The decision of the Sammamish City Council last month to not consider a request from Southeast Quadrant landowners to increase the density of development in proposed Town Center was seen by many as an indicator of the council’s eagerness to move forward with the beleaguered project, free of further planning and process hindrances.

While the council may have shed itself of the concerns of the Southeast Quadrant for the time being, it is clear that there are a number of yet unresolved factors, at the city and state level, that will continue to push and pull at the seams of the Town Center plan.

One of these is the recession, which has extinguished the enthusiasm of developers to invest in new projects.

Another is the growth targets set by the King County Growth Management Planning Council (GMPC). These targets, which are updated every five years, tell a city like Sammamish how many new homes it must build and how many new job opportunities it must create in the coming decade, to allow the state to accommodate its ever growing population.

These growth targets are the pressure behind a minimum level of density in developments like the Town Center – how many new homes and commercial businesses need to be created to satisfy the county’s mandated expansion targets. These targets have been at the center of Town Center density discussions, as councilors and staff consider the balance of meeting these requirements without subjecting the city to an inappropriately high level of development.

Recently revised growth targets have set Sammamish the task of creating 4,000 new residential units and 1,800 new jobs by 2031.

During the Southeast Quadrant proposal discussions on Feb. 16, the city’s Director of Community Development Kamuron Gurol indicated that, with the Town Center plan as it was, the city was on track to meet the required addition of residences, though he stressed it was difficult to accurately predict the numbers

“On the jobs side there is more of a question mark,” he said. “The way you count jobs is inherently qualitative. Some people say there is one job in every 5,000 square feet of commercial. But it all depends on the type of retail business.”

Gurol said that, using broad estimates, the 600,000 square feet of commercial development allowed in the current plan would create between 1,200 and 2,400 jobs. The figure of 1,800 mandated by the county sits right in the middle of that estimate.

The city is still considering how it will calculate the number of home-based businesses in the Plateau – what could be a sizable segment of jobs creation in Sammamish that is currently not being counted. This would impact how many jobs would have to be created in the Town Center.

Similarly, councilors are now beginning to address how the future of Sammamish’s two existing shopping centers, Pine Lake and Sammamish Highlands, will relate to what the Town Center must accomplish.

As he explained last month why he did not support an increase in densities in the proposed Town Center, Sammamish councilor Mark Cross referred a number of times to the opportunities for redevelopment of the Pine Lake Village shopping center.

“If a subarea plan was to be done, any densities we added, in terms of jobs and housing, around a park and ride lot, would build up the capacity of the city above and beyond the (growth target) numbers quoted earlier tonight,” he said. “I want to make sure we know what densities are appropriate for the Pine Lake area, rather than focus on changing the plan in the Town Center area.”

Cross was not the first to realize that redevelopment of the Pine Lake Village, built in 1989, is an idea tied inextricably to any vision for the Town Center.

Former Sammamish Planning Commissioner Scott Hamilton told The Reporter in January that the proximity of the Sound Transit owned Park and Ride lot, kitty corner to the shopping center, provides an ideal opportunity for a Transit Oriented Development (TOD).

Hamilton said the city should be looking to connect developers with the transit agency to explore a purchase of the air rights over the Park and Ride – the empty space above this ground-level development. Toward the end of his term as a planning commissioner, Hamilton insisted that any development in the city must incorporate a TOD – a commercial/residential building that includes a hub for public transit.

“I’m talking about something where people can live, work or shop, and walk downstairs to catch the bus,” he said. “(The Park and Ride area) is the most appropriate. You wouldn’t have to tear anything down – in essence, it’s vacant land. Its underdeveloped.”

Hamilton said that even with current Town Center density limits in place, the Plateau would not be able to handle the additional traffic. By shifting density to the south (Pine Lake Village) and the north (Sammamish Highlands), the city would be able to disperse traffic concentration.

Hamilton also said that both shopping centers would need modern redesigns if the city was to meet its goals for Low Impact Development (LID).

“These were built before LID was even a gleam in anyone’s eye,” he said. “Think of what you could do if you redeveloped this, in terms of more appropriate density, with office and residential above retail. You would greatly reduce the amount of impervious surface. Pine Lake is very close by.”

Gurol confirmed this week that the city did not have the creation of subarea plans for either shopping center on its work program at the moment, and suggested it they were not the sort of thing that could be done quickly, or cheaply.

“It is not a snap of the fingers,” he said, adding that a thorough subarea plan would take about three years, and run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.