New Housing Springs Up In Downtown Bellevue -- Residential Building Boom Could Dramatically Change Commercial Center Of Eastside City

Amid all the plans for reshaping downtown Bellevue with new office towers, shopping malls and night life, it's easy to overlook the dramatic change already taking place.

People are starting to call downtown Bellevue home.

During the past five years, the number of apartments and condominiums has grown from several hundred to nearly 1,900 built or under construction. And developers have plans to nearly double that in the next few years.

The pace is impressive, if not downright breathtaking.

In a suburban city that has all but exhausted land for single-family homes, downtown - with its zoning for high-density, high-rise homes - has become Bellevue's fastest-growing neighborhood.

More than anything else, the housing boom has the potential to dramatically change the feel of downtown Bellevue, which has suffered from a lack of the street-level bustle of Seattle.

"It builds on itself," said Bellevue Planner Dan Stroh. "You get this critical mass of housing, and you have more eyes and ears on the streets, more cultural activity, more services oriented to people who live downtown. The more units you get, the more successful it becomes."

There are more than a dozen apartment and condo projects on the drawing board. And every day seems to bring new speculation about land deals and announcements that could add even more.

"That's a lot of stuff," says John Su, a Taiwan native who built the Park Place Condominiums in the early 1990s. "I'm starting to worry about overbuilding."

It's a keen concern for Su, who is seeking permits to build 140 apartments or condos above retail and office space in an 11-story building and a six-story building on 106th Avenue Northeast a block west of the Bellevue Regional Library.

Property adjacent to Su's has been optioned by Burnaby, B.C., developer Nat Bosa, who wants to build 600 condominiums in three towers of 23 or 24 stories each. Bosa has built several projects on that scale and larger in the Vancouver area.

Vancouverites initially didn't want to live in high-rise buildings, but they came around, Bosa says.

"Ten years ago, if you asked people, `Would you live downtown?' they would think you were crazy," he said. "Now they want to live downtown. Bellevue, I think, is going to be a great center. I think it's really going to come of age."

Library area

The city figures more than 15,000 condominiums and apartments could eventually be built downtown. That would mean an estimated 22,500 people living downtown - more than the population of Mercer Island.

The new phase of residential development is taking place mostly in two neighborhoods: the northeast corner of downtown, near the library, and in the quaint Old Bellevue district.

One of the two urban-style apartment buildings under construction in Old Bellevue is a project of Denver-based Simpson Housing: 227 apartments in a five-story building and an attached nine-story tower.

Simpson Housing Vice President Phil Pittney, compares Old Bellevue to Seattle's Queen Anne - "a compromise between living in a suburb and living in a strictly downtown business district."

Tucked away a comfortable distance from the sterile glass-walled office towers of 108th Avenue Northeast, small shops along narrow Main Street give Old Bellevue a Norman Rockwell feel. And then there's the grassy Downtown Park just a block away.

Old Bellevue landowner Stu Vander Hoek remembers bitter political battles in the late 1980s and early 1990s over proposed high-rise development in neighborhoods like Old Bellevue. So far, the new round of development hasn't generated significant controversy.

Vander Hoek recently moved his office so he can look out the window and watch construction of his first major development, The Courtyard Off Main, which will have 110 apartments on four floors above a level of shops.

Old Bellevue area

In the other housing hot spot, the northeast corner of downtown, Seco Development owner Michael Christ has built 220 apartments and is building 379 more.

Christ has plans for two more developments that could help create a new neighborhood, centered around Main Street east of Old Bellevue.

"My dream has been to bring Main Street out of Old Bellevue" as far east as 110th Avenue Northeast, says Christ.

It's a vision that's supported by city officials and was endorsed last year by an Urban Land Institute panel that saw opportunities for a new urban neighborhood between Main Street and Second Street.

Bellevue hasn't been alone in seeing a boom in in-city housing.

Cities from San Diego to Vancouver have experienced a wave of new residents moving into downtowns, attracted by the convenience of being near work or near shops, restaurants and entertainment.

In Seattle, the downtown and Lake Union neighborhoods are the city's fastest growing. Developers are rushing to build thousands of new condominiums to meet what they see as a huge pent-up demand.

Both county and state policies have encouraged this kind of dense urban development as a way to slow suburban sprawl and ease traffic congestion as the Puget Sound region continues to grow at phenomenal rates.

A long dry spell

Bellevue has long considered housing as important to a successful downtown as shopping and offices. But during the 1980s, while high-rises began dotting the skyline, and Bellevue Square was remodeled into one of the nation's most successful malls, the demand for in-city condominiums and apartments lagged to the point of irrelevance.

Between 1979 and 1992, just one housing project was built, the 118-unit Pacific Regent retirement home on Northeast 10th Street.

By the early 1990s, the city began to fret that plans for downtown housing had gone wrong. During debates in 1992 over King County's plan to direct housing growth in urban centers, critics pointed at Bellevue to show why the idea wouldn't work.

"We didn't have a good answer," Stroh said.

The turning point came between 1993 and 1995, when the pioneering projects Bellevue had been counting on for over a decade finally arrived. Nearly 500 units were built, and while some filled up faster than others, it marked the start of the housing boom.

"This land is expensive, but where do you find the density for this kind of development?" Stroh said. "You find it in Vancouver, you find it in Seattle and a little in Portland, but nowhere else in the Northwest."

While developers grin at the potential to cash in on the housing boom, city officials and even some landowners are worried too many projects will cater only to high-income tenants, leaving Bellevue's downtown neighborhoods out of reach for many younger, lower-paid workers.

It's not a groundless fear. Land is expensive downtown - up to $4 million per acre - and the concrete and steel required for high-rise construction are expensive building materials.

Developers see two main groups of potential buyers and renters: young professionals with solid incomes and no children, and empty nesters.

"You're going to have a lot of people passing 50, 60, who don't want the house any more, who want to lock up their condo and go to Palm Springs for a few months in winter," says Bosa.

With the median price for a single family home in parts of Bellevue now topping $500,000, City Hall has eyed downtown development as one solution to the affordable housing problem.

So far, Bellevue has invested public money in two projects, senior-citizen housing at Ashwood Court under construction on Northeast 11th Street, and the Pacific Inn on 112th Avenue Northeast, which caters almost exclusively to single renters of limited means.

`We're comfortable here'

No one is keeping track of exactly who is moving into downtown Bellevue. But in some ways Robert and Judith MacMillan are typical of downtown's new residents. They are in their 50s, not quite retired, with grown children who live in the area.

A few years ago, the couple moved from Kirkland and began leasing a bright, fifth-floor downtown condominium with views of Mount Rainier, the Olympics, and Bellevue's own towering high-rises.

Although a new resident, Robert MacMillan was already familiar with Bellevue; he worked for a company that built commercial and light-industrial projects in the area and was a member of Bellevue's tight downtown business circle.

He and his wife liked the idea of living in a city, and they toyed with moving to Seattle, where the choices of cultural venues, restaurants and entertainment are more varied.

But Bellevue offered an alternative that was comfortable, had many of the amenities of urban life and was still just 10 minutes from Seattle.

"I guess that means we are pretty happy," MacMillan said. "Even if I hit a windfall and money were no object, it wouldn't matter, because we are comfortable here."

J. Martin McOmber's phone message number is 206-515-5628. His e-mail address is: mmcomber@seattletimes.com

Keith Ervin's phone message number is 206-515-5632. The e-mail address is: kervin@seattletimes.com