The Snoqualmie City Council affirmed a prior planning commission decision on March 28 by rejecting 10 appeals filed by residents over a proposed downtown development.

The Rails/Hovinga development, brought to the city by a private property owner, is now under a building permit and civil engineering review. Jason Rogers, the city’s community development director, said he had no timeline for how long that could take.

The project is proposing to build a three-story, 35-foot-tall, mixed-use building on a 9,000-square-foot vacant lot along Maple Avenue. The first floor would have a mix of front facing office and retail space and backside parking spots. The top floors would feature 11 apartments and a rooftop with amenities.

Since the lot is within the city’s downtown district, it was required to meet design standards defined by the city’s municipal code that are intended to protect downtown Snoqualmie’s historic aesthetic. Whether a development meets those standards is up to the city’s historic design review board, which must grant approval prior to building permits being issued.

The city’s planning commission, acting as such review board, approved the project’s design with minor changes at its Jan. 18 meeting. But 10 residents — at least six of whom live on Maple Avenue — filed appeals of that decision.

The city council was then tasked with deciding if those appeals should be denied or granted and remanded to the planning commission.

Dane Stokes, a Snoqualmie resident who served as spokesperson for the appellants at the March 14 city council meeting, said the appellants and 15 additional neighborhood residents believe the designs violated the city’s municipal code.

In its rebuttal of the appeals, city staff wrote that eight of the 10 appeals failed to identify legal grounds for an appeal. Of the two remaining appeals — including one submitted by Stokes — city staff said they failed to demonstrate the historic design review board was “clearly erroneous.”

After delaying the decision at its March 14 meeting, until city staff could provide the council with transcripts of planning commission meetings, the council voted 5-2 on March 28 to deny and dismiss all 10 appeals. Councilmembers Ethan Benson and Matt Laase voted in dissent.

In an interview, Laase said based upon what was shared in the record, he felt “there were errors in the process,” but was unable to specify further due to the quasi-judicial nature of the proceeding.

Quasi-judicial refers to a public hearing where councilmembers act as judge and jury, and are bound by the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine. In these types of hearings, councilmembers are prohibited from doing their own research, and must base their decision solely on information presented at the hearing and what’s on the record.

“I voted no in response to items shared on the record and felt that the appeals should have been approved,” Laase said.

At its March 14 council meeting, several councilmembers raised concerns that a code objection contained in several of the appellants’ appeals regarding historical design review was not addressed by city staff in its rebuttal. That code requires the King County Office of Cultural Resources to be informed and given a report on all new structures built in the city’s historic district.

The city declined to comment about the discrepancy, saying they are still in the legal appeal period for the historic design review board decision.