Buried behind a storm of mammoth projects are yet more potential development proposals in Downtown Bellevue. While these projects don’t possess the scale of the mega-projects addressed in the previous article, they do jockey for their potential place in the city’s skyline and will impact the look and feel of the neighborhood for years to come. When you combine these budding projects with everything that has been completed since 2018 and under construction, Downtown Bellevue emerges as a pincushion that developers are jabbing their high-rises into. The result will be a very different skyline in the not-so-distant future.
If the 24 projects in permitting counted for this article are constructed, 25 new midrises and towers could be added to Downtown Bellevue. In total this could result in the construction of 2439 residential units, 1.1 million square feet of commercial space, and over 5301 parking stalls. This doesn’t even include figures for three high-rise developments whose details are less accessible at the moment.
Aggregating these figures with projects constructed since 2018, under construction, and the mega-projects, Downtown Bellevue has seen the construction and is expecting the construction of 118 new midrises, high-rises, and skyscrapers. All together downtown is counting over 13,100 new residential units, over 16 million square feet of commercial space, likely over 2,000 hotel rooms, and over 43,300 parking spaces constructed since 2018, under construction, and in permitting.
In the interactive map below you’ll find details on the projects in different stages of development that pepper Downtown Bellevue, including completed, under construction, construction-ready, and also inactive projects. While the projects that have fallen through are unlikely to materialize, they represent the increasingly limited development capacity left in Downtown Bellevue.
Blue pins indicate completed projects. Dark green pins indicate projects under construction. Light green pins indicate construction-ready projects. The pins with special icons represent “mega projects.” Purple indicates a “mega project” under review. Yellow pins indicate projects in permitting. Red pins indicate inactive and dead projects.
As with the past Bellevue developments articles, I will be highlighting projects from north to south and west to east. Downtown Bellevue can roughly be broken into nine two block by two block sections. I’ll be using that compartmentalization to navigate the many projects under review and stalled.
In permitting
When you separate out the “mega-projects” out from everything that is under review by the City, you lose all of the super tall buildings. Many mid-rises and 10-15 story towers remain for this batch of projects and some taller ones do standalone here. Height isn’t everything of course, and both positive and negative standouts remain in this faction.
- 1036 100th Avenue NE – Pinnacle Apartments
- A six story, 102-unit apartment building with 110 parking spaces*
- 1125 102nd Avenue NE – SRM Polynesia Bellevue
- A seven story, 166-unit apartment building with 128 parking spaces
- The project’s preapplication conference was finalized on 6/9/2022
- 10232 NE 10th Street – Mirador Two Condominium/Mira II
- A 17-story, 138-unit condominium with 5,739 square feet of active space — retail and other non-office commercial — and 202 parking spaces
- 10350 NE 10th Street – Bell10
- An eight story, 102-unit residential mid-rise with 84 parking spaces
- 10621 NE 12th Street – Silver Cloud
- A nine story, 239-unit residential mid-rise with 219 parking spaces
- This project applied for design review on 2/18/2022.
