Category Archives: City Politics

As drivers sit in traffic, Sammamish ponders up-zoning of Town Center

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Even as Sammamish residents scream over traffic congestion, exacerbated over what proved to be fraudulent implementation of a traffic concurrency model intended to be sure the roads can handle growth, efforts are underway to sharply up-size the Town Center.

The Town Center was approved to have 600,000sf of commercial/retail/office space and 2,000 residential units. Transfer Development Rights (TDRs) already boosted the residential units a few hundred above the 2,000.

The Environmental Impact Study (EIS) studied impacts up to 700,000sf and 3,000 units. Anything above this would require a Supplement EIS, Kamuron Gurol, the Community Development Director, said at the time.

The development company, STCA, is working with staff to propose hiking the Town Center by as much as 250,000sf and up to 1,500 more residential units.

STCA is currently developing the Town Center west of 228th Ave.

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Setting priorities at the Council retreat

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By Christie Malchow

Mayor of Sammamish

Guest Contributor

The Sammamish City Council annually has a retreat in January. Its purpose is multi-faceted, with the goals ranging from generating or affirming Council goals and priorities to agreeing on procedural and structural improvements to help us provide the City of Sammamish dynamic, strong, and effective leadership.

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Town Center Plan Flaws Ignored

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  • Glaring omissions in the Town Center plan regarding traffic forewarned 10 years ago – and ignored.

By Miki Mullor

Guest Contributor

Miki Mullor

During the recent moratorium deliberations by City Council, the Town Center neighborhood plan was brought into the conversation. The issues with traffic planning in the city, exposed during the concurrency debacle, were feared to also impact the Town Center plan. Calls to review the plan were answered with a response that the plan was done 10 years ago therefore it’s too late to review.  This implies a “statute of limitation” argument that if indeed there were issues with the plan, those should have been raised at that time and cannot be argued now.

However, recently surfaced documents from the time of Town Center planning in 2007 reveal just that – that serious problems do exist in the plan and those problems were raised timely – yet ignored by the city.

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Council appointments to Planning, Parks and other commissions

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The Sammamish City Council last week made the following appointments to various commissions that review policy, plans and make recommendations to the council:

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Council may backtrack on local retreat

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Christie Malchow

The Sammamish City Council may backtrack on holding its annual retreat locally.

This was the first year in the city’s history that the retreat was held in Sammamish.

In the last two years, it was in Tacoma. Previously, it was held for many years in Roslyn, east of the Cascades.

The locations drew criticism as discouraging public participation and not living up to the spirit of the Open Meetings Act.

At the end of the retreat Saturday, Mayor Christie Malchow remarked that it may be held elsewhere.

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