Key Bank ready to begin building on Ridge

Published 2:06 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

SNOQUALMIE – The City Council last Tuesday approved a set of design standards for a neighborhood retail center on Snoqualmie Ridge, paving the way for Key Bank to begin construction of its building on the corner of Center Boulevard and Snoqualmie Parkway.

A sign currently occupies the space where the Key Bank building will be built. Once complete, it will feature a Key Bank location on one corner and the now-ubiquitous Starbucks coffee shop on the other corner. Other tenants will occupy the remaining spaces between the two businesses.

The Key Bank building will be the first in a series of projects along Center Boulevard. According to the design guidelines, all future buildings in the neighborhood retail center must face Center Boulevard, and parking lots will be placed behind the buildings.

The goal is to make the retail center as “pedestrian friendly” as possible. The design of the three-block area encourages people to park their cars and walk along the wide sidewalks in front of the stores. At Center Boulevard and Ridge Street, the retail center ends with a “terminus” that connects it with the nearby park and the rest of the Ridge development.

Nancy Tucker, director of planning for the city of Snoqualmie, told council members that when creating the design standards, the city wanted the new neighborhood retail center to reflect the downtown area and the train depot. She said city staffers photographed several retail areas in different cities to serve as a gauge against retail development on the Ridge.

She said unlike other cities, the retail area was to steer clear of strip development or large shopping centers.

“We didn’t want to be Issaquah,” she said.

Design standards for the retail area encompassed everything from the type of materials to be used in construction, to the amount of glass surface on store fronts, to the size and placement of business signs, to the location of trash bins, which will be screened from view.

Under the design standards, businesses at the corners of the Parkway and Center, Mayrand Street and Center, Kinsey Street and Center, and Ridge and Center, should be retail in nature, if possible. Businesses will have a maximum of two stories, and architects will have to vary rooflines and building facades.

Bill Fuller, principal architect with Fuller-Sears Architects of Seattle, said because store entrances will be located along Center Boulevard as well as in the rear of the buildings where they face the parking lots, “The building really has to look good on all sides.” Fuller’s company designed the building that will house the Key Bank branch.

David Dorothy, director of commercial development for Weyerhaeuser Real Estate Co., said his company and city staff had been working since October on the design standards for the neighborhood retail center. They were approved by the Planning Commission this spring before being sent to the City Council.

“I think the product that came out of it [the work between the city and WRECO] is a good product, and one you probably won’t see anywhere else,” Dorothy said.

In addition to Key Bank going in on the Ridge, Tucker said a developer is interested in building a 20,000-square-foot grocery store in the retail area. At the same time, the developer wants to build a gas station next to the grocery store.

The neighborhood retail center design standards allowed a gas station, but they limited the operation to two pumps, which could fuel four cars at once. Tucker said the developer wanted that number increased.

However, that idea didn’t sit well with some council members. In the end, they agreed to strike the gas-station portion from the design standards and send it back to the Planning Commission.

Councilwoman Colleen Johnson wondered whether as the retail area becomes more popular it would become less pedestrian friendly.

Tucker said those who already live on the Ridge have shown they’re more likely to hoof it than jump in their cars, saying, “They like to walk, and they’re out there walking in all kinds of weather.”