City of Kent, KOA plan property swap to keep campsites

The Seattle/Tacoma KOA campground and city of Kent plan to do a small property swap as part of the estimated $52 million Lower Russell Road Levee improvement project along the Green River.

KOA (Kampgrounds of America), which sits along South 212th Street and Russell Road, will lose about 30 sites needed by the King County Flood Control District to expand the levee. KOA has 189 sites at its Kent location, which opened in 1978.

City staff has recommended in exchange for that property of about 33,866 square feet (just under 1 acre), Kent will give up 55,956 square feet of property in its Green River Natural Resources Area to allow KOA to replace its 30 campsites. The natural resources property borders the southern edge of the campground.

Because the city bought the natural resources property in 1993 with King County grants, it must replace land to be lost in the KOA exchange. The city plans to use its $55,000 purchase last year of the nearby Suh property (68,560 square feet) to meet that requirement.

The King County Flood Control District, funded by a property tax and overseen by the King County Council, will reimburse the city for its purchase of the Suh property and pay KOA to put in the new campground sites.

“KOA is willing to work with us to give up about 30 campsites, but they are looking to get 30 sites in return,” said Toby Hallock, city engineer, in a Feb. 4 report to the City Council’s Public Works Committee.

Hallock said for the city to relinquish the covenants on the property and to transfer public property to a third party, public hearings need to be held. Those are scheduled to be at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 5, at City Hall during the council meeting.

“We are getting reimbursed from the flood district and coming out with more property,” Councilwoman Brenda Fincher said.

Councilman Dennis Higgins was pleased to see another step being taken.

“This is all part of the process we have been following to move this along,” Higgins said. “And we offset (the exchanged land) with the purchase of the sub-property, which was an island inside the Green River Natural Resources Area.”

Al Johnson, executive vice president of Recreational Adventures Co., a franchisee of KOA, looks forward to the property swap.

“We are relieved,” Johnson said in a Tuesday email. “We have known about the potential levee project for several years and have held off doing our customary enhancements until we knew what our future looked like. This approach allows us to keep in business while providing the necessary flood control.”

It will cost an estimated $800,000 to construct the new campground sites, Johnson said.

“This will be considerably less expensive and time-consuming than arriving at a condemnation settlement,” Johnson said.

Hallock said the properties are similar.

“The Green River Natural Resources Area property is pretty flat and open, with nice vegetation, a lot of grass and blackberries, and a few shrubs,” he said about where KOA plans to build campsites.

The new sites could be ready this summer.

“The plan is to have the replacement sites ready before the old sites are taken out for the project,” Johnson said. “Hopefully, this will be early this summer.”

KOA, which has more than 500 locations across the nation and Canada, will lose sites on its western edge, but gain sites just south of its existing property.

Work is expected to start later this year on the levee improvement that includes relocating and reconstructing the city’s 10-acre Van Doren’s Landing Park; installing 1,000 feet of flood wall; moving 400,000 yards of material; moving the historic Dvorak Barn; and creating a fish habitat.

The larger levee will increase the flood protection to a 500-year level from a 100-year level, Hallock said. The 500-year means the chance of a flood that large is o.2 percent (1 in 500) in a given year compared to 1 percent (1 in 100) at the 100-year level. The higher protection helps as the city improves numerous Green River levees in an effort to have the entire system within city limits accredited by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in order to remove properties behind the levee from FEMA flood maps to reduce development restrictions as well as flood insurance costs and requirements in the Kent Valley.