- 1051 108th Avenue NE – Brizo
- A five story, 239-unit residential mid-rise with 201 parking spaces
- This project is in Design Review
- 10850 NE 8th Street – Bellevue 108th Street Mixed Use
- Two five story residential mid-rises over a shared parking garage. Together they are proposed to have 312 units, 3,900 square feet of active uses, and 900 parking spaces
- 550 106th Avenue NE – Bellevue Connection/Bungie HQ expansion
- Ground floor retail addition of 200 square feet, a third floor office addition of 900 square feet, and a fourth floor office addition of 24,000 square feet
- Expansion into adjacent tenant suites to create 208,000 square feet of new office space
- 400 108th Avenue NE
- An 18-story office tower with 308,950 square feet of office space, 7,420 square feet of active space, and an 8-level below-grade garage for 638 parking spaces
- 700 112th Avenue NE
- A 24-story office tower with retail and parking
- The preapplication conference was finalized on 6/24/2022
(Photo by Author)
- 10011 Main Street – Main Street Apartments
- A six story, 68-unit apartment building with retail, and two levels of below-grade parking
- The project applied for predevelopment services on 3/10/2022
- 15 103rd Avenue NE – NOMA
- An eight story, roughly 140-unit residential mid-rise with around 11,000 square feet of retail/restaurant space, and a 2.5-level below-grade garage with around 160 parking spaces
- 201 Bellevue Way NE – Park Row
- A 21-story, 142-unit residential tower with 10,100 square feet of retail space and 277 parking spaces
- 12 Bellevue Way SE
- A six story, roughly 299-unit mid-rise with ground floor commercial and fitness and roughly 265 parking spaces
- This project applied for design review on 6/14/2022
- 302 Bellevue Way SE
- A small mixed-use 2,811 square foot apartment with 11 parking spaces
- 141 108th Avenue NE
- A seven story, roughly 93-unit residential mid-rise with 4,000 square feet of commercial space and a three level below-grade parking garage with around 100 parking spaces
- 120 106th Avenue NE – Arcadian
- An 18-story office tower with ground floor retail and a four level below-grade garage for 805 parking spaces
- 228 106th Place NE
- An eight story, roughly 171-unit apartment building with 93 parking spaces
- 305 108th Avenue NE – 305 Office building
- A 12-story office tower with 194,700 square feet of office space and a four level below-grade garage with 354 parking spaces
- 123 108th Avenue NE – 123 Bellevue Apartments
- An eight story, 88-unit apartment building with ground floor commercial and office and a four level below-grade garage with around 89 parking spaces
- 200 108th Avenue NE – Silver Cloud Hotel – Bellevue
- A 15-story hotel.
- The project applied for predevelopment services on 2/14/2022
- 11027 NE 4th St – 111th Avenue NE Apartments
- An eight story, 140-unit apartment building with 112 parking spaces
- 200 112th Avenue NE
- A 16-story office tower with 315,000 square feet of office space, 2,900 square feet of active space, and 550 parking spaces
Seemingly dead projects and future potential
What has been left to develop appears to be old strip malls, commercial low-rises, and parking lots. All the projects that have been dropped or shelved fit these categories. A fair amount of these sites look to be left in Downtown Bellevue, but they appear to be rapidly being snapped up for redevelopment.
- 10210 NE 8th Street – McAusland Mixed-Use Building
- 10223 NE 10th Street – Moltissimo site project
- A proposed senior assisted living center
- 855 106th Avenue NE – Tateuchi Performing Arts Center/PACE
- 919 109th Avenue NE – Pacific Regent Phase II
- A high-rise senior living center
- 261 100th Avenue NE – DeGraff Apartments
- A low-rise apartment building
- 30 Bellevue Way NE
- Zoned for high-rises, a preapplication conference was had for this address in 2018
- 44 Bellevue Way NE
- Two towers were proposed in 2019
- 10713 Main Street
- A residential mid-rise, inactive since 2020
Bringing it all together
At this rate, Downtown Bellevue does actually appear to be running out of development capacity. This depleting capacity is clearly the result of unambitious planning and a highly constrained zoning policy. The demand for new housing, office, and retail space in Bellevue is evident. As it begins planning for its new comprehensive plan update, Bellevue should keep in mind the capacity bottleneck that it may further constrict. Just look at all the single-family zoning immediately surrounding Downtown Bellevue, high-rises and middle housing would fit in great there. Maybe upzone Bellevue Square even more, which will offer a prize when it’s ready for redevelopment.
*Many of these figures are taken from permit descriptions, actual figures will warp throughout the permitting and design process but generally stay close to those original figures.
Shaun Kuo is a junior editor at The Urbanist and a recent graduate from the UW Tacoma Master of Arts in Community Planning. He is a urban planner at the Puget Sound Regional Council and a Seattle native that has lived in Wallingford, Northgate, and Lake Forest Park. He enjoys exploring the city by bus and foot.
