• Hearing Examiner highly critical of City Staff.
• Outright denies project, and raps City for decisions over roads, environment.
• Says project should never have been approved.
• Residents pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to fight City’s approval.

A development approved by Sammamish that drew four appeals on environmental, street standards and other grounds was rejected last week by the City’s Hearing Examiner.

Even the developer, William Buchan Inc, appealed the decision by the City Staff, a highly unusual move, protesting conditions the City put on the development.

The Friends of Pine Lake and Wally Pereyra appealed over environmental impacts and Chestnut Estates Neighbors appealed over impacts to their neighborhoods.

Hearing Examiner John Galt found that the City improperly approved Buchan’s application for an extension of the Chestnut Estates development, at 212^th and SE 8^th, to a new project called Chestnut Estates West, across sensitive Ebright Creek. Accordingly, Galt denied the application. With this denial, several elements of the four appeals became moot, and he didn’t rule on the merits of these.

But in a 44 page decision, Galt minced no words. He said residents of Chestnut Estates could not be blamed for feeling Buchan engaged in “bait and switch” tactics with Chestnut Estates and the City’s decision—and its staff testimony—was “constantly changing” and “troubling.”

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