Looking out the back door of his house in Maple Valley, about 20 miles southeast of Seattle, Peter Heydorn can see a massive stand of trees growing across the street. But unlike most rural land in unincorporated King County, the 156 acres behind his house are completely surrounded by the city.

"It's a real geographic anomaly," says King County Council member Reagan Dunn, whose district includes Maple Valley. Neighbors of the land call it the Donut Hole, but King County, which has owned the property since the 1950s, has another way of describing it: for sale.

In a bidding process overseen by King County Executive Ron Sims, the county initially offered developer YarrowBay Group a no-bid contract to build a large mixed-income housing development on the site. After an outcry from Dunn and residents of the surrounding areas, Sims agreed to open the process, allowing a 60-day window for bids. That brief window closed in late April and, just as before, YarrowBay was the only bidder.

Although Sims's push to add housing in exurban Maple Valley certainly seems out of step with his commitment to growth management (which concentrates development in urban areas), Sims points out that the YarrowBay purchase allows the county to preserve another threatened piece of rural land—the 276-acre Icy Creek site along the Green River, which YarrowBay was seeking to develop.

Nonetheless, the prospect of an influx of new residents has Maple Valley officials and residents fuming.

Under the latest proposal for the site, Maple Valley city manager Anthony Hemstad says, the county could allow up to 2,000 new housing units in the Donut Hole—or as many as 6,000 new residents. For all practical purposes, those newcomers would live in Maple Valley—a bedroom community of 21,000 people. But because the county owns the land, the newcomers wouldn't be governed by the city. The county could pocket construction fees and annual property taxes, while surrounding Maple Valley residents would have to foot the bill for roads leading to and from the development, plus police officers, libraries, schools, and parks.

"This is going to bottleneck the whole city with traffic," says Heydorn, who started an online petition to demand that the county give citizens more input on the project.

Although YarrowBay's proposal is still pending, it appears that the developer and county have no plans to improve the roads around the Donut Hole. According to Jennifer Lindwall of King County's Capital Improvement Program, certain state roads, including Highway 169, are exempt from county rules requiring road improvements when new residents move in. Existing Metro bus service offers no relief, with buses stopping less than once per hour on weekdays (and with no service at all on weekends).

Masterminding this land deal without planning for its impacts represents an apparent about-face for Sims, who has historically opposed new rural developments in areas that lack the infrastructure to support them and encouraged cities to annex unincorporated county land. For example, in February, Sims announced that the county had granted the city of Auburn $1.25 million for annexing rural county land, arguing that under the state Growth Management Act, "cities generally are the unit of government most appropriate to provide services in urban areas."

King County's environmental sustainability director, Rod Brandon, says the area needs more "workforce housing"—affordable to people making less than King County's median income. But that goal could create a clash between the lower-wage newcomers and the suburbanites who currently use the land, which, in addition to trees, also contains a golf course.

Hemstad insists Maple Valley residents aren't opposed to growth—after all, Maple Valley is a booming exurb that has doubled in size since it incorporated a decade ago. But, he says, "We'd like it to be planned... rather than plunked down with no comment from the community."

"Had I known about this development," Heydorn adds, "I would have never bought a house in Maple Valley." recommended

dominic@thestranger.com