Tulalip outlet center to open as state's biggest

Days before the opening of the Seattle Premium Outlets on the Tulalip Reservation, a bus arrived with a group of tour operators for what's known as a fam tour, or familiarization tour, sponsored by the Snohomish County Tourism Bureau.

Such a trip is intended to draw national — and international — attention to the outlet stores, along with such spots as the Boeing Tour Center at Paine Field and the tulip fields of the Skagit Valley.

"Asian people, they love to shop," said David Siu, the owner of Harvest Tours in Vancouver, B.C., who estimates he books about 5,000 visitors a year through his agency, many of them from Southeast Asia.

The outlet stores, he said, will be a key stop because "in Vancouver, we have no factory outlets."

Pat Breeding and Barbara Cenac of Cajun Tours and Cruises in Houma, La., said they mainly book senior-citizen tours, and going to stores is a big part of the trips.

"We always allow them an amount of time to shop," Breeding said.

After months of construction, most of the 100-plus stores that make up the outlet center will open for business at 10 a.m. tomorrow.

At 383,000 square feet, it will be the biggest outlet center in the state, about twice the size of Chelsea Property Group's other Washington outlet development, along Interstate 90 in North Bend. By comparison, the newly redone Alderwood shopping mall in Lynnwood has about 1.5 million square feet.

Seattle Premium Outlets, 10600 Quil Ceda Blvd., sits next to the Tulalip Casino, across Interstate 5 from Marysville. The stores include such familiar names as Banana Republic, Borders, Chico's, the Gap, Harry and David, Kitchen Collection, Liz Claiborne, Movado, Samsonite, Seiko and Tommy Hilfiger.

The center is open air, though the buildings have awnings to protect shoppers from rain. Along with the shops, it features a food court, performance space and rubber-floor play areas.

Preparations have been in full swing. At the Coach store, for example, Jennifer Valencia had come up from her job as a store manager in California to help with the opening, as workers moved in 17,000 Coach handbags and other items.

"It's going to be a big store," she said.

At the Nike Factory Store, manager Mikka Costa had arrived from the Fresno, Calif., area about three weeks earlier to oversee the opening.

The 17,000-square-foot store will be the biggest Nike factory outlet in the region, she said. About 55 employees have been hired, and they've been busy moving boxes of shoes into displays to get ready for tomorrow.

Though Costa declined to give sales figures, the store expects big business, and one reason was apparent on the ends of the boxes: Shoes that retail for $110 in the Nike store in downtown Seattle were marked at $69.99 at the outlet store.

"They're not seconds," Costa said. "They've just usually been out three to six months."

At the Sony store, the same types of discounts were being put on the shelves. A manager said the store will mainly sell refurbished computers and other equipment, all carrying factory warranties, for about 30 percent less than similar products in traditional retail stores.

The development is generating about 1,000 jobs, said Lisa Taylor, Seattle Premium Outlets' assistant general manager, although not all the stores will have as many employees as the Nike outlet.

All the jobs hadn't been filled, either, and help-wanted signs still hung in the windows of many stores a few days before the opening.

Chelsea, the center's owner, has more than 50 outlet centers across the United States. It opened its first outlet center in 1981 in New Jersey and bought the Factory Stores at North Bend in 2001. The company is a subsidiary of the nation's largest shopping-center developer, the Simon Property Group of Indianapolis.

The concept of manufacturers selling their own goods at discounted prices in outlets on the edges of major metropolitan areas began appearing in the 1980s. And by 1990, there were 183 outlet centers, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, an industry trade group. Now the figure is put at 312 nationally.

The new outlet center represents the continued retail growth along the Interstate 5 corridor. That's especially true north of Seattle, where Wal-Mart plans stores in Stanwood and Arlington, and Everett expects to develop city-owned property along the Snohomish River with a combination of shops, offices and residences.

Peyton Whitely: 206-464-2259 or pwhitely@seattletimes.com