Bellevue “Great Neighborhoods” Neighborhood Area Plan update: Your Neighborhood, Your Voice
Updated November 12, 2024
What’s Going on with the Newport Hills Shopping Center?
This is always an important question for Newport Hills residents. This page gives an overview of what’s going on now, and in the near future, and how you can be involved, then gives a brief history of previous proposals to rezone the shopping center property.
What’s going on now and in the near future:
Following the adoption of the 2024 Comprehensive Plan update, attention turns to updating the Newport and Crossroads Neighborhood Area Plans (NAP), formerly known as subarea plans. NAPs set the vision and policies governing growth and development in each of Bellevue’s 16 Neighborhood Areas. Newport’s subarea plan/NAP hasn’t been updated since we annexed into the City of Bellevue in 1993.
NAP will affect our neighborhood as a whole, but our central commercial district will certainly be a main focus. All neighbors and our small businesses are encouraged to be active participants in this year-long process. This is our neighborhood and we will be the ones to live with the outcome of decisions that are made.
There will be many opportunities to ask questions and provide input. The city’s Engaging Bellevue page is online (link below), so you can enter comments and suggestions at any time. The next in-person opportunity to provide input will be this month (November 2024):
Newport “Ideas Fair”
Wednesday, November 20, 5:30-8PM
Newport Hills Swim & Tennis Club banquet room
5464 119th Ave SE, Bellevue 98006
EventBrite registration for November 20 Ideas Fair is HERE.
This LINK takes you to the Newport NAP page on Engaging Bellevue. It contains links to the vision questionnaire/survey (multiple languages), Newport Places map, and Share Your Newport Story. The presentation slides for the city’s October 10 NAP kick-off meeting are housed there also.
The community club hosted speakers from the NAP Program at our Newport Hills Community Club General Membership Meeting on Wednesday, October 23 (Guest speakers: Brooke Brod, Community Engagement Lead, and Dr. Kate Nesse, Senior Planner).
Background on the Newport Hills Shopping Center
The Newport Hills Shopping Center property (where Stod’s, Resonate, the Mustard Seed, Grey Coast Crossfit and other businesses are located) is an approximately 6-acre parcel owned by Rainier Northwest LLC, a private entity owned by the Hsaio family. The property has been offered for sale for many years. It is currently zoned Neighborhood Business, which requires retail on the ground level and permits two additional stories of residential space. It comprises more than 50,000 square feet of retail space, plus a large parking lot. (The Chevron station is a separate parcel and is not owned by Rainier Northwest.) Since at least 2010 Rainier Northwest has been represented by Heartland LLC, a Seattle-based real estate advisory and investment firm. In 2010 Heartland issued a report concerning the possible redevelopment of the Newport Hills Shopping Center property. The report recognized the crucial function of the property as the public square/”third place” for our neighborhood.
Since then there have been two Comprehensive Plan Amendment applications to the City of Bellevue, by Rainier Northwest and proposed buyers of the property, to change the zoning of the shopping center parcel to permit greater housing density to be developed there. In 2016 the proposed buyer was Intracorp, a local housing developer, and in 2018 the proposed buyer was Toll Brothers, a publicly traded, national housing developer. In both cases the request was to change to dense residential zoning, so that roughly 100-150 townhouses (Intracorp) or “luxury townhouses and stacked flats” (Toll Brothers) could be built. The applicants stated that they would include a retail component in their projects, but this would be as little as 15,000 square feet depending on whether an anchor tenant (such as a major grocery store) could be secured.
Although some Lake Heights and Newport Hills residents supported these proposals, large numbers of residents opposed them, primarily because they would have taken the “public square” of our neighborhood and replaced it with private housing, because such a large number of new residences would exacerbate congestion on our already burdened through streets and crowding in our elementary school, and because of the destructive effect on beloved small businesses in the shopping center. Many neighbors offered public comments, written or in person, and many more signed petitions, in opposition.
Neither proposal was approved by the Planning Commission, which found that the applicants had not shown “Significantly Changed Conditions” with respect to the shopping center parcel. A finding of Significantly Changed Conditions is the threshold requirement that must be met before the Planning Commission may go on to consider the merits of any proposed Comp Plan Amendment for a specific parcel.
Rainier Northwest and Heartland were actively involved in Bellevue’s recently completed Comprehensive Plan update, commenting publicly and lobbying privately for an “upzone” of the property to allow a large amount of housing to be developed on the site. Now that the Comp Plan update is finished, they continue to push for the upzone, and it is clear that they intend to be major participants in the NAP process that will set the vision and policies for our neighborhood’s future (despite Rainier’s intention to sell the property).
- What’s going on with the Shopping Center? Update on Bellevue’s Planning Process:
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