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Home / Washington Business - January/February 2005 / Community Profile: Betting on Bellevue |
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Community Profile: Betting on Bellevue |
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Written On: January/February 2005 |
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Written By: by Ron Dalby |
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BELLEVUE — This booming urban center east of Lake Washington now competes head to head with Seattle and other major cities nationwide to lure business and industry to its streets. Yet just east of the downtown business district where five active construction cranes currently dominate the skyline, the city owns and operates a 1940s-era dairy farm.
“Where else can a city kid learn to milk a cow?”, City Manager Steve Sarkozy asks rhetorically. “Or maybe shear a sheep?”
Kelsey Creek Farm is the centerpiece of a park with the same name. Bellevue purchased the facility years ago, and now operates the farm as a means of demonstrating the region’s history. It is part of an extensive city park system that contributes much to the quality of life in Bellevue.
There are more than 60 parks of varying sizes scattered throughout the city. If you work in a high-rise building in the city’s core, you can probably see one or more of these from your office window. Regardless of where you work or live, there is almost certainly a park within walking distance for
unwinding during a break, over your lunch hour or after work.
Bellevue, however, is more than just parks. According to Sarkozy, the city, “has emerged as a corporate regional center and cultural hub on the Eastside.” He also believes Bellevue works so well because its city government is modeled on a successful corporate structure.
He points with justifiable pride to a small step toward solving what he considers the region’s biggest problem, the transportation system. Access routes allowing commuters to efficiently get into and out of the city from I-405 are nearing completion — early and under budget.
According to Sarkozy, projects like this have historically run late and way over budget. This time the project was laced with incentives for the contractor to perform on time and under budget. In this case the contractor will get paid the bonuses, a win-win situation. The contractor puts extra money in his pocket, and the city gets a project completed ahead of time and for less than the projected cost.
Sarkozy hopes that other communities and state government can learn from this experience and prepare bid documents for future projects in line with this model. It’s pretty hard to argue with faster and cheaper, particularly when you’re talking about government services.
Government projects, however, are not all that’s going on in Bellevue. Kemper Development Co. has two of the five downtown construction cranes in constant motion as Lincoln Square goes up in the business center of town, a few blocks west of exit 13 on I-405. Lincoln Square will offer a hotel, 148 condos, a 500,000 square feet of office space, and a number of retail shops when completed.
Freeman is not building on spec, either. As of this writing, more than 130 of the condos — or “luxury residences,” according to Jennifer Leavitt, spokesperson for Kemper Development — none of which have yet been completed, have already been purchased with the lowest-priced units starting at around $3 million. “And that’s just for the shell,” Sarkozy said. Buyers will still have to finish off the inside.
The condos will occupy the top 19 floors of the Westin Hotel, which is a key part of the Lincoln Square facility. An upscale 16-screen Signature Theatre, various restaurants and retail shops will fill other parts of the complex. A skyway will connect the new development with nearby Bellevue Square, another Kemper Development Co. enterprise.
The views from the condos, the hotel and the offices will be magnificent. To the east “is Mount Rainier, and the other way is Seattle and Puget Sound,” said Betty Nokes, president and CEO of the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce. She can watch the progress of Lincoln Square from the windows in her building just across the street.
Spend a few minutes with Nokes and you’ll quickly realize why she’s head of the chamber — she’s got to be Bellevue’s biggest booster. Facts, figures and ideas come out of her almost non-stop and with very little prompting.
One of the things she feels most strongly about is the strength of the local civic organizations. Nokes believes that because so many CEOs live in Bellevue that a number of very talented people are available to go the extra mile toward making their community a special place to live. And, as she says, “A lot of people who grow up here, stay here,” which means residents have a lot invested in their community.
Nokes also notes that, “We’re very lucky that the city manager and our elected officials recognize the value of business.”
To all appearances these days, business is booming. Nokes smiles broadly when she points out that a couple of years ago the office vacancy rate was more than 30 percent. Today she says it’s in the single digits. City Manager Sarkozy claims 5 percent, but Nokes prefers to be a little more cautious.
Who is gobbling up all that space? Symetra Financial, formerly a Safeco company, for one. Symetra is relocating its corporate headquarters from Redmond and recently signed 10-year lease agreements for some 260,000 square feet of office space in Bellevue.
Jim Pirak, Symetra’s vice president of marketing, claims the decision to relocate from Redmond to Bellevue this coming summer was an easy one. “We looked at a variety of different cities,” he said, “but because of where our employees were located, it was important to us to stay on the east side. Bellevue offers an abundance of amenities.”
Much of the space leased in Bellevue is in the Rainier Plaza, which will be renamed the Symetra Financial Center when the company takes possession of it in July. The balance of the space leased was in Key Center, adjacent to Rainier Plaza.
Like Pirak, many business people are impressed with downtown Bellevue. Unlike other cities, there are no homeless people or vagrants hanging around.
“You really feel safe here,” Nichole Shell said. Shell is a young, single woman who works in communications for the Chamber of Commerce. She moved to Bellevue from a small town in Idaho little more than a year ago. “My mom feels so much safer here than in downtown Seattle.”
Statistics on the crime rates tend to reinforce that feeling of safety.
Bellevue has virtually no murders and rates for other crimes against persons are very low. Some property crimes, like theft, are higher than other nearby communities, but according to Sarkozy that’s because of the abundance of retail businesses in the area.
Walking around town, you get a sense of why people feel safe. Police presence is highly visible, but not obnoxiously so. Most people you meet on the street make eye contact and actually nod or smile as you pass them — and so do the cops. This is definitely not aloof, big-city behavior.
And yet with all the city services so obvious and abundant, Bellevue has not had to raise taxes in 10 years and doesn’t plan to in the foreseeable future. Sarkozy said that the constant growth of business in the town keeps city coffers in good shape, and there is no need to increase taxes.
Living and working in Bellevue, though, does come with a price tag attached — the cost of housing. You’re probably going to need a half million dollars or more in your pocket to buy a 2,000-square-foot house in a decent neighborhood. In the pricier neighborhoods near Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish, triple that amount may not be enough. Some call these homes “starter mansions.”
Even renting a modest apartment can be expensive. With luck you might find a two-bedroom unit in an older building for $800-$850 a month plus utilities. More realistically, the price will probably exceed $1,000 a month plus utilities.
However, if you raise a family in Bellevue, there’s a real plus in terms of the school district. Not long ago Newsweek magazine rated two of Bellevue’s high schools among the top 10 secondary schools in the nation. A third high school was included if you counted the top 20. Residents are justifiably proud of a school system that works, and demonstrated that pride by voting overwhelmingly for a school bond issue that essentially rebuilds almost all of the school buildings in the district.
Good schools, a thriving business climate and friendly people all contribute to the palpable excitement you can feel on the ground in Bellevue these days. Only a few short decades ago, Bellevue was known mostly as an upscale bedroom community for Seattle. Now, however, more people come into Bellevue each day to work than leave for jobs in Seattle or other communities. Anyone daring to suggest the bedroom-community status of old is quickly corrected by anyone he or she is likely to meet.
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