Transfer of portion of Soaring Eagle Park to Sammamish nearing completion
January 21, 2012
By Caleb Heeringa
New: Jan. 21, 12:17 p.m.
Thirty acres of Soaring Eagle Park will soon be in Sammamish’s hands, nearly four years after King County agreed to transfer the parcel.
City and county officials confirm that the agreement will allow the potential for sports fields and other “active use” on Sammamish’s 30 acres, at the north end of the Trossachs neighborhood, but the rest of the 578 acres of the park will be preserved from future development.
Doug Williams, spokesman for King County Department of Natural Resources, said the delay stemmed from surveying work that had to be done to formalize the location of a conservation easement on the property. The park had a “floating” easement for 330 acres through the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office, but has reached agreement with the agency to expand that to 578 acres in exchange for preserving the current trail system and allowing for future development of Sammamish’s parcel.
“(The agreement) preserves the integrity of the (conservation) grant and allows the transferred site to have the (development) restrictions removed,” Williams wrote in an email.
Williams said sports fields and a parking lot could be allowed on the property. Sewer could also be extended into Sammamish’s parcel, provided that it is only used for the park.
Soaring Eagle has long been seen as a potential site for a sports fields complex. Demand for time on the city’s current fields is outpacing supply; Jessi Richardson, director of the Sammamish Parks Department estimates that 98 percent of the city’s current year-round field hours are booked up.
Richardson said development is likely years away, though. The city has yet to start a master plan process for the parcel. The project could also prove expensive – during council deliberation over the turfing of the baseball field at Eastlake High School, Richardson estimated that a Soaring Eagle sports complex could run upwards of $10 million.
The city and county are waiting for the conservation office to sign off on the deal, but Richardson said she expected the parcel to be in the city’s hands in four-to-six weeks.
King County Councilwoman Kathy Lambert, who represents Sammamish and the surrounding area on the council, said she was surprised to hear that the deal had yet to go through, given that the council had approved the transfer four years ago. She called the wait for dealing with the state conservation easement “unacceptable,” and questioned the wisdom of shutting off all but 30 acres of the park to development, given the continued growth and the high population of children in Sammamish.
“I wish we would have had a little bit more flexibility,” she said. “Looking at the demographics here, I think it would have been better to have more opportunities for our children to play … Who knows what we’re going to want in 50 or 100 years.”
Lambert also assailed the lack of a connection road between Trossachs Boulevard and East Main Drive. The connection road had been considered in early visions for the park as an access for emergency reponders in the case of an injured hiker. A connection could also provide another transportation option for Trossachs residents, who currently have to take Trossachs Boulevard to Duthie Hill Road and head out to state Route 202 to go north.
“The first time there’s some big event and people can’t get there … people are going to say why didn’t we (build a connection road,)” Lambert said.
Reporter Caleb Heeringa can be reached at 392-6434. ext. 247, or cheeringa@isspress.com.
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One Response to “Transfer of portion of Soaring Eagle Park to Sammamish nearing completion”
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I wish the Review would challenge Ms. Lambert’s statement about “the high population of children in Sammamish”.
The Review’s own article about the census (http://sammamishreview.com/2011/03/01/census-shows-sammamish-is-growing-diverse) states:
“Sammamish also remains a relatively young city, though it has seen a small decrease in the number of children as a percentage of its population. Sammamish currently has 14,763 residents under the age of 18 – about 32.2 percent of its population, down from 33.4 percent in 2000..”
While this about 9% higher than the state overall, it is not increassing, and the raw numbers are not really that significantly different than other comparable cities.
It is also not a fact that all of those children need or want ballfields to play on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
In the 2010 Parks and Recreation community survey, Sammamish residents voted for several other options ahead of increasing active use fields.
“By a very large margin, residents rated the construction of a new community center/aquatic center as the top priority among parks and recreation projects (54.7%). The other three options gathered substantially less support, with 18.7% preferring construction of trails, 15.4% preferring acquisition of land for parks and open space, and 11.1% preferring new sports fields.” (https://www.ci.sammamish.wa.us/files/document/6830.pdf)
Ms. Lambert (and the City) need to recognize that many of the residents here, including myself, value a natural experience of our local wooded areas and their irreplaceable flora and fauna, over the noise, traffic and disruption of active ball fields and roads on every patch of green available in Sammamish.
Frank Blau