolling quarter from March through May 2026, the most recent stable window in the data, and Everett's citywide median sale price sat at $580,000, down about 6 percent from the same stretch a year earlier, in a market where homes typically went under contract within a week.
Northwest Everett, the bluff and downtown submarket that includes the area around Waterfront Place, told a different story over that same quarter: a median sale price of $710,000, up 13.6 percent year over year, with homes moving even faster than the citywide average. It's a small enough submarket that single-month snapshots can swing hard in either direction, which is exactly the kind of volatility you'd expect from a low-volume, already-built-out area. But the quarter-long trend points the same direction as everything else in this story: buyers are already paying a real premium to be near amenities that exist today, not amenities that might exist by 2030.
Riverfront homes, by comparison, tend to trade in line with the broader citywide range rather than commanding a similar premium, even though the marketing language sounds just as ambitious. That's not a knock on the neighborhood. The Towns at Riverfront and Overlook at Riverfront are genuinely nice communities with river frontage, trails, and low-maintenance HOA living. It's simply that the price a buyer pays there isn't yet capturing a commercial corridor that, on paper, doesn't fully exist yet either.
If you're shopping Everett with a specific lifestyle in mind, walkable retail, an evening out without a drive, the honest question isn't which development sounds better in the listing description. It's which one has already been built.
What to check before you buy near "upcoming" retail
A few questions worth asking before you fall in love with a rendering:
- Ask your agent to pull the actual development agreement and its current amended deadlines, not the marketing brochure language
- Ask when that deadline was last extended, and why
- Find out whether the promised amenity is being delivered by a private developer or a public agency. Accountability structures are not the same
- Check MLS sales volume for the specific sub-neighborhood, not just the citywide number, to understand how thin or deep that market really is
- Search local news coverage of the project's history before you sign anything
Frequently asked questions
Is Riverfront Everett a good place to buy right now? If your priority is river access, trails, and a quieter residential setting close to I-5 and Highway 2, it's a solid, established option that's been selling homes since 2017. Just don't buy assuming the retail promises on the brochure will show up on your timeline. The city's own agreement now gives the developer until 2030 on the grocery store.
When will the Riverfront grocery store actually open? The current deadline, after one extension, is 2030. That's a deadline, not a guarantee. The developer has already missed one commitment on this exact requirement.
Where exactly is Waterfront Place compared to Riverfront Everett? Waterfront Place sits downtown on Puget Sound, part of the Port of Everett's Fisherman's Harbor district. Riverfront Everett is several miles inland, east of I-5, along the Snohomish River. They share a naming convention. They do not share a location, a developer, or, so far, a delivery record.
If you're weighing an Everett purchase against a timeline you actually plan to live by, rather than one a development agreement might live by, that's exactly the kind of local detail worth a conversation before you write an offer. Team NSRG knows which Everett promises have already been kept and which ones are still on paper. Schedule a consultation and let's look at the specific street, not just the sales brochure.
