05 · Regulatory Roadmap
The long pole is the shoreline. So we front-run the surveys.
The red tape, the armored bank, and the studies that unlock both
Because the Snoqualmie is a shoreline of the state, everything within 200 feet of the water plus the floodway and floodplain sits in shoreline jurisdiction. That makes the Shoreline Substantial Development Permit the pacing item, six months to a year, and it depends on surveys we can and should commission now. The bank itself is not wild ground: it is named, armored county flood infrastructure, and that changes the conversation in useful ways.
The parcel's Snoqualmie frontage carries three named county flood facilities, all current in the river inventory: the Zylstra Revetment (FacilityID 436, river miles 5.86-5.96), the Cherry Creek Revetment (286, RM 6.01-6.07), and Cherry Creek Mouth DS (287, RM 6.14-6.19). The title record adds a 25-foot county public right of way along the river (Cause No. 810531). The county therefore already holds maintenance obligations and access rights on this bank, which any lease and any site plan must respect, and which any trail alignment can potentially use.
Next door, the bank story is active: a completed 2020 restoration phase at the Cherry Creek mouth (riprap removed, planting benches, several hundred willow and dogwood stakes under two county grant programs), and a second phase running on the neighboring private property through 2026. Restoration crews are working within sight of this parcel now.
If the files show county planting on the bank
The buffer conversation becomes "we steward what you planted": an established buffer, a named stewardship partner, and maintenance continuity as part of the lease. The records request that answers this is drafted and ready to send.
If the bank is clean (as every open source so far says)
Every open public dataset, the state grants register, and the 2023 permit trail show no documented planting on this parcel's own bank. Then the riparian buffer is ours to design and plant, which reads well in a shoreline application, and the working precedent next door treats farmland-preservation easements as the constraint on planting width, a county-legible frame for sizing ours.
Site on buildable upland
Keep buildings, parking, and the trailhead outside the wetland and riparian buffers and the floodway. The studies define that envelope; design to it.
Lean on adaptive reuse
Repair and reuse of the existing barn is generally lower-scope in shoreline and floodplain than new construction, and it spends almost none of the 1986 easement's non-tillable allowance. The barn is a regulatory asset as well as a financial one.
The trail helps
Public shoreline access is a favored shoreline use, and a public right of way already runs along this bank. Including the trailhead strengthens the shoreline application for the whole site rather than adding to it.
Plan for federal layers
Community Facilities, HFFI, and RFSI create a federal nexus that triggers Section 106 and possibly ESA review. Commission the cultural and habitat surveys early so federal money does not stall the schedule.
The critical path, in one line
Permission-to-enter and surveys, in parallel with the lease conversation.
Those two tracks are the real critical path. Everything downstream, the permits and the build, waits on them, so both start immediately, with the records requests above already drafted to feed them.
See the phasing →
The record & open work →