SNOHOMISH — The county is selling 144 wooded acres off of Cathcart Way to a division of national housing developer D.R. Horton.
The County Council last week authorized entering into a $40.3 million purchase-and-sale agreement with D.R. Horton’s Pacific Ridge Homes. The land is a forest next to Glacier Peak High School and Little Cedars Elementary.
The parcels are zoned with areas for multifamily residential and commercial uses, including business zoning along Cathcart Way itself.
The County Council marked this area as surplus last August; the county hired a real estate marketing firm to help sell it. Bids for the land came in April, attracting five bidders. The county set the minimum bid allowed at $18 million.
Pacific Ridge Homes gave the highest bid, county spokesman Kent Patton said May 25.
The deal is scheduled to close by mid-August.
A larger conservation area of forest fenced off along Cathcart Way directly east will remain untouched. Further east of the forest is the county’s Operations Center.
Part of this other site once was a landfill for 12 years until this filled up in 1992. The county now exports its trash — approximately 2,100 tons each weekday — to a landfill in Klickitat County in southern Washington. This includes collecting what gets disposed at the county’s solid waste dumps to ship it all to that landfill.
The county bought a large 600-acre plot along Cathcart Way a few decades ago, and has sold some parcels since.
It sold 65 acres to the Snohomish School District for the two schools that opened in 2007 and 2008. About 84 other acres were turned into Willis Tucker Park in 2005. The park’s boundary edge is across the road from Glacier Peak High School.
