The Village at Totem Lake
Shopping mall in Totem Lake, Kirkland, WA
The Village at Totem Lake, formerly Totem Lake Mall, is a shopping center in Kirkland, Washington, United States. The center of Totem Lake Mall consisted of an enclosed shopping mall (Lower Mall), and an adjacent strip mall (Upper Mall). Collectively, the two centers were sometimes referred to as "Totem Lake Malls". Following the redevelopment of major regional malls beginning in the 1980s, Totem Lake Mall went into steady decline, losing most of its major tenants. The majority of these tenants were only accessible on the outside, shying away from the interior mall concept popular throughout the 1960s-1990s. Multiple redevelopments for the property were proposed. Village At Totem Lake, LLC purchased the mall in 2015 and in 2016 announced it would be redeveloped and reopened as The Village at Totem Lake.
Today, The Village at Totem Lake includes retail, restaurants, office space, and on-site residential to create a mixed-use center. Major tenants include Cinemark, Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe's, Nordstrom Rack, Ross Dress for Less, and Barnes & Noble. The first Sweetgreen location in the Pacific Northwest opened at the mall in 2024.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Village at Totem Lake” as shopping mall in Totem Lake, Kirkland, WA. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as shopping mall in Totem Lake, Kirkland, WA. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7828300. Authority coordinates are 47.712, -122.181. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2015, 2016 and 2024.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Village at Totem Lake”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Village at Totem Lake primary sources, The Village at Totem Lake archive and Village research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “The Village at Totem Lake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.