Sammamish staff outline updated Town Center plan, EIS and code changes as development continues

Matt Braemeyer, deputy director of Community Development for the City of Sammamish, told the Sustainability Commission on the topic of the Town Center update that staff are drafting a new plan and a supplemental environmental impact statement to reflect changes since the original 2007 final EIS and the 2008 plan.

The draft plan revisits density and code administration in the city’s roughly 240-acre Town Center, Braemeyer said, noting portions of the area are already built or permitted and other constraints — including 83 acres of critical areas and about 26 acres dedicated to civic uses such as City Hall and the library. He said roughly 32 acres are built or planned for near-term construction and that the remainder of developable land is limited.

Braemeyer said the original FEIS studied up to 4,000 housing units and the adopted plan landed on a 2,000-unit figure. With more than one-third of the original Town Center unit capacity now built or under construction, staff are re-evaluating the assumptions and impacts used in the earlier analysis. “We are evaluating up to 4,000 units, which is the same as our original EIS,” Braemeyer said during the presentation, adding staff will review traffic, schools, utilities and environmental impacts as part of the supplemental EIS.

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