Soaring Eagle Park in transition

Tucked behind a subdivision near Sammamish's city limits sits the entrance to 627 acres of dense forest.

King County's Soaring Eagle Park has been a sanctuary for Bob Mallory since the early '90s. Over the years, he said, he's logged 6,000 miles running the trails with his Chesapeake Bay retriever, and he's spent countless nights watching the quiet moonscape. He marvels that the forest is a five-minute drive from his house.

Now, Mallory and others who belong to the neighborhood group Friends of Soaring Eagle Park say they're waiting with trepidation as 30 acres of the forest transfers in the coming months from King County to the city of Sammamish. They worry the move will bring development such as sports fields and encroach on what they call their pristine "gem" of a park.

"The city and county wouldn't be transferring 30 acres just to leave it as it is," Mallory said.

But officials say that option — leaving the park totally undeveloped — was never part of the deal.

When King County bought Soaring Eagle Park from the state Department of Natural Resources in 1993 for $8 million, "we had always planned to develop [a portion] for active use," said Kevin Brown, the county's director of parks and recreation.

Shortly after it purchased the site, the county mapped out a master plan to use 80 acres for recreational use, Brown said.

That fell through because of costs, he said. As the county continued to struggle with budget shortfalls, it looked to transfer park parcels to adjacent cities willing to take on the cost of developing them, Brown said.

The proposed 30-acre development is at the south boundary of the park adjacent to the Trossachs Boulevard access road. The site was chosen for two reasons, Brown said. First, it is accessible via Trossachs Boulevard, so no extensive access road would be required. Second, it offered the least impact to the rest of the site.

But what kind of development winds up there remains to be seen. The transfer is expected to be complete before the end of the year, said Jessi Richardson, the city's parks and recreation director.

After that, an extensive public review will get started — most likely by the beginning of next year — to decide what kind of amenities get built. "In my experience, what I see come out of a public process is a nice, healthy plan," Richardson said.

One possibility is playfields.

Sammamish, one of the fastest-growing cities in the state, has a population of nearly 40,000, according to April 2006 figures from the state Office of Financial Management. Richardson said the city does not have enough ballfields to meet demand.

The all-weather fields that recently opened at Skyline and Eastlake high schools were built in a joint partnership with the two school districts, and are available for community use from 5 to 9 p.m. on weekdays. And they are booked weeks out, she said.

"We have people clamoring to get on those fields," she said. "I think there's a good opportunity here to have a creative, balanced development."

Mallory said he's not convinced. As he walked through the park on a recent rainy afternoon, he saw distinct hoof prints in the mud.

"Look! See the deer tracks?" he said. "I've seen black bear, bobcats, porcupines. This is a fully forested natural space, right within a suburban area. How often do you see that?"

Soaring Eagle ranks among the top 10 percent of parks in the county by size, Brown said. The biggest is Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park near Issaquah, at 3,120 acres.

Brown said he's confident a 30-acre development wouldn't mar Soaring Eagle's lush, natural landscape.

"There would still be more than 590 acres left as open space," he said. "You'd still have that sense of being alone in the woods."

Sonia Krishnan: 206-515-5546

or skrishnan@seattletimes.com