If you’ve lived in Casino Road for any length of time, you already know the rhythm. A new apartment complex goes up, the rents on the older buildings climb to match, and the families who made the neighborhood what it is start quietly disappearing. It happens in the spaces between the news cycles, and by the time anyone outside the neighborhood notices, it’s done.
That’s the problem Stations Unidos was built to slow down — and as of early 2026, Casino Road has a seat at the table.
What Just Changed
Stations Unidos is the new operating name for what used to be the Everett Station District Alliance, the nonprofit that has been working since 2014 to envision a different future for the area around Everett Station at 3201 Smith Avenue. The organization incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in 2017, and for several years it focused mostly on cleaning, safety, and placemaking work in the immediate Everett Station footprint.
In 2024, the board contracted with LISC Puget Sound — the same regional intermediary that has anchored years of community investment in Casino Road — to figure out how to evolve from a station-area alliance into a full-fledged community development corporation. After more than a year of community engagement, the ESDA board adopted LISC’s recommendations in 2025, and the organization formally rebranded as Stations Unidos in 2026.
The new name is the most visible change. The bigger one is structural.
The Board Looks Different Now
Under the new governance, the board of directors is split equally between the Everett Station District and South Everett. The Casino Road side of the table is just as full as the downtown side, and future board seats will be nominated by neighborhood advisory boards in each area.
The current board reads like a who’s who of two neighborhoods that haven’t always talked to each other. From the Everett Station District: Roland Behee, Mary Anne Dillon (Vice Chair), and Joe Sievers (Secretary). From South Everett: Julio Cortes, Alvaro Guillen (Chair), and Tony Hernandez. Three at-large members round it out: Victor Caesar, Amber Harrington (Treasurer), and Bobby Thompson.
Brock Howell is CEO and President. Ed Petersen serves as Chief Strategic Housing Officer. The fact that a strategic housing officer is in the room — at all — is the tell. This is not a placemaking nonprofit anymore. This is a housing organization with placemaking in its toolkit.
Why Casino Road, Why Now
The honest answer is the light rail.
Sound Transit’s Link extension to Everett Station is years away from opening, but the planning is happening now, the property speculation is happening now, and the displacement risk is happening now. Marshall Foster, Sound Transit’s Chief Planning and Development Officer, said at the Stations Unidos launch that the work the organization will be doing in the years before the trains arrive is going to be critical.
That’s not a generic compliment. Sound Transit has watched what happened along the Link extensions in Seattle — neighborhoods like the Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill saw exactly the kind of displacement Casino Road is now staring down. The lesson the agency took away is that you cannot wait for the station to open before you start protecting the people who will need it most. By then it’s already too late.
Casino Road is one of the most economically and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Snohomish County. It is home to large Latino, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and East African communities, several of the most-trafficked food banks and pantries in the city, and dozens of immigrant-owned businesses. The corridor’s working-class, immigrant-rooted character is exactly what gets lost first under transit-driven displacement — and exactly what’s already showing up in places like the small Casino Road tortillerías and family-run restaurants that anchor day-to-day life in the neighborhood.
Stations Unidos’s mission, in its own words, is to “advance housing, support local businesses, and connect communities to neighborhood-led solutions that help families stay rooted and thrive in Everett.” Every piece of that sentence is doing work. Advance housing — meaning produce, preserve, or protect affordable units. Support local businesses — meaning the carnicería, the pho shop, the East African cafe. Neighborhood-led solutions — meaning the people who live there are the ones setting the agenda.
What “Equally Represented” Actually Looks Like
The most consequential thing about the new structure is the equal seat count. In a lot of community development organizations that try to bridge two neighborhoods, one neighborhood ends up dominant. Sometimes by intent, more often just by inertia — the existing board recruits from its existing networks, and those networks tend to be geographically clustered.
Splitting the seats 3-and-3 with future appointments running through neighborhood advisory boards is a structural commitment. It means a Casino Road advocate who shows up to a meeting can’t be voted down by a downtown majority. It means the strategic housing plan for south Everett has to be co-written by people who live there.
That’s not the case for most community development corporations in the region. It’s a meaningful design choice, and it’s worth watching whether it holds up under pressure once funding decisions get harder.
The Everett Station District Doesn’t Disappear
One thing worth clearing up: the Everett Station District isn’t being absorbed or sidelined. It continues both as a division of Stations Unidos and as the place name for the area around the actual train station at 3201 Smith Ave. The downtown placemaking, cleaning, and safety work that ESDA built over the last decade keeps running. What changed is that a parallel division now exists for South Everett, with the same level of organizational support.
