After 10 years of discussion and planning, Mill Creek’s new Town Center is under construction, coming to life with the building of a new Main Street and public plazas where private developers are beginning the creation of 300,000 square feet of commercial space that will feature retail stores, office buildings, a supermarket, a fitness center, a public plaza and fountains.

When that upscale community was planned 28 years ago, the focus was on a golf course, hundreds of homes and a few acres of shopping center development, with little thought given to a downtown focal point. But since the city’s incorporation in 1983, there’s been a lot of thinking about how to create a civic identity, said Bill Trimm, Mill Creek’s community development director.

Now, homebuilders John and William Buchan, who have helped to build Mill Creek’s enviable residential environment, are developing the city’s new Town Center streets, sidewalks, utilities and other infrastructure.

In their first commercial venture, they are marketing land to developers on the first 10 commercial lots, just north of an existing shopping center at the Bothell-Everett Highway and 164th Street SW.

They cleared 16 acres of wooded land to develop up to 233,000 square feet of retail and office space in the new urban-village development, expected to hold 10 buildings in the first phase. The city also plans a second phase in Town Center with as many as 10 more mixed-use buildings, including a 35,000-square-foot community center.