Face-Lift Set To Give Mall Higher Profile

BELLEVUE

HE OWNERS of Bellevue's Factoria Mall are planning renovations next year to attract new businesses and more shoppers.

Of all the shopping centers in Bellevue, none has a better location than Factoria Mall.

It's at the interchange of the Eastside's two interstate highways, I-90 and I-405, with affluent suburbs in every direction.

But the 22-year-old mall hasn't lived up to its potential, and its owners are getting ready to do something about it. Early next year construction crews will begin remodeling the mall to accommodate new restaurants and stores.

No tenants have been announced, but the mall's management says some leases have been signed, others are being negotiated, and new tenants will open in time for the 1999 holiday season.

Factoria also will receive a major face-lift, "turning the mall inside out," in the words of Maria Royer, Terranomics Real Estate Services broker. The design calls for more skylights, landscaping, windows and doors; a courtyard between Mervyn's and the former Ernst Home Center; and a westside entry with the look of a European streetscape.

A 36,000-square-foot section of the mall next to Mervyn's is being "de-malled" to make room for an as-yet-unidentified tenant. The Ernst building will be reduced from 36,000 square feet to 25,000 and leased to one tenant, leaving more space for the courtyard.

Royer said the improvements are the first phase of a "continuous metamorphosis" into a shopping center that will be more of a community gathering place.

Factoria Mall, which opened in 1976 as Factoria Square, suffered a significant setback when Ernst closed in January 1997. It was not until last December that the mall regained control of the space and was able to work on redevelopment.

S.K. Choi said business at his 7-year-old store, Country Western Wear, suffered when Ernst closed its doors. The shopping center loses business to nearby Bellevue Square, Choi said, but he added he is "very excited" about the coming changes.

Cheri Austin, manager of Petco, said the opening of Nordstrom Rack last year helped business, but "they have a long way to go before they make this a very busy mall. . . . I'm not sure just a new look is going to help cut it. You walk through the mall, there are a lot of empty places."

Factoria Mall has grown, with mixed success, from a small shopping center anchored by Safeway and Pay'n Save (now Rite Aid). The two biggest stores, 76,000-square-foot Mervyn's and 101,000-square-foot Target, opened in 1987.

Last year, when Nordstrom Rack opened and Ernst closed, mall sales were up 25 percent from 1996, said General Manager Craig Chang.

"That means that those who are still here are doing a bang-up job in covering for those who left," he said.

With its off-price anchor stores, Factoria Mall serves a segment of the market that the pricier Bellevue Square can't reach.

Aiming to tap more of the Eastside's higher-than-average household incomes, broker Royer said the new tenants will move the mall in a more upscale direction.

Restaurants will be a key to bringing more people to the mall, Royer said. Billy McHale's, Torero's, Grazie, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken are in stand-alone buildings on the edges of the property and thus aren't drawing shoppers into the mall. The largest restaurant in the mall is the 10,000-square-foot Old Country Buffet.

Some of Factoria's new tenants will be businesses that are now in Redmond Town Center and are looking for another Eastside location but don't want to pay the high rents of downtown Bellevue, Royer said.

About 80,000 of the mall's 480,000 square feet of retail space are vacant - a high vacancy rate that the owner, San Francisco-based Factoria Square Limited Partnership, is eager to improve.

The mall won a modest marketing coup when the Bellevue City Council recently voted to give 128th Avenue Southeast a new name: Factoria Boulevard.

The shopping center's owners have no illusions of becoming another Bellevue Square, which is more than twice the size and vies with downtown Seattle for the nation's toniest retailers. Their idea is to do what the Crossroads Shopping Center did a decade ago: turn a struggling community-level mall into a popular, money-making destination.

Retail Extra

Bill Nye the Science Guy will be on hand Saturday for the grand opening of Zany Brainy at Redmond Town Center. On Friday night and Saturday such children's-book characters as Curious George, the Cat in the Hat and Winnie the Pooh will make appearances.

Main Street Linens, opening Thursday at Issaquah's Gilman Village, will hold its grand opening Saturday.

Shop Talk appears on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month.