January 2008

Our Neighborhoods: Snoqualmie Ridge

By Wenda Reed

There are seven other 3-year-olds for her son to play with on the cul-de-sac where Michelle DeRouen lives with her husband and two children, ages 6 and 3. When she’s a little older, her daughter will be able to walk to Cascade View Elementary School, opened in the fall of 2005 in the center of the 2,200 home sites on Snoqualmie Ridge.

DeRouen moved to the master planned community, 28 miles east of Seattle, in 2002 when the development was only four years old.

“We’re on our second home,” she says. “That’s a pattern: people get here and then upgrade; we know a dozen families who have done this.”

The couple grew up on the Eastside, and then lived as a couple in West Seattle. They moved to Snoqualmie Ridge to be closer to grandparents in Bellevue and for an easier commute (30 minutes to Seattle, 30 minutes to Snoqualmie Pass and 20 minutes to Bellevue “with no traffic”). At first it seemed too far out, DeRouen says, “but 10 minutes further east meant 600 more square feet for the same money.”

Snoqualmie Ridge was designed as a walking community with wide sidewalks and lots of room for children to bike and play. “There’s lots of wildlife still in the area,” DeRouen adds. There are plenty of stay-at-home moms, and a large percentage volunteer at the elementary school. When she first arrived, there was a shortage of daycare and after-school care for working parents, but DeRouen says the situation is improving, especially with the opening of the Snoqualmie Ridge Early Learning Center across from the school. “There are not a lot of older couples, except those moving close to grandkids,” she adds.

“It’s such a family-oriented neighborhood, so safe and so quiet,” DeRouen says, admitting that many people might consider it “Pleasantville.”

It’s easy to get that impression. Three- to five-bedroom homes are built in a uniformly tasteful Craftsman-like style with consistent set-backs and similarly landscaped yards. There are dozens of mini-neighborhoods, created by different builders, set into the curves of the hillsides, with the towering Cascades as a backdrop. Hundreds of new trees, most less than 10 feet tall, are planted along the sidewalks, but there are only a few patches of the original forest.

Forty-percent of the land is set aside in open space, including eight neighborhood parks, trails, wetlands and the Jack Nicklaus Signature TPC Golf Course. The neighborhoods are dotted with children’s play equipment, picnic areas, tennis and basketball courts, soccer fields, landscaped retention ponds and a neighborhood pea patch. There’s no graffiti, few weeds, and – except for a trail bordering one of the ponds – no litter.

The small downtown retail “village” on Center Street is anchored at one end by a bank and the new glass-fronted Snoqualmie Library and at the other by a spa and an Italian restaurant advertising a kids’ special for $1.99. In between, residents can find many of the necessities, including a vet, hair-cutter, dry cleaners, UPS store, athletic club, chiropractor, medical center, physical therapist, optometrist and two dentists. The high concentration of families supports niche businesses, including the Cascade Dance Academy, a Kumon Learning Center, Zeebi’s Toy Store and Peanut Butter & Lily children’s clothing boutique.

Of course, there’s a Starbucks – next to the small Village Foods IGA store, a half block behind the main street – as well as Zoka Coffee on Center Street and a dozen restaurants and specialty food stores. An Irish pub and an ice creamery are opening this month.

There’s a homegrown hardware store a couple of miles away in downtown Snoqualmie, along with a bowling alley, furniture store, chainsaw art gallery, several churches and the Northwest Railway Museum and historic depot (where Thomas the Tank Engine departs). Downtown houses several childcare facilities and preschools, a YMCA and Encompass, a family service center with a preschool, parenting classes, birth-to-three early intervention, Family Nights and a childcare coop.

Snoqualmie Ridge residents need to go to nearby North Bend for major grocery stores and the outlet mall and to Issaquah for big box stores. Presently, most middle school students from the Ridge attend Chief Kanim Middle School in Fall City and Mount Si High School in downtown Snoqualmie. More schools are being built, which will result in boundary changes, although the last two school bond issues have failed and schools are over capacity.

Further expansion is happening at Snoqualmie Ridge as well. Phase I is almost finished, as vacant home sites are filled in on both sides of the expansive Snoqualmie Parkway. More land has been cleared between the present neighborhood and Interstate 90 to begin Phase II. The population of the city of Snoqualmie is expected to double by 2014 to about 14,000, and most of the development will occur on the Ridge, giving more families a chance to live in this community.

Wenda Reed is managing editor of Seattle’s Child.

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