Say Goodbye To The Queen Of Downtown Bellevue

Standing in line at the Bellevue Dairy Queen, shuffling past that chest-high waste bin and the odd, Early American hint in the decor, you wonder when it's all going to end.

The Dairy Queen got its death notice this week, although reports of its demise have been widely circulated in Bellevue for months. The Dairy Queen sits strategically on the corner of Northeast Eighth and 112th Avenue Northeast, an easy glide off I-405 and just down the street from Meydenbauer Center. It's the Center, and the reach of Bellevue's vision, that is shutting the doors on the Dairy Queen.

In a long-awaited announcement, the Tochterman Group, which owns the property, revealed plans to build a luxury hotel on the corner occupied by the Dairy Queen. For Connie Grant, director of Tochterman properties, it's another step toward a dream. That dream coincides nicely with downtown Bellevue's idea of itself, as a smaller, cleaner, up-scale version of downtown Seattle, full of glitz and ambience.

Meydenbauer Center is part of that plan, but only if it attracts more business and if the people who go there to meet and do business also have a nice place to hang out after hours. Unless those corporate decision-makers have a hunger for a dipped cone with nuts, something would have to change.

Grant's answer, one she and her associates have been working on for more than a year, is to lure a marble-and-chrome four-star hotel to the corner location. The thinking is without fault. For downtown Bellevue to achieve the critical mass needed to keep a downtown hopping, good shops along with more hotel rooms are needed.

The Tochterman Management Group and its developer are dealing with the primo names of the American host business to match the Hyatt a few blocks away - Westin, Marriott, Sheraton are mentioned to take the place of the irreplaceable Dairy Queen.

"A guy came in here four times and each time, he said he's had Blizzards all over the country and ours are the best."

So reports Kathleen Nixon, who has been behind the counter of the Dairy Queen for umpteen years. She said not to put in the exact number and I'm going along with her. "This place was here before 405," Nixon went on. "We have a doctor who comes by and he remembers when we were down the street and the Dairy Queen was a walk-up place. When I came we had the old cement floors. Maybe it's the way we maintain the machines, or maybe it's just the way the staff is trained, but people say we've got the best Blizzards anywhere."

The Dairy Queen is run by Gene Morley. He's had it for 14 years. In the way things sometimes work, the Tochtermans and the Morleys have something that bridges the gap between high-rise dreams and chocolate shakes. Connie Grant belongs to the Tochterman family whose original farmland conveniently spread over what is now six lanes of 405 and under the convention center. When she talks about her hopes for the land her family inherited, she talks about stewardship and the responsibility her family shares.

Morley's four daughters worked behind the Dairy Queen counter with him at various times. It's a family enterprise. Kathleen Nixon remembers all the daughters, even the youngest, now 13, helping out. Everyone would pitch in to wash the picnic tables under the shade trees or rush around when business picked up.

"You know," Nixon said, "they get those Dream Builder conventions down the street, the Amway folks? In the afternoon, they hit us hard for about three hours."

For now, the Dairy Queen is bumping along on a month-to-month lease. There's no point in putting money into the place, but customers sometimes ask about fixing the washrooms or the linoleum floor. In 1985, its food license was suspended briefly because an inspector found an employee smoking over the grill. Aside from that, for an old place so identified with the main route into downtown Bellevue, the Queen is remarkably free of history. As Morley said, "one day, this old building will just be gone."

Don't look here for a tear of farewell. Nostalgia works best when the history of a place is entwined with the years of discovery rather than the age of weight control. I like the Queen because it's handy and you meet a better class of people, but nobody will step in to try to save it.

The Dairy Queen corner was a gasoline station decades ago. In the next decade, a cornerstone will support the pillars of modern hostelry. If you're Connie Grant or in any way interested in the vitality of Bellevue, this is a no-brainer. A luxury, high-rise hotel at the gateway corner to Bellevue will help the whole Eastside.

Not even Kathleen Nixon is too upset. "I'm going back to school," she said. "And I'm not ever coming back. Should I just stay here forever and be Miss Dairy Queen?"

James Vesely's column focusing on Eastside issues appears Mondays on editorial pages of The Times.