Shouldering the door open, John Taylor cautiously stepped inside what used to be the Tall Chief Golf Course pro shop. Vacant since 2009, the county-owned building was roofed with moss outside, and filled with mold inside. Chunks of the ceiling littered the spongy floor, evidence of damage from accumulated water and neglect.

“This isn’t the worst building, but it’s not the best, either,” said Bob Burns, deputy director of King County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks.

The best building, a steel pole barn, was so overgrown with blackberries, that door could open only halfway.

Burns, Director Christie True, Taylor, assistant director for the department’s Water and Land Resources Division, and county media spokesman Doug Williams led a tour of the damaged buildings and other features of the Tall Chief property last week, and talked about the 191-acre site’s future.

That future will look a lot like its past.

About 50 years ago, the site had been a working dairy — one of 100 in King County, said True — and King County officials are now negotiating a sales agreement that would put dairy operations back on the land, possibly as soon as spring 2016. Steve and Janet Keller, owners of the neighboring property across the river, and fourth-generation dairy farmers, are the future tenants, along with their four children.

The Kellers submitted the winning proposal for using the often-flooded old golf course last fall. Their plans include clearing trees from the lower part of the property, which is in the floodplain, to grow feed crops for their dairy cattle, to build greenhouses on the hillside above the floodplain and sublease those to area farmers, to save the existing buildings, if possible, and build farm worker housing. Long-term, they propose a milk-processing plant on the land, possibly a barn and other farm buildings, but only three more houses, as specified in the sales agreement with the county.

Best of all, the Kellers’ purchase of this land from King County could enable True’s department to fund the two other proposals submitted for Tall Chief.

“We actually liked all of the proposals,” True said. “In fact the legislation that’s going before the County Council actually puts us in alignment to get all of the proposals completed. We do the Kellers first, then we go look for properties… the proceeds from this sale will go toward acquisitions for the two other proposals. So we see them all happening.”

The committee that reviewed the proposal included Taylor and two other county staffers, plus three “external” members, Enumclaw farmer Bob Vos, Director of policy and planning for the King Conservation District Josh Monaghan, and Northwest Agriculture Business Center staffer Lucy Norris.

“They were selected for their expertise,” said Taylor. “We had a farmer from the Enumclaw plateau who serves on the agricultural commission, so his mandate is broader … he understands policy… we had someone from the KCD with a farm planning background… we had someone who works with farmers all the time and understands how to get a property into production.”

True noted that she had asked the board of the Snoqualmie Valley Preservation Alliance, a local group of farmers and business people working on flooding issues in the Valley, to participate on the review committee. They declined out of concerns about conflict of interest, she said, since SVPA members were expected to submit proposals for the property. The Kellers are SVPA members.

Community input was part of the process when the RFP was designed, though, which True noted was unusual. They held several meetings on the property last spring and summer, and Taylor said they received more than 40 comments from community members. About 15 of them were implemented, including several requests to extend the proposal period, but one suggestion, to require organic farming or Salmon-Safe certification from the future tenant, was rejected.

“We don’t tell farmers what to grow or how to farm,” said True.

The Keller dairy is not organic, selling all its milk to Darigold, but the family’s proposal allowed that organic farmers could sub-lease parts of the property.

The other two proposals were from the Kou Oh and Phong Cha family, Valley flower farmers, for increasing their production of flowers, and Seattle Tilth, for developing an incubator farming program. Neither of them required a site as large as Tall Chief, True noted, and both offered less money than the Kellers. Tilth, which was “a strong second,” True said, did not proposed a no-cost lease instead of buying the land.

Funding availability is one reason the Kellers’ proposal stood out, Burns said. One of the parties, “didn’t have the financial resources to fix up the facilities, nor would they be able to farm the whole property.” Another would have required several years to implement and start producing revenue.

“They didn’t have the money lined up and… the buildings need work now,“ True said.

Inside the clubhouse, the smell of mold is overpowering, although the most-affected rooms are kept closed. The damp air has curled the dozens of picture corners, still stuck to the walls after someone tore off the photos years ago. A few unclaimed photos are stuck there, too.

Janet Keller said the family hopes to preserve the buildings, depending on what a contractor finds in assessing the damage, and possibly build more homes on the site. They will be limited by the contract to three additional homes.

“We want to preserve this as a farm,” said Burns, so the county is requiring a significant conservation easement that “limits the uses of the property to agriculture… and anything they build, they’d have to go through the normal permitting processes.”

Most importantly, “You couldn’t have McMansions up here, ever,” Burns said.

That’s a big change that occurred in 2013, when King County bought the land, for $4.5 million, with the intent of returning it to farm use, with the appropriate zoning and land-use designations for the Agriculture Production District. Between 2009 and the county’s acquisition, property owner John Tomlinson had been working toward development of the land as an 18-home development that included farm plots for each residence, as well as a larger lot that the residents would lease to a farmer. Because of the property’s location on the hillside, buffering the large residential tracts on the opposite face of the hill, many were reluctant to see houses, even with farming, built on that ridge.

“We kind of felt like it would be the beginning of the end,” True said.

“Over the ridge is Treemont and Aldarra, subdivisions. This is why it’s so important to save Tall Chief,” said Burns. “It’s coming over the ridge. If you look at this property on Google Earth, everything to the west is development and you look to the east, and it’s the heart of the agricultural part of the Valley.”

Saving Tall Chief was not just about preserving this property, though. It was also about preserving farming, said True, as rising land costs make the industry inaccessible to newcomers, and sometimes to succeeding generations. That the Kellers have a fifth generation of future farmers ready to get to work also made their proposal “appealing,” she said.

“It’s a way of life. We all enjoy it, we all enjoy working together,” said Janet Keller. She also noted that the family had begun talking about relocating their dairy, since they would need more room to give all of their children an opportunity to farm. “It was a topic of conversation,” she said.

Buying the Tall Chiefs property will give the Kellers room to grow, True said, and support the local food initiative launched last year by the King County Executive, the Kitchen Cabinet.

“Less than 2 percent of the food we consume comes from King County,” True said, but the Kitchen Cabinet program has set goals to add 400 new net acres per year for food production in the county, and to increase the number of farmers by 25 per year.

It’s ambitious, and expensive. For instance, the Tall Chief property, zoned as a residential development, was valued at $4.5 million, but as agricultural land, the value is a fraction of that. Although the sales agreement is not final, Burns said the final purchase price was likely to be $720,000, with the option of buying two additional home credits for up to an additional $265,000.

King County’s Council is expected to receive the legislation for the sales agreement by the end of the year.

King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks staff leading a tour of the Tall Chief property Thursday were, from left: John Taylor, assistant division director, Water and Land Resources Division, Christie True, department director, Doug Williams, spokesperson, and Bob Burns, department deputy director.

The building that used to serve as the golf course clubhouse, like most buildings on the property, is covered with moss. and almost overgrown by weeds.

Invasive weeds have flourished on the former Tall Chief Golf Course property, climbing to the utility lines supplying the single home on the grounds. The property has been unused since Tall Chief Golf Course closed in 2009. King County bought the land in 2013 with the goal of returning the land to food production.

An old security sign posted on the Tall Chief property shows wear and tear.