The State of Washington requires King County to have a comprehensive plan that creates land use guidelines for rural areas and towns. In the King County Comprehensive Plan, Fall City was designated as a Rural Town. Rural Towns are pockets of commercial and residential activities in rural areas.

Unfortunately, accompanying development codes for residential sub-divisions in rural towns were not created to support the comprehensive plan and this gap has permitted developers to subdivide and build homes in an urban style that is inconsistent with the rural town designation.

In previous decades Fall City has experienced a slow, 1% growth rate including other sub-divisions. These projects maintained the average lot and home sizes and grew the town in a manageable way. These new developments are not the same as these, as they leverage a clustering strategy that creates a dramatic departure from the rural character of Fall City.

This urban development style, along with the pace of development, brings with it a host of problems for Fall City’s limited infrastructure and lack of services. Current residents have serious concerns about the safety of their community water sources, traffic mitigation, pedestrian safety and environmental impacts.

Beyond safety, as the last remaining inland rural township in King County, Fall City’s unique rural character and historic ambiance is threatened.

Fall City has strong relationships with the county and is working hard to close this gap with upcoming changes to it’s sub-area plan. In the meantime, we will continue to explore all avenue to limit the impacts of the proposed developments.