Edmonds Waterfront and Main Street Changes in 2026: Two Landmarks

Rick Steves closed on the Edmonds Theater for about $2 million in late August. Three weeks later, Arnie's taped a handwritten notice to its front door and shut down for good after 45 years on the waterfront. Both buildings sit inside the same half-mile stretch of downtown Edmonds. Both are landmarks in the plain sense of the word: buildings people use as reference points when they give directions. And they just landed on opposite sides of the same question, which is what actually happens to a beloved building in this town when its future comes up for a decision.

The theater's answer took about a week. The restaurant's answer has been running on a clock that started back in 2024 and won't finish until sometime around 2029.

A neighbor bought the theater

According to My Edmonds News, the Edmonds Theater has operated on Main Street since 1916, when it opened as the Union Theater in the Lemley Building across the street from where it stands now. Thomas and Helen Berry bought it in 1921 and renamed it the Princess. Two years later they built the larger house that still holds the screen today, and the name changed again to the Edmonds Theater in 1979. The building has been passed between family owners for most of a century. Its most recent owner had run it until he passed away, leaving it to his daughters.

They sold it to Steves, a longtime Edmonds resident who grew up going to movies there. He announced the purchase in late August by ringing a bell in a video posted to his social channels. The public celebration coincided with a screening of "The Last Picture Shows," a documentary about the financial collapse of small single-screen theaters across the country. The film ran at the Edmonds Theater from August 28 through September 3. There are only 54 independent single-screen theaters left in the country as of this year, down from more than 500 a decade ago, and 15 to 20 have gone dark in western Washington alone over the past two decades.

His plans are modest and specific: cosmetic repairs to bring back the building's Art Deco detailing, and a shift toward using the space for community groups and nonprofits alongside regular showings. "It's pretty threadbare right now," Steves told KNKX, describing the building's current condition. He's not treating this as a commercial play. He's treated it as a purchase he could make personally, on his own timeline, and announce as done.

The building next to the ferry dock is running on someone else's clock

Arnie's occupied the ground floor of a building called the Landing at 300 Admiral Way, steps from the Edmonds ferry terminal and marina. The restaurant had served Puget Sound views and Northwest seafood there since the early 1980s. My Edmonds News reported that the doors simply didn't open on September 21. A sign taped up in its place read: "After 45 years of service, Arnies Restaurant will close effective September 21, 2026. Unfortunately, the current business climate does not allow us to continue." No advance notice. No public wind-down. Regular customers who drove out that evening expecting dinner found the notice instead.

Arnie's now has zero remaining locations under its name anywhere. Its sister restaurant in Mukilteo closed in 2023, and that building is now home to Hook and Cleaver.

What makes the Edmonds closure different from a simple restaurant failure is what has already been decided about the building underneath it. In June 2025, the Port of Edmonds signed a 50-year ground lease with a father-and-son development team, Mike and Ryan Appleby of 1010 Development, who bought the Landing building outright from its previous owner, a company called Catspaw LLC that had held it for decades. The Applebys' plan is a boutique hotel with a spa, sauna, social club, event space, and a full-service restaurant built into the same footprint. Getting there required 11 public Port commission meetings across 2024 and 2025, a condition study, a market analysis, a redevelopment feasibility report, and a cash flow analysis before the lease was approved. Port staff explained the scrutiny plainly. "There is only so much commercial waterfront property in Edmonds," Brandon Baker, the Port's acting executive director, told My Edmonds News. "We had to ensure it was the right fit for the community and the Port."

When the lease was announced, Arnie's was explicitly described as the building's flagship tenant, expected to keep operating as usual while the Applebys filled other vacancies and the hotel concept moved through permitting. "We have roots dating back five generations in Edmonds," Ryan Appleby said at the time. "It's an important place to us." The hotel is still in preliminary design and hasn't entered formal permitting review, and construction isn't expected to start before 2029. Arnie's closing now, ahead of any of that, means the building's ground floor sits empty for an unknown stretch rather than transitioning directly into whatever comes next.

That's the actual difference between these two stories. The theater changed hands because one person with a personal connection to the building decided to buy it and could close the deal in the time it takes to plan a bell-ringing. The restaurant's building is moving through a public, multi-year redevelopment process that was already set in motion well before its current headline tenant ran out of runway. Steves controls his own timeline. The Landing building is on the Port's.

What's still filling in around them

Downtown and waterfront Edmonds isn't standing still while these two stories play out. Girardi's Osteria on 5th Avenue, a family-owned Italian spot that's operated since 1999, just redesigned its menu around smaller standard portions with the option to add on, a move owner Fred Milani framed as a way to hand cost control back to diners rather than raise prices across the board. Rooster has a planned opening in October, giving the neighborhood a new sit-down option heading into the fall. And the Applebys have already lined up their first replacement tenant for the Landing building, Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream, ahead of whatever else fills in before hotel construction eventually begins.

None of that erases the empty storefront where Arnie's used to be, or answers what a multi-year gap between a restaurant's closure and a hotel's groundbreaking actually looks like on a working waterfront. But it does mean the neighborhood's dining scene is still adding names even as it loses one that had been there for 45 years.

Two buildings, two different kinds of ownership

Walk from the ferry dock up to Main Street and you pass both buildings inside of ten minutes. One just got a new era decided by a single person who grew up going there. The other is waiting on a process that started before its most recent tenant even announced it was leaving, and won't resolve for years. Neither outcome is good or bad on its own. They're just two different speeds a landmark can move at, and recent events happened to put both on display at once.

I keep close track of what's changing on Main Street and along the Edmonds waterfront, because it's usually the clearest signal of where this town is headed next. If you want to talk through what's opening, what's closing, or what a multi-year redevelopment like the one at 300 Admiral Way could mean for the neighborhood around it, reach out to Mauri Tracy any time.