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Reporter ISSAQUAH | SAMMAMISH
WWW.ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015
Lake trail negotiations progress
VALUE VILLAGE OPENS
Reporter editor Craig Groshart retiring after more than 33 years in journalism on Eastside Story page 3 Column page 4
King County parks director to address Sammamish City Council next week
Business
BY MEGAN CAMPBELL ISSAQUAH/SAMMAMISH REPORTER Daniel Nash, Issaquah/Sammamish Reporter
Savers Inc. opened a Value Village thrift store on East Lake Sammamish Parkway Feb. 19, filling a retail space that had been vacant for six years after Albertsons grocery closed its doors. Above, shoppers line up outside for Value Village’s grand opening. Third and fourth from left in the picture, Josh Immordino and Justin Harvey play cribbage while they wait. Metropolitan Market slated to open in 2016 Page 7
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Lines out door of long-vacant space BY DANIEL NASH ISSAQUAH/SAMMAMISH REPORTER
The morning of Feb. 19, shoppers were lined up out the door of the retail center on the corner of Southeast 56th Street and East Lake Sammamish Parkway. Many had grabbed baskets and carts to be at the ready. Others milled about and chatted up the staff at the welcome booth, set up on a card table beside the parking lot. Two men, Josh Immordino and Justin Harvey, passed the time with games of cribbage. It was probably the most foot traffic the old Albertsons building had seen in the more than six years since the grocery store announced its closure. The building remained perennially vacant during that time, with the exception of short-term leases to the Spirit Halloween company during the fall. Complicating matters was the fact that property owner Merlon Geier Partners had inherited an agreement that barred them from leasing to certain grocery competitors, such as Kroger
SEE VILLAGE, 7
SEE TRAIL, 2
Smarter traffic lights coming soon BY MEGAN CAMPBELL ISSAQUAH/SAMMAMISH REPORTER
@IssReporter
or Walmart, until 2052. MGP wound up halving the roughly 50,000-square-foot building into two retail spaces. Inside the store, more than 60 new Value Village employees gathered around Savers Inc. CEO Ken Alterman for a pre-opening ceremony pep talk, while city officials and corporate administrators awkwardly made small talk nearby. Alterman reminded the employees to relax, that first-day hiccups were normal. Some of the employees made last minute adjustments within the aisles and aisles of clothing. Two days earlier, the store and the merchandise had been a mostly empty space and a pile of donations, respectively. They went outside and began the opening ceremony. “I think you’re going to be shocked when you go inside, especially if you were here Tuesday,” Alterman said, addressing shoppers. “The merchandising is extraordinary.”
Sammamish’s public works director and King County’s parks director negotiated, point-by-point, the most southern section of the East Lake Sammamish Trail design plans Feb. 19. This followed the Sammamish City Council’s passionate discussion at last week’s meeting, where council members expressed their disappointment and befuddlement with the county’s lack of flexibility in the updated design plans for segment A, which stretches from 43rd Way Southeast to Southeast 33rd Street. Together city Public Works Director Laura Philpot and county Parks Director Kevin Brown spent a day last week walking and biking the trail. They said they reached an agreement on the majority of the design plans, like deciding to fill a ditch instead of chopping down trees in order to make room for the wider path. “There’s some areas that they could go a little further on,” Philpot said. “We haven’t been satisfied and neither has
From QFC to Safeway, the city of Sammamish wants to install smarter traffic signals along the 228th Avenue corridor. Several contractors submitted bids to the city to construct the adaptive signal control technology at 11 intersections from the Issaquah-Pine Lake Road Southeast intersection at 228th Avenue to the Northeast 12th Place and 228th Avenue intersection. The
bids were published on the city’s webpage in mid-February. An adaptive control is a form of traffic signal that responds in real time to traffic conditions. It reads the road and can help control congestion. With adaptive technology, delays decrease and vehicles are more fuel efficient. This technology would be able to react more seamlessly to unpredictable traffic fluctuations and increased congestion, according SEE TRAFFIC, 8
Megan Campbell, Issaquah/Sammamish Reporter
The intersection of 228th Avenue and Spartan Way will be one of 11 to receive upgraded “smart” traffic lights.