Union Hill-Novelty Hill, WA

Union Hill-Novelty Hill is one census place with two deliberately different landscapes. A 1989 King County plan directed most forecast growth toward the Novelty Hill master-planned area near Redmond's watershed. In 1994, the county redesignated most of the wider planning area as rural. The result remains visible: Redmond Ridge and Novelty Hill have clustered subdivisions and shared commercial facilities, while much of Union Hill remains under rural residential designations. In 2020, 22,683 residents occupied roughly 24 square miles. At that scale, errands and public facilities are spread among several centers across the plateau. King County Local Services handles roads, permitting, parks, and community planning in place of a municipal government.

Redmond Ridge is the more concentrated side of that divide. The Village at Redmond Ridge and Redmond Ridge Marketplace place grocery shopping, restaurants, services, and other daily-use businesses near the subdivisions. A separate business park along Redmond Ridge Drive and Novelty Hill Road contains offices, professional services, recreation uses, and larger workplaces. A 2020 King County study found the commercial areas almost fully developed and treated the business park as the community's principal employment area. That arrangement gives an unincorporated place a suburban center where routine shopping, services, and organized recreation overlap, even as the surrounding plateau retains a distinctly different land-use pattern. The office park, marketplace, and bus route all meet along Redmond Ridge Drive and Novelty Hill Road.

Connections beyond the plateau follow a small number of east-west roads. During the service period from March 28 through August 28, 2026, King County Metro's DART Route 224 links Redmond Ridge with Duvall and downtown Redmond, including Downtown Redmond light-rail station. The spring 2026 change shifted the route within Redmond Ridge to serve new stops by the SpaceX offices and business park. Weekday-only service is a practical limit in a community whose shared facilities are widely separated across the broad plateau. Within that schedule, the route creates a direct regional transit link among the housing clusters, office park, Downtown Redmond station, and Duvall.

The plateau's shared facilities occupy small, specific sites. Redmond Ridge Park provides lighted ball fields and synthetic soccer fields for leagues and practices. The Redmond Ridge Library Express is a 300-square-foot, self-service hold-pickup room inside the homeowners association building; KCLS card access keeps it open daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. It opened in 2009 and offers holds, returns, and a book drop in a much smaller space than a full branch. At the northern side of the census place, the City of Redmond's 800-acre Watershed Preserve shifts the setting. The preserve is a detached piece of Redmond surrounded by the northern part of this unincorporated area. Its trails permit hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding, and an accessible interpretive trail offers a shorter way into the forest. A grocery run, weekday bus, evening field reservation, and watershed trail each begin from a different point on the plateau.