Category Archives: Town Center

Council begins Town Center regulations review

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The City Council will begin reviewing the regulations recommended by the Planning Commission for the Town Center at its meeting Monday, March 15. This is a study session, so it will not be televised or recorded for subsequent posting on the City’s website. (The policy of not televising study sessions is a poor one, but this might be a topic for another time.)

The regulations include design guidelines, storm water control, setbacks, sign codes, building heights, parking requirements, permitted uses, buffer requirements, affordable housing and more. The Staff proposes an ambitious schedule to complete Council review by the end of June, after which applications can be accepted to begin development.

The regulations are fairly prescriptive and very detailed and some of them will generate controversy, such as the requirements for parking structures and affordable housing.

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Redeveloping Pine Lake Center

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As the Sammamish City Council proceeds with its review of the regulatory recommendations from the Planning Commission for the Town Center, the debate at the February 16 Council meeting included discussion about a sub-area plan for the Pine Lake (QFC) Center.

Council Members Mark Cross, John Curley, Tom Odell and Michele Petitti spoke in favor of sub-area planning for Pine Lake as the preferred next-step rather than re-opening the Town Center Plan to accommodate a Docket Request by some landowners of the SE Quadrant to triple the commercial development in their quadrant and increase residential density by a third.

The four council members saw the merits in exploring creation of a transit-oriented development over the park-and-ride (“A” in the photo below the fold) at Pine Lake as well as the prospect for redevelopment.

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No “corruption,” “cronyism” or “favoritism”

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On February 16 at the City Council meeting, Town Center resident Michael Rutt spoke. He said he was “angry” and said he was dealing with  “corrupt people” and subject to “favoritism” and “cronyism” with respect to the E zone of the Town Center.

The E zone is a small area in the SE Quadrant involving the Lutheran Church and four residences that were zoned at the current R-1 (one unit per acre). This E zone has come under withering criticism by John Galvin and Rutt over the past two years because a Planning Commissioner, Stan Bump, lives in the E zone. Galvin and Rutt repeated have charged he received special consideration for this zoning. A previous column discusses this.

The charges are without merit. Below is a cryptic analysis of Rutt’s allegations.

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Council nixes steroid Town Center Plan

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The City Council last night (Feb. 16) voted 5-2 against the plan by some landowners in the SE Quadrant to add a Docket Request in increase the commercial density in their quadrant to 300,000 sf from 90,000 sf and to add about 300 residential units to their allocation.

They back-peddled from their request that the entire Town Center be upzoned so that they would get their “proportionate” increase after this column read their Docket request closely and discovered what they were truly asking for was 2 million sf in commercial zoning throughout the entire Town Center and a 28% increase in residential zoning, or an additional 540 units across the entire Town Center.

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Galvin supported 45,000 sf for his quadrant, praised plan

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John Galvin, one of the landowners in the Town Center’s Southeast Quadrant who is asking for a 2 million square feet upzoning for the entire Town Center and 300,000 sf in his quadrant, supported the “preferred alternative” approved by the 2007 City Council–which provided for 45,000 sf of commercial space in his quadrant.

Galvin also praised the five year process that led to the Preferred Alternative.

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