East Link continues the property acquisition process with its second batch of residences along 112th Avenue, to include 18 lots.

On June 27 (after The Reporter’s deadline) the Sound Transit Board considered a resolution authorizing the agency to purchase those parcels, which extend just south of Main Street to north of Bellefield Park Lane. Afterward Sound Transit will assign somebody from the property department to each homeowner, beginning the course of appraisals.

The resolution follows an earlier one in May, which obtained the 41 units of Carriage Hills and Carriage Place condos and aims to quicken the acquisition process for homeowners who have voiced to the Bellevue City Council and Sound Transit that they feel put on hold in the years-long process of East Link construction.

Arjun Sirohi, who lives with his wife just off 112th Avenue Southeast and Southeast Eighth Street, said neighbors received a letter from Sound Transit on June 11.

“For the majority of us,” said Sirohi, who works downtown and walks daily, “we want to be living in the same neighborhood if possible. The problem is nothing is available. If you try to extend beyond Surrey Downs in West Bellevue, the possible neighborhoods available are Enatai, Meydenbauer Bay, Vuecrest, they’re all exorbitantly expensive. So to find a replacement home is going to be a challenge.”

Sound Transit is still engaged in final design for the East Link alignment. Details such as the exact number of properties needed and the footprint of impact won’t be known until late this year or early next.

Though not an official appraisal, neighbors along 112th also noted a five to eight percent drop in their property values on the real estate site Zillow in the days after receiving a letter from Sound Transit.

According to its own standards, an acquisition by Sound Transit is not complete until all displaced residents have been relocated.

“Just give me a decent comparable, replacement home…I don’t know if [Sound Transit] is aware of the market,” said Sirohi. “But they soon will be.”

Earlier in the month the Surrey Downs Community Club discussed an amendment to the MOU which would allow for alternate access at Southeast 15th Street and 112th in the form of a cut-through. Members determined that the proposal would only produce more traffic and so suggested that funds instead go to the city’s cost savings efforts. The Surrey Park would then be downgraded from a community to a neighborhood park.

Sirohi says while he and his wife turn their attention to a move, they’re faced with the dilemma of occupying a home that might not be theirs for much longer.

“We’ll keep things going, like the yard and all. Both of us love gardening,” says Sirohi. “So we do a lot of that, just out of our own interest.”