Original story:
The $6.1 million property, formerly known as the Mars Hill Church, remains empty almost a year after the city of Sammamish purchased it.
The property is located at 120 228th Ave. NE, in close proximity to all three of the city’s high schools. The Sammamish City Council authorized the purchase of the property in March 2015, intending it to be a higher education hub, ideally bringing in high schoolers enrolled in Running Start and adults looking to further their education.
“That intent still remains,” City Manager Ben Yazici said earlier last month.
Running Start, established by the state, provides students the option to attend local community colleges and earn high school and college credit.
In Sammamish, there are 96 Eastlake High School students and 186 of Skyline High School students enrolled in Running Start as of February, according to the Eastlake High and the Issaquah School District records. (There is only one student from Eastside Catholic School enrolled in the program; however, this is the first year Eastside Catholic is offering Running Start.)
The three colleges — Cascadia College, Bellevue College and the Lake Washington Institute of Technology — which submitted a joint letter of interest to the city last year, will not be leasing the building from the city any time soon, Cascadia College President Dr. Erik Murray said Tuesday.
“There’s too big of a risk for us,” Murray said. “We’d have to have enough students in programs we devolved there in order to cover month-to-month and yearly costs.”
And, according to a fiscal analysis, the colleges would likely need hundreds more — not just the Running State high schoolers, which college officials see as the bulk of those who would attend the satellite college — to enroll in order to operate the facility.
Murray estimated it would take more than $1 million to accomplish this, including bringing the building up to technical standards, employing staff, paying for utilities and the lease.
“We do recognize a need to have facilities closer to Sammamish,” Murray said. “I would love a satellite campus out in Sammamish.”
In the meantime, the two-story building of about 30,800 square feet sits unoccupied on 22 acres, and it’s costing the city money, $50,000 a year to maintain it, Yazici estimated.
The council is not interested in selling the property, Yazici said.
“I think it’s a great investment now in the community,” he said. And he’s not giving up on its original purpose.
There might be an opportunity for the city to negotiate a temporary lease arrangement with other organizations to occupy the space, Yazici said.
During public comment at the Tuesday Sammamish City Council, an affiliate with Ace Hardware expressed a desire to convert the church property into an Ace store. However, zoning restricts using the property for retail purposes, limiting it to educational and religious uses.
