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04 · The Legal Path

Compatible use, not conversion.

Two recorded instruments, and the route through both

The land is encumbered twice, by two instruments recorded 34 years apart, and we do not fight either one. We do not buy the land, and we do not convert it. The route through both instruments is written into the code, and the older instrument is not an obstacle at all: farming is its recorded purpose.

The two-instrument stack
Instrument 1 · recorded 11/07/1986 · #198611070673
The farmland-preservation easement
Under the voter-approved Farmland Preservation Program, the then-owners deeded the full tract's development rights to King County. Its recorded purpose is to preserve this ground as farmland. Under the program's standard form it caps non-tillable ground (about 3.96 acres here, with roughly 1.09 acres already counted) and dwellings (one). It survives the 2020 sale and binds the county as owner. The verbatim text is on order and unread; its terms gate the site plan.
Instrument 2 · recorded 12/23/2020, inside deed #20201223002074
The Conservation Futures / Parks Levy covenant
The deed's own Exhibit A carries both funding covenants: Conservation Futures (open-space use restrictions and restrictions on alienation, RCW 84.34.200 et seq., KCC 26.12.005 et seq.) and the 2013 Parks Levy (Ordinance 17568: the property is not to be converted to a different use unless equivalent property is received in exchange). Notably, the deed never names the 1986 easement; it survives by law under a generic subject-to clause.
What the stack does
Buy
Barred
Restriction on alienation; cannot be sold for private development
Farm (lease)
The purpose
Farming is the 1986 instrument's recorded object and an eligible open-space use under RCW 84.34
Food hub + trailhead
Compatible
A compatible operation under 26.12.010.K, sized within the 1986 easement's terms
The statutory hook
King County Code 26.12.010.K, verbatim"This section does not prevent the grant of easements or franchises or the making of joint use agreements or other operations compatible with the use of a project as provided for in this section and authorized under chapter 84.34 RCW."

The conversion requirement (26.12.010.I) applies only to converting the land "to a different use." Subsection K expressly exempts easements, franchises, joint use agreements, and "operations compatible with the use of a project." So a lease or joint-use agreement for compatible operations triggers no conversion, no replacement land, and no council process. The whole strategy lives in that lane.

The sharpest line in the argument
Farming here is not merely compatible with the encumbrances. It is the recorded purpose of the older one. The public bought this ground's farming future in 1986; a farming lease is that purchase finally performing.The two-instrument compatibility argument
Why each element is compatible
Farming
"Farm and agricultural land" is an eligible open-space category under RCW 84.34, and preserving farmland is the 1986 instrument's stated object. Community agriculture is the conforming use par excellence on this ground.
The market → a farm store
Selling on-site and regionally grown products is agricultural product sales under KCC 21A.08.090, not general retail, when it honors the code limits (a majority of sales by producers and from Puget Sound-grown products, a modest sales area).
The kitchen → agricultural processing
Value-added processing of regionally grown inputs is a permitted agricultural support use. The county's own farm-lease program already builds wash-pack and processing infrastructure on comparable conservation-restricted parcels. Structures must also fit the 1986 easement's non-tillable cap, which favors adaptive reuse of the existing barn footprint.
The trailhead → it advances the trail purpose
The parcel's designated purpose is a Snoqualmie Valley Trail site, and the title record already carries a 25-ft public right of way along the riverbank (Cause No. 810531). Building the trailhead does not merely coexist with the purpose; it delivers it. That is the opposite of a conversion.
The honest caveat

"Compatible" is a determination the Department of Natural Resources and Parks makes; it is not automatic, and it now must thread two instruments, not one. The 1986 easement's verbatim terms are ordered but unread: until they are read, every site-plan statement on this site is provisional. Both recorded instruments and the draft lease go to a Washington land-use attorney together, before the county conversation relies on any of this. The phased build is designed to earn the determination: farming and the heritage barn, the clearest compatible uses and the 1986 purpose itself, come first, so the county relationship and a track record exist before the kitchen is on the table.

The fallback, which we aim to avoidIf any element were nonetheless deemed a conversion, KCC 26.12.010.I allows it through an Executive action with a 60-day County Council rejection window, plus equivalent replacement land or cash valued at the new use (and the Parks Levy covenant independently requires equivalent exchange). That is discretionary, public, and costly. The compatible-use route is designed to avoid it entirely.
The two kill switches, standingWater and septic feasibility (no commercial water or septic means no kitchen or market, the revenue engine; a recorded water-company easement in the title record is a named diligence item). And the county compatible-use determination, which must now clear both the 1986 easement and the 2020 covenant.

Legal, then permitted, then built

The lease is the landowner's yes. The permits are a separate track.

The compatible-use determination is permission from the county as owner. On top of it sits the regulatory layer: shoreline, critical areas, floodplain, building, and health. That roadmap, and the surveys that unlock it, come next.

Regulatory roadmap →
Sources & findings