HomeDuvallKing's-4-quarterLocal compute
For partners and funders

Where this stands, and what it needs next.

A community farm cooperative, a bounded food hub in the standing barn, and the trailhead the county designated, on 75 idle public acres outside Duvall. This page is for people and institutions who might carry a piece of it. It sets out the stage honestly, including what could still stop it.

The stage, stated plainly

This is a proposal, not a project under way. The public record behind it is pulled and cited; the ground work is not done. Two things gate everything, and both are named on every page of this site: water and septic feasibility, because without commercial water and septic there is no kitchen and no market, and the county's compatible-use determination, which has to thread two recorded instruments, a 1986 farmland-preservation easement and a 2020 conservation covenant. Until those clear, every site-plan statement here is provisional, and we say so rather than discovering it later with someone else's money in the ground.

What would move it, in order
01 · the landowner
A conversation with King County
The county owns the land and holds both instruments. The ask is a compatible-use determination and a long-term lease, not a sale. Anyone with a working relationship inside the Department of Natural Resources and Parks, the Agriculture Program, or the Council can shorten this by months.
The gate
02 · the ground truth
Surveys and a barn walk-through
Boundary and topographic, wetland and stream delineation, floodplain, geotechnical, a historic structure assessment, and water and septic feasibility. These gate the permits, have long lead times, and can begin under a permission-to-enter before any lease is signed.
The long pole
03 · the operators
Growers, a kitchen, a market
The cooperative is only as real as the people who would farm the plots, run the processing kitchen, and sell at the market. Established food-hub and incubator operators in this valley are the model and, we hope, the partners.
The enterprise
04 · the public applicant
A local government at the front
Several of the public programs that fit this project need a city, a county or a tribe as the applicant, with the enterprise as the beneficiary. That is a role a local government can play at no capital cost, and it is the single most useful thing a public partner can offer early.
The multiplier
05 · the patient money
Foundations and mission funders
Feasibility work comes before any grant reimburses, and that gap is where most projects like this die. Philanthropic and mission-aligned funding at that stage is worth more than a larger sum later.
The gap
06 · the neighbors
People who know this ground
Anyone who farmed here, worked this bank, or remembers the barn in use knows things no record holds. Those conversations have shaped the proposal more than once.
The record
What this page is not. It is not an offering and it contains no terms. No entity exists yet, nothing is for sale, and nobody is being asked for money here. If and when the cooperative forms and raises capital, that happens through the proper channel, with documents, to people we have actually talked to. This page exists so the conversation can start early.
Read before you talk to us

The honest version of this project lives on three pages: why the land is idle, which is a structural argument rather than a grievance; the legal path, which is the compatible-use route and its caveat; and the record, which carries every citation and every open question, including what we have not been able to answer yet. The funding page maps which public program fits which cost, and the budget gives rough order-of-magnitude ranges that a contractor walk-through will replace.

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