Another round of snow delays plans for a new Sammamish town center

SAMMAMISH, Wash. – The snow didn’t miss the eastside of the Puget Sound.  24 inches fell in nine days in Sammamish in February, and there was another round of snow Thursday morning.

One hilly road was closed after a string of crashes during the morning commute, but it’s the $13.25 million Southeast Fourth Street Improvement Project years in the making that’s had to hit the brakes during each round of wintry weather halting plans for a new Sammamish town center.

Sammamish mom Nicky Beaty lives life on the go, but snowy weather is halting her kids' education.

“They’re actually not looking forward to snow days at this point. They actually want to keep going so they can finish off the year,” said Beaty.

She lives near the Southeast Fourth Street Project, and all this construction tries to slow her down, too.

“It’s already hard enough to get in and out of the subdivisions. Getting kids back and forth from all the extracurriculars, that can take a lot of time,” said Beaty.

The road is part of the main infrastructure to help ease traffic through the city’s future town center. It will feature bike lanes, sidewalks, and medians with trees.  It’s a $13.25 million project city of Sammamish Spokesperson Sharon Gavin says will be worth the investment.

“Places for people to eat, to shop and to have more of a gathering place. So people don’t have to leave the plateau,” said Gavin.

But right now, not much is happening. Two feet of snow in February and another dumping overnight will delay the project’s anticipated completion date of sometime next spring by at least a few days.  Because the city has built-in weather days, Gavin says they’re not anticipating any additional costs for the project.

“There’s probably going to be some delay because we’ve had an extraordinary weathery winter. But nothing of a huge impact,” said Gavin.

If more weather, rain or snow, covers Sammamish again, Gavin says they’d rather risk delays than injuries.

“If it’s too cold, if it’s raining, if there are dangers of branches coming down, things like that. We always want to err on the side of caution while also keeping the project moving forward,” said Gavin.

The snow is now quickly melting, and that’s easing Beaty’s construction woes.

“I don’t worry too much about it because everything has to get done, right?” she said.