The “Density-Transit” Connection Fuels Bellevue Growth

Bellevue Skyline Grows with Infrastructure Transit improvements

Explosive growth in Bellevue’s core in the last 6 years reflects an “Eastside Optimism” that might seem immune to the downturns in tech firms and financial sector.

Dense urban development in Downtown Bellevue took off in 2003 after adoption of the Downtown Implementation Plan.  This plan included revising land use to include high density residential use. It also called for infrastructure improvements including extensive reconfiguration of access to I-405, which added exclusive HOV/Transit access and Transit Center enhancements using funding from Sound Transit/WSDOT and others.  The plan also assumes doubling of transit service and other I-405 access improvements, and creating a one-way couplet to support substantial increases in office, retail and residential use to meet concurrency as prescribed by the State Growth Management Act.

Sound Transit’s EastLink Light Rail project would link this urban center of Bellevue with both Seattle and Redmond’s Overlake neighborhood the corporate home of Microsoft – that is unless the tunnel is advanced and costs escalate, in which case funding principles between the City and Sound Transit would keep the line from extending to Redmond/Overlake.   A post by Seattle Transit Blog questions the logic of City of Bellevue recommendations for placing stations adjacent to I-405, when the density (as shown in these panoramic views) is clearly west of I-405.  Bellevue’s newest office dwellers, a migration of Microsoft employees, brings new spending to downtown but these employees may need a stronger search engine than Bing to find the light rail link to Microsoft’s Redmond mothership if we get the tunnel.