Lots To Worry About In Bellevue -- Store Parking Space Is At A Premium

BELLEVUE

Say you want to buy the latest best seller at the downtown Bellevue Barnes and Noble. You drive, park and shop. If you want to buy a compact disc at Tower Records on the same block, you must drive 25 yards and park in a separate lot. Same with the sports store across the street.

Try parking in one lot and walking from store to store, and you'll likely receive a warning ticket under your wiper. Or worse.

Parking is at such a premium downtown that merchants closely monitor people who leave their cars and shop - or work - elsewhere. Impound notices are posted in front of almost every stall in the three blocks surrounding Bellevue Square.

This week the warnings become real. Forget Santa's sleigh. The vehicles getting the most attention in downtown Bellevue will be the tow trucks that are expected to pull a half-dozen cars out of lots that advertise free parking.

The holiday parking crunch is part of Bellevue's transformation from a retail to an urban center; observers say it's not just shoppers fighting for spots but also high-rise-office workers who want to avoid triple-digit monthly parking fees by stealing a free space.

During the Christmas season, the clash between shoppers and office workers brings out ticket-toting lot attendants, tow trucks and plenty of bad feelings. But unlike the candy canes, colored tinsel and fake snow, this Bellevue tradition isn't likely to disappear after Dec. 25.

"Right now it's a seasonal problem, but I see this as a year-round problem," said Matthew Terry, director of the city Department of Planning and Community Development. "It's part of Bellevue's adolescence."

Parking is one of Bellevue's biggest public-policy issues. The city is poised to invest millions of dollars to create a pedestrian-friendly downtown, a goal that collides head-on with the merchants' interest to protect their lots.

"We want to see people park at a single destination and walk," Terry said. "We'd like to see parking considered a shared resource, but that's a foreign concept in Bellevue."

Christopher Tull is employed by the Bellevue Downtown Association (BDA) to patrol several lots along Bellevue Way Northeast and Northeast Eighth Street. He chalks tires, calls in tows and watches whether people head into the stores that provide the parking or walk across the street to Bellevue Square.

Although the mall offers free parking, the garage is often clogged and hard to get into. The open lots of Baskin-Robbins and Cost Plus are too tempting for some drivers to resist, says Tull, adding that violators often try to sneak away unseen.

"Reminds me of high school when you avoid the hall monitor when you're trying to cut class," he said. "They know I'm here, they know they're going to get busted, but they do it anyway."

To provide some relief to the parking squeeze, downtown merchants have organized a Saturday shuttle service from two park-and-ride lots. The BDA also provides a free round-trip limousine service that runs among several downtown locations through Christmas Eve.

For Bellevue Square - which attracts 16 million visitors annually - free parking is paramount to continued vitality, said Clark Rice, security director for Kemper Development, which owns the mall.

"We see parking as our edge over downtown (Seattle). It's a matter of survival," he said.

During the holiday season, Kemper Development hires 60 people to patrol the mall's 6,200 parking stalls. One of the biggest challenges is keeping mall employees out of the garage, said Rice.

In the off-season, roughly 1,200 spaces in the Bellevue Square garage are occupied by mall employees. During the Christmas rush, employees must find off-site parking, exacerbating the holiday strain.

At nearby Grace Lutheran Church, Pastor Wesley Howell says that at times every one of the church's 120 spaces is taken by shoppers and mall employees.

"We're putting fliers on people's cars. We hate to tow - hey, merry Christmas - but we're getting to that point," he said.

"We're not talking about an irritation. It's completely locked up."

The city opposes adding to the 33,000 existing downtown parking spaces. The shortage in supply is caused by merchants who aggressively patrol their lots - a losing battle, considering the lengths some people will go to find easy, accessible parking, Terry says.

Instead, he says, the city will launch an effort next year aimed at getting merchants to share parking and validate each others' customers.

"The environment will force people to work together," he said.

Master Sheng-Yen Lu of the Ling Shen Ching Tze Temple in Redmond has a more ethereal remedy.

In his book, "The Mystical Experiences of True Buddha Disciples," Lu describes how he once spent considerable time looking for a parking space in downtown Bellevue.

He chanted and suddenly found himself in front of an empty stall on a different level of the garage.

"At last we had found a parking spot, and my wife and children applauded as we pulled into the space," he wrote. "It was a joke created by the Buddhas and bodhisattvas."

Alex Fryer's phone message number is 206-464-8124. His e-mail address is: afryer@seattletimes.com