Sammamish Residents: The City Wants to Hear Your Thoughts This Week About Plans for a Community Aquatic Center

The policy goal is clear - to build a community center, possibly with swimming facilities, on the Sammamish Plateau.

Residents have said there's been talk of building such a place for years. Getting to the point of actually opening the center doors will take effort. Lots of it.

Sammamish city officials are at a point where they want to hear directly from residents about what should go inside the building, how to pay for it, the size, location, types of programs and overall design. They've scheduled two meetings this week to do just that.

On Wednesday, the public is invited to a 6:30 pm meeting at City Hall to lend their voice to a feasibility study, City Manager Ben Yazici said in a statement.

The City Council and Parks Commission will hold a joint meeting on Tuesday at 5:30 pm at City Hall to discuss the matter. Already, and other members of the City Council have talked about it.

The city has hired Denver-based Barker Rinker Seacat Architecture to conduct the feasibility study for the community center, which could have swimming facilities. Members of the company will be at the March 8 and 9 meetings.

A final report for the community and possible aquatic center should be finished in July. That will focus on construction cost estimates, how much it will cost to operate, conceptual drawings and a site and market analysis, Yazici said.

The city budget for 2011 includes $6.3 million to launch planning efforts. But Yazici said that no decision has been made.

"It's important to determine 'what' we want to build first. Then we can move on to an analysis of funding options, assess the viability of the project and identify potential partners," he said in a statement.

"We are still in the investigative mode. The City Council will listen to residents and think long and hard before any decision is made."

The discussion of a possible community center with swimming facilities comes at a time when Sammamish has seen its population grow. Some residents leave the city for their activities.

Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau that there were 45,780 residents in the city last year, an increase of 34 percent from a decade ago. About a third of the residents - 14,763 people - are under 18 years old.

That is an increase of about 30 percent for youths since 2000, the federal government reported.

The Boys & Girls Club of King County Redmond/Sammamish is $3 million for a new teen center at the intersection of 228th Avenue Northeast and Northeast Inglewood Hill Road.

That facility is expected to have a total of 17,000 square feet, including a gym that needs to be built. There are no plans for the teen center to have a swimming pool. Organizers hope to open the teen center in August or September.

That organization has reported that the Sammamish area has more than 6,000 teens.

Sammamish residents who are interested in the city's community center and the feasibility study can contact Jessi Richardson, parks and recreation director, at jrichardson@ci.sammamish.wa.us or Anjali Myer, project manager, at amyer@ci.sammamish.wa.us.