City of Issaquah Approves Land Acquisitions on Squak Mountain and Issaquah Creek
Kelly Jiang is the Board President of the Issaquah Alps Trails Club and the newest member of the Issaquah City Council.
On Monday, February 24, the Issaquah City Council approved the purchase of 17.66 acres to be added to the City of Issaquah’s park system. This includes the 17.55-acre Kelkari property (shown in Figure 1 highlighted in yellow). The Kelkari parcel adjoins both Squak Mountain State Park, as well as another parcel the City of Issaquah acquired in 2022. The acquisition of the Kelkari property opens up the potential for additional trail connections from the valley floor to the vast trail system on Squak Mountain.
The $2.5 million acquisition of the Kelkari property is projected to be funded through the King County Conservation Futures grant program, as well as the City of Issaquah’s Parks and Open Space Acquisition Fund. Because the city is currently applying for Conservation Futures funding, the property is expected to close (i.e. transaction finalized) in March 2026.
Figure 1: Kelkari property map. Note: blue dotted lines indicate potential future trail connections. Red dotted lines indicate existing trail connections.
The other acquisition is for a 0.11-acre parcel on the southwest side of East Fork Issaquah Creek. This property is across the creek from existing city-owned land and offers the potential for additional trail connections to the Veterans Memorial Field, and from there to the rest of the City downtown parks. Additionally, now that the City owns property on both sides of the creek, this opens up the potential for creek restoration - both for salmon habitat, as well as for floodplains to absorb flood water during major storms. Note that there is an existing structure on the property (a single-family home) that will be torn down as part of the creek restoration.
The $900,000 acquisition for the Kinnune property is expected to be funded through the City of Issaquah’s Open Space Acquisition Fund. This acquisition is expected to be finalized in May 2025.
Figure 2: Kinnune property map
As Issaquah’s newest city councilmember, it was very exciting for me to be able to vote in favor of these land acquisitions in my very first city council meeting! I was thrilled to join my council colleagues in unanimously approving both of these acquisitions. These major land acquisitions don’t happen every day - the last one before this was in March 2022, when the City purchased a 20-acre parcel just to the west of the Kelkari property. Before that, the last land acquisition was the 46-acre Bergsma property, which was approved in December 2018.
Following the Bergsma acquisition, Issaquah decided to create an Open Space Acquisition Fund to essentially save up money to help finance these acquisitions. Since then, Issaquah has set aside around $500,000 per year in this open space acquisition fund. This allows the city to act quickly when opportunities arise to purchase a property.
IATC looks forward to continuing our work with the City of Issaquah to support open space acquisition, exciting new trail connections on these newly-acquired parcels, and restoration of habitat along our creeks. Personally, I’m looking forward to more bushwhacks to scout trail connections on that part of Squak (see the below photo from a previous bushwhack where we explored the Kelkari property)!
Figure 3: Bushwhacking up Squak from Kelkari property, March 2022