The two divisions share a CEO, a strategic housing officer, and a board, but each has its own neighborhood advisory body. The intent, as the organization describes it, is for residents and businesses in each area to lead, transit to connect them, and growth to strengthen the people already there.
Whether that works depends on what comes next. A community development corporation can do real things — buy buildings, hold land in trust, build affordable units, fund small business preservation, support tenant organizing. Or it can talk a lot. The next eighteen months, before light rail planning gets concrete, will tell which kind of organization this is going to be.
What This Means for Casino Road Right Now
If you live, work, or own a business on Casino Road, the practical questions are: what’s actually happening, and what do you do about it?
For now, the practical answer is that there is finally a citywide community development organization with an official mandate to be in the neighborhood, with paid staff, with a board structured to give the neighborhood real power, and with technical support from LISC Puget Sound. That didn’t exist 18 months ago.
The neighborhood-led solutions piece of the mission means the organization is going to need community input, advisory board members, and partnerships with the existing players — Connect Casino Road, Volunteers of America Western Washington, the food banks, the schools, the immigrant-led nonprofits. If you’re already plugged into VOAWW’s food, housing, or family services on Casino Road, you’re already inside the network this work will lean on. Anyone who has wanted a seat at the table on the displacement question now has a clearer place to ask.
You can find Stations Unidos at stationsunidos.org. CEO Brock Howell can be reached at brock@stationsunidos.org. Board chair Alvaro Guillen leads the South Everett side of the work.
A Note on What This Isn’t
Stations Unidos is not Sound Transit. It does not control whether or where the light rail station gets built. It does not set city zoning, the comprehensive plan, or the property tax rate. It cannot stop a private developer from building market-rate apartments on a parcel they own.
What it can do is the slower, less-visible work of building community ownership of the change that is already coming — through housing acquisition, business preservation, tenant support, and the kind of neighborhood organizing that makes sure the people who live there now are still the ones living there in 2032. The same kind of work other south Everett neighborhoods like Pinehurst-Beverly Park are also navigating as growth pressure climbs along the Casino Road corridor.
That’s a long bet. But the alternative is the rhythm Casino Road already knows.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Stations Unidos?
Stations Unidos is a nonprofit community development corporation in Everett, Washington that evolved from the Everett Station District Alliance (ESDA) in 2026. Its mission is to advance housing, support local businesses, and connect communities to neighborhood-led solutions in both the Everett Station District and the Casino Road area of South Everett.
Why did the Everett Station District Alliance change its name?
The ESDA Board of Directors adopted recommendations from LISC Puget Sound in 2025 to evolve the organization’s programs and governance to support anti-displacement and equitable transit-oriented development citywide. The rebrand to Stations Unidos took effect in 2026 to reflect the broader service area, including both the original station district and South Everett’s Casino Road neighborhood.
Who is on the Stations Unidos board?
The board is split equally between the Everett Station District (Roland Behee, Mary Anne Dillon, Joe Sievers) and South Everett (Julio Cortes, Alvaro Guillen, Tony Hernandez), plus three at-large members (Victor Caesar, Amber Harrington, Bobby Thompson). Alvaro Guillen serves as Chair, Mary Anne Dillon as Vice Chair, Joe Sievers as Secretary, and Amber Harrington as Treasurer.
Why is Stations Unidos focused on Casino Road?
Sound Transit’s Link light rail extension to Everett is bringing additional displacement pressure to a neighborhood already facing rising housing costs. Casino Road is one of the most economically and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Snohomish County, with large Latino, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and East African communities. The expansion is intended to give residents and businesses more tools to stay rooted before the train arrives.
Where is Stations Unidos located?
The Everett Station District remains both a division of Stations Unidos and the name for the area around Everett Station at 3201 Smith Ave in downtown Everett.
Who leads Stations Unidos?
Brock Howell serves as CEO and President. Ed Petersen serves as Chief Strategic Housing Officer.
How is this different from Connect Casino Road?
Connect Casino Road is a coalition of more than 15 partners that has worked on the ground in Casino Road for years on family services, food access, education, and community building. Stations Unidos is a community development corporation with a citywide remit and a focus on housing, business support, and transit-oriented development. The two organizations operate in complementary lanes, and Stations Unidos’s work in Casino Road will involve partnership with Connect Casino Road and other existing community organizations.
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