Sammamish looks at program to import density from county
November 17, 2010
By Administrator
New: Nov. 17, 10:26 a.m.
Sammamish can make money by maintaining the rural character of hundreds of acres just north of its city boundaries and possibly linking up two areas of prime green space used by many residents.
The catch? It’s got to stomach more density and development in Town Center — a touchy issue for some on the City Council who have tried for months to ensure that Sammamish isn’t building itself a downtown it can’t handle.
The council got its first look Nov. 9 at a proposed transfer of development rights (TDR) program to be jointly run by the city and King County. Under the program, the county would buy the right to build homes from properties the county would like to see stay as forest and farmland. Those development rights would then be transferred to Town Center developers who wish to build more housing units than the city’s normal regulations allow.
Darren Greve, who oversees similar county TDR programs with other cities, said the program was a “win-win” for the city and county, who would both benefit from limiting traffic on Redmond-Fall City Road and keeping a natural backdrop for the thousands of area residents commuting to and from Redmond.
The proposed program would also be somewhat of a financial windfall to the city, Greve said. The county would give the city $375,000 up front that the city could use to jumpstart its own TDR program, which would function the same way for undeveloped green space inside city boundaries. The Planning Commission is currently hammering out the details of that program.
The county would put up the money necessary to buy the development rights — as much as $4.8 million if all the properties sell at the amount the county projects. Once the rights are sold to developers, 25 percent of the revenue would come back to the city — up to $1.2 million. The money could be used to buy land for additional open space near Town Center or elsewhere in the city.
“This is a long-range future plan that gives us the opportunity to acquire significant rights to land that will be a benefit for generations to come at a very low cost,” Councilman Mark Cross said.
It all sounded too good to be true to Deputy Mayor Nancy Whitten, who continued an argument she’d been making throughout the recent debates over the Town Center development regulations — that the city was overshooting the density caps it had worked so hard to set and would be dooming itself to traffic gridlock and projects stalled by overstretched infrastructure.
“I am opposed to anything that brings significant infrastructure demands into an area where we’re already predicted to be over capacity,” Whitten said, citing an environmental impact statement that projects 2030 traffic levels based on every property in city limits developing to its full potential. “How are we going to mitigate traffic impacts?”
Echoing earlier debates on the issue, Gurol and City Manager Ben Yazici assured Whitten and the rest of the council that a specific development’s impact would be calculated prior to construction and the developer would be funding necessary traffic improvements through impact fees.
Mayor Don Gerend said he supported the program, saying it shifted potential traffic problems instead of adding to them.
“You remove potential traffic that would be going onto (State Route 202) into Redmond, which is one of the choke points in our morning commute,” Gerend said. “We’re reducing traffic in the north end, not just adding traffic to Town Center.”
Gurol estimated that the program could add 225 dwelling units to the area at a maximum. He said the success of the program is dependent on the city and county making the TDRs a worthwhile investment.
The county projects they will buy and sell the rights for around $80,000 and that they’ll be worth approximately 3 extra condominiums or apartments in Town Center, depending on the zoning of the area being developed. Making the deal a one-for-one swap, as some on the council suggested, would increase the chances of developers losing their interest and the county being left holding useless rights at a financial loss, Gurol said.
In a later interview Gurol said the city wouldn’t have direct veto power over where a TDR goes in Town Center, but said he was confident that between the TDR regulations, Town Center plan limitations and the normal administrative hoops that a development has to go through would be enough to prevent a developer from sucking up all the extra rights and building a skyscraper.
“There’s a lot of different steps they have to go through,” Gurol said. “I don’t expect anyone to blow through (the development caps) any time soon.”
Councilman Tom Odell said he appreciated the goals of the project but questioned whether the TDRs had to be limited to Town Center or whether they could be spread around the city.
“Putting all of the TDR effort into 240 acres of Town Center to me runs a high chance of adding to commuting misery index of Sammamish,” Odell said. “As a council we have a responsibility to not only look ahead five or 10 years. Our actions here could have an impact on the nature of the city in the future.”
Gurol said it’s possible that the program could be expanded to allow the rights to be sent to other areas of town, such as the shopping centers around Safeway and QFC, but the city should complete an updated comprehensive plan for those areas first.
The county’s TDR program is to be approved alongside a city TDR program being considered by the Planning Commission. The council will likely vote on both in December.
Reporter Caleb Heeringa can be reached at 392-6434. ext. 247, or cheeringa@isspress.com.
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[...] attracting more transit service. The most recent event concerns Transfer of Development Rights. The Sammamish Review reported Nov. 17, “…Gerend said he supported the program, saying it shifted potential traffic problems instead [...]