Through July 1, the City received 266 comments on the Draft EIS.
Help us make the City Council listen... Or hold them accountable.
We are concerned about the plan to build 85' buildings and add 2,000 housing units to the Town Center. This development would worsen traffic, overcrowd schools, and harm our natural environment.
Increased population means more road use, raising safety concerns during emergencies. Our schools, already full, may need to bus students to Redmond. Additionally, increased urbanization threatens the trees, lakes, and wildlife that define Sammamish.
Read more about why we urge the city council to reject this plan.
Photo credit Cory M. Grenier
Explore the challenges and opportunities of transit in Sammamish. With most residents relying on cars for their daily commute, the introduction of light rail in nearby Redmond offers potential but limited impact for Sammamish traffic. Learn how commuting alternatives stack up and what the future holds for transportation in the region, and if it will really help our residents.
Sammamish has trees, lots of them, and many are mature Douglas-firs, one of our state's native trees. The TC growth will be at the expense of the tree canopy those trees provide. We're going to lose our natural shade and trade it for a heat island. Also, the animals that depend on those trees, such as the native Douglas squirrel and the brown creeper, will lose their homes.
The Town Center development presents our community with a defining choice
We can either treat this crisis as an inevitable consequence of growth, or take the high road and rise as responsible stewards of our unique ecosystem and demand that the size of this development be limited so as to not extirpate our iconic Lake Sammamish kokanee salmon.
As residents of Sammamish, we must learn to value all the natural treasures that we presently have and work to safeguard them.
Wally Pereyra, Environmentalist, July 2025
The details of Sammamish city finance are complicated, but the underlying problem is simple.
Sammamish, like most cities in Washington, is in a jam. Major expenses tend to grow at the rate of inflation. The major revenue source, property tax, by law cannot increase at the rate of inflation, if it is greater than 1%. In years of low inflation, this was not a big, obvious problem. Then 2022 and 2023 happened. The imbalance became visible, large and short term.
What does this have to do with a much bigger Town Center? City revenues increase with new construction. But city expenses also increase. The City Council hopes that the near term increase in revenue from a bigger Town Center will cover the longer term increase in expenses that it will cause. So far, the City has not provided any justified argument that this will be the way it plays out.
Sammamish doesn't have the infrastructure to support all this growth, nor are there viable plans to build it. We're already failing our traffic concurrency. Our water and sewer system is already stressed, with the water district planning high cost expansions. There is no more room to build schools in our city.
Our roads are already crowded. The City's own studies show that our roads would be more congested than Paradise, California in an evacuation situation. And Paradise burned to the ground.
Our region is already beset by climate emergencies, earthquakes, windstorms and flooding. How are we going to get out?
The Sammamish Town Center is being promoted as a destination for dining, shopping, and civic events, but parking will be limited to one space per housing unit, which may not be sufficient given the average number of cars per household.
The amendment wants to put almost 400,000 square feet of retail in the Town Center. This is half the size of Bellevue Mall! Where are people going to park?
Case studies about the impact of the Town Center.
Growth, but keep it sustainable
Our mission is to educate ourselves and our neighbors on the complex issues surrounding the 240-acre Town Center and to advocate for a thoughtful, balanced approach to housing, retail, transportation, city economic involvement, and environmental stewardship.
We believe in a Town Center that honors the values of current Sammamish residents—one that prioritizes responsible growth, fiscal sustainability, safeguards our natural environment to include our wildlife, trees, watershed, creeks, and aquifers, and upholds the integrity, infrastructure, and safety of our city.
Together, we strive for a Town Center that enhances our city’s future without compromising its character, its fiscal future, its safety, our children’s schools, or our current residents’ quality of life.
Who are we and what do we stand for.
We are a growing coalition of 25+ bipartisan Sammamish residents (Democrats, Republicans. Independents, Progressives), committed to shaping a Town Center that is environmentally sustainable, and fiscally responsible - without regressively taxing fixed-income residents to benefit developers and city council member’s personal agendas. We reflect our community’s reasons for moving to Sammamish.
We appreciate our beautiful lush forests and sparkling lakes, excellent schools, safe communities, backyards, trails, and parks where our children/grandchildren and pets can play, easy traffic, friendly, inclusive neighborhoods, and fantastic city services.
Many of us have lived here between 10 and 50+ years and have seen the damage that can happen when partisanship happens–when city council majorities swing too far to the right then far to the left. We are unified in our support of leaders that believe in compromise.
We believe in measured growth, but not without infrastructure. We want the Town Center that was promised to us in 2008, not the housing density boondoggle and financial disaster of 4000 housing units with the “opportunity” for retail and the pursuant gridlock and overcrowding that would come. We support leaders who put the interests of residents first, while ensuring compliance with King County requirements and the city's development code.
We’ve been fully self-funded from the start and do not accept money from political parties or developers. In line with our commitment to transparency, we’re now welcoming donations from Sammamish residents to further our community outreach efforts and any future activities.
In 2023, a small group of citizens had concerns about the development of the Town Center. Since we did not understand exactly how this was developing and how it would affect our lives and those of the people who live in Sammamish, we decided to educate ourselves and then try to get the information out to the residents. Over a period of approximately one year, we met individually with each current city council member, the city manager, the head of the planning staff and other planning staff. We attended city council meetings, Town Center open houses and planning commission meetings. At the conclusion of these numerous meetings, we felt we were not able to obtain the data and the facts we needed to get a true sense of how all the plans the city had would actually come together and result in a sustainable, affordable and environmentally friendly Town Center. Additionally, we could not comprehend why the city did not share extensive, ongoing articles about the Town Center in every newsletter that is sent to all households in Sammamish. In our quest to continue to try and get the information out to the public, we added new concerned residents with an online presence that we now call Save Our Sammamish.
We have, to the best of our ability, tried to present the data we have received from the city and King County. It is our intent to present the facts and data with no embellishment and in an unbiased way. We still believe that many of our residents in Sammamish are still unaware of what is actually happening in the heart of our city which will eventually encompass over 240 acres and will affect our city in a drastic way. We will continue to work for the best outcome for the residents in Sammamish, and we respect and value all input and unbiased reporting.
