Farmers look to South Lake Union to make a buck

Seattle’s South Lake Union is among the hottest commercial real estate markets in the region and that could mean a profit for farmers in the Snoqualmie Valley, thanks to a program allowing rural landowners to sell their development rights.

King County is looking to partner with the city to expand the county’s Transfer of Development Rights [TDR] Program, in effect since 2001. It allows urban developers to pay farmers for a portion of their development rights. With the purchase, the developer gets to add extra housing units to an urban project, for example.

For the farmer, “a conservation easement is put on his property, that’s his commitment, saying the land can no longer be further subdivided and developed,” said Darren Greve, manager of the county’s TDR and mitigation programs.

The program is designed to steer development out of rural farmland and into urban growth areas. The strategy has helped the county protect more than 140,000 acres of working farms and forestland. The expansion of the program would focus on “threatened farmland that supplies the city’s farmer’s markets, it’s restaurants, and other retailers with local food,” said Greve. “And a lot of those are concentrated in the Snoqualmie Valley.”

Previous transfers of development rights have protected forest land in the White, Snoqualmie, and Raging River areas.

A state law passed in 2011 allows cities to partner with counties in the conservation effort.

The proposal gets a hearing Tuesday before a county council committee. Greve expects the city and county council will approve expansion of King County’s TDR program well before the end of the year.