LAKE ROESIGER — If you ever imagined yourself the lord of your own manor on an 80-acre estate, now’s the chance to act.
Land once envisioned as part of a rural mini-city with 6,000 homes is being marketed as “executive estates.” Most of the 10 lots for sale measure a half mile by a quarter mile. Zoning allows future owners to build a single house and manage a commercial forest in their back yard.
“We’ve have some interested parties,” said Greg Wright, the real estate agent selling the property. “What we’re marketing now are some of the pieces that seemed best suited for some of these executive forest tracts.”
But there haven’t been any takers yet.
Meanwhile, the Cascade Land Conservancy and government officials have been discussing ways to put the land in public ownership.
The lots belong to Falcon Ridge, a limited liability company controlled by Dave Barnett of Shoreline. Barnett had proposed developing vast tracts of forest east of Lake Stevens into a master-planned community of homes for thousands of people, with shops and job opportunities nearby. The development had been proposed under county zoning rules for fully contained communities.
Those plans imploded last summer after the Snohomish County Council voted to get rid of that zoning. No such communities had been built and Barnett’s project was the only one proposed.
The council vote led to a dust-up with County Executive Aaron Reardon, who vetoed the council’s decision. A majority of the council soon overrode Reardon’s veto.
The legislative decision left Barnett with a bunch of land zoned for commercial forestry and allowing just one house for every 80 acres.
Nearly a year later, a chunk of the would-be mini-city is being sold off as executive estates in the Forest at Falcon Ridge. Eight 80-acre lots are listed for $499,000 apiece. The asking price for two 40-acre lots is $299,000 each.
“It’s a growing forest,” Wright said. “With each one of them, we’re including a professionally done forestry plan.”
True to the marketing name, the properties sit on a ridge and afford views of Lake Roesiger to the southeast, Mount Pilchuck to the northeast or the Olympic Mountains to the west.
The size of the lots struck Peter Paterno, the sales manager at Windermere Real Estate in Lake Stevens, as “pretty unusual.”
For large home sites, properties of 5 or so acres are more the norm, he said. During the building boom a few years ago, 5-acre lots commanded $250,000. Now, they’re down to $140,000 and they’re not moving, he said.
The executive estates only represent about a quarter of the 2,600 acres Barnett has near Lake Roesiger.
Rural-cluster subdivisions in various stages of approval occupy another couple of hundred acres, Wright said. Plans for another 1,600 acres aren’t yet clear.
Barnett’s proposed mini-city was in County Councilman Dave Somers’ district, and Somers worked hard to get rid of zoning that would have made it possible.
Now, Somers said, “the only thing you could really do with the rest of the land is manage it for forestry.”
“I think they’re going to have a very difficult time selling these parcels, but it’s their legal right to do that,” Somers said. “I would still like to see it brought into public ownership.”
To that end, Somers said he has had recent discussions with the Cascade Land Conservancy and the state Department of Natural Resources.
At this point, the state has no plans to acquire the land, DNR spokesman Aaron Toso said. CLC’s Snohomish County conservation director, Nick Harper, is trying to convince DNR officials otherwise by gathering data to show that it would fit well with nearby forest trust lands.
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465, nhaglund@heraldnet.com.
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