If you drive Meridian Street through Birchwood, you already know the spot. Two traffic signals sit close enough together that clearing one just means stacking up behind the next, right where Birchwood Avenue and Squalicum Way both dump into Meridian in almost the same place. The Bellingham Golf and Country Club sits on one corner. The Whatcom Farmers Cooperative farm supply store sits on another. In between, freight trucks headed for the Port of Bellingham share the lane with everyone else trying to reach Interstate 5.
The city has been talking about fixing this since the early 2000s, and for most of that time "fixing this" meant nothing more than a line item in a planning document. That started changing this year. The project finished its 60 percent design earlier in 2026, and the city's own project page lists the 90 percent milestone as expected sometime this quarter, which puts that checkpoint landing right around now. That's real progress. What it is not is a signal that construction trucks are showing up anytime soon.
What actually gets built
The plan replaces the two separate signalized intersections with a single multimodal roundabout. Squalicum Way gets shifted so it lines up with Birchwood Avenue before either one reaches Meridian, which means traffic that used to hit two staggered lights now merges into one approach. The old Squalicum-and-Birchwood junction becomes a plain, non-signalized T-intersection instead of a light.
The roundabout itself is modest by design: a single circulating lane, a right-turn lane on the southbound Meridian approach, and a right-turn pocket on the westbound Birchwood approach. The bigger changes are everything built around it.
| Element | What changes |
|---|---|
| Sidewalks | Missing segments filled in along Birchwood Avenue, both east and west of the roundabout |
| Bike lanes | Extended north on Meridian to the roundabout, connecting to routes on either side |
| Bus stops | Two stops on Birchwood Avenue and one on Meridian Street upgraded for WTA riders |
| Trail | Bay to Baker Trail extended from Cornwall Memorial Park through the project area, with a new crossing on the roundabout's south leg |
| Creek | An unused stretch of Squalicum Way removed to restore Tributary W for fish passage |
The city is also using this project to replace aging water mains and sewer pipes under the intersection, relocate a major gas line, and add permeable pavement and bioretention features to manage stormwater. A separate but related project, tackling the Meridian Bridge and Squalicum Creek restoration, is being designed by the same team. Some of the 1% for the Arts funding attached to the project is earmarked for a public art piece at the roundabout itself.
Why this intersection, and why now
Meridian is the connective tissue between the waterfront, the Port of Bellingham, and Interstate 5, which means every freight truck moving in or out of the port corridor runs through this exact stretch. Squalicum Way currently functions as a truck route, and the redesign folds that route directly into Birchwood Avenue rather than keeping it as its own signal. That's a meaningful change for anyone who's timed their commute around avoiding this corner during freight hours.
There's also a growth story sitting just north of the project. PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center is expanding its campus nearby, and that expansion is part of what's pushing this project forward now rather than later. More employees and patients moving through an intersection that already backs up during normal hours is not a problem that solves itself.
The part everyone glosses over: the start date already moved
Here's the detail worth sitting with if you live in Birchwood and have been hearing "the roundabout is finally happening" for a couple of years now. Design progress and construction timing are two different clocks, and they're not moving at the same speed.
Construction is anticipated to begin in early 2028, depending on federal environmental permitting and right-of-way acquisition.
That's the most recently updated estimate on the city's own planning portal. Earlier city materials pointed to a fourth-quarter 2027 start. The gap between those two numbers isn't a typo. It reflects how much of this project's actual timeline depends on two things that have nothing to do with design drawings: securing right-of-way from adjacent property owners and clearing federal environmental permitting. Both of those processes move on their own schedule, and both have already pushed this start date later once.
If you're trying to plan around this project, the useful habit isn't watching the calendar year the city publishes. It's watching for right-of-way acquisition updates and permitting decisions, because those are the two levers that have already moved the date and are the most likely to move it again.
What's paying for it, and what that tells you
The total project cost, covering design and right-of-way acquisition, is estimated at about $17.5 million. The city's own share of that is roughly $3.3 million, with the rest coming from a mix of sources.
| Funding source | Contribution |
|---|---|
| City of Bellingham | Transportation and Street Funds, Parks Greenways |
| Port of Bellingham | Direct contribution |
| Whatcom County | Economic Development Investment Program grant |
| PeaceHealth | SEPA mitigation fees tied to St. Joseph campus master planning |
| Federal government | Carbon Reduction Program funding |
The city describes the updated project scope as fully funded, which matters more than it might seem. A lot of infrastructure projects stall not because the design is unfinished but because the money isn't fully lined up. That's not the bottleneck here. The bottleneck is process, not dollars, which is a different kind of wait but a more predictable one.
What's locked in versus what's still open
The public comment window for this specific design closed on March 15 of this year, following a March 4 open house at Parkview Elementary School. If you missed that round, the sidewalk, bike lane, and bus stop elements described above are essentially set. Where residents will likely get another chance to weigh in is further down the process, typically around permitting hearings and construction bidding, though the city hasn't published a firm date for that yet.
For daily life right now, nothing changes at the intersection itself. The signals are still there. The commute is still what it's always been. What's different is that the plan sitting behind those signals is no longer conceptual. It has a design, a funding source, and a rough construction window, even if that window has already slid once and could slide again.
That's worth knowing if you're weighing a home near this corridor, not because it changes what the neighborhood is today, but because it tells you what's coming and roughly when. Birchwood's mix of older homes, newer infill, and its proximity to Squalicum Creek Park and the Bay to Baker Trail has made it one of the more affordable entry points into Bellingham for a while now. A finished roundabout with real sidewalks and trail access on both sides of Meridian will change how that corner functions for the people who already live there.
If you're thinking about buying or selling in Birchwood and want a read on how a project like this actually plays into value and timing, Julian & Company can walk you through what's confirmed, what's still moving, and what it means for your own plans.
