Report on the Kirkland Park Place Open House

Touchstone Development held an open house at Kirkland Performance Center on Thursday, February 21st to discuss the status of the new Park Place development. The event was well-attended with about 100 attendees. Touchstone management described the layout of the development which includes 1.2 million square feet of office space and triple the amount of retail space. Since only 6% retail spending by Kirkland residents is spent in Kirkland, Touchstone hopes their development will increase that number. The amount of workers increases from about 500 to 6000 people while parking increases from 1000 spaces to 3500 spaces. Touchstone goals are for a beautiful space with walkways connecting Peter Kirk Park with 45% of the acreage devoted to public areas (that includes streets and street parking). It will take 30 months to build the first phase and 24 months for the second phase. Two seven story buildings and one eight story building are included in the plan. The city council will need to approve building height variances to approve their plan. Most questions from the attendees revolved around parking, traffic, and the retail mix. This, mycitymyspace.com, website was included in their materials so please make your comments here or at the Park Place forum under "City Life".