Bellevue Comprehensive Plan / Rezone
Updated July 23, 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:
We know of no current formally submitted proposals to redevelop or rezone the shopping center property or any of the other commercial parcels on our hill.
The City of Bellevue is in the final stages of adopting an update to its Comprehensive Plan, as required by the Growth Management Act. On July 10, 2024, the Planning Commission adopted a version of the Comp Plan that it will recommend to the City Council. The City Council will consider, discuss and vote on the Comp Plan at an upcoming meeting (date isn’t yet set, but is likely to be the beginning of September). It will be important for Newport Hills residents to weigh in, by sending written comments in advance of the Council meeting or offering oral comments at the meeting, in support of the Comp Plan as recommended by the Planning Commission – especially the process for zoning changes described below.
In its final version of the Comp Plan, the Planning Commission included “broadened” zoning designations that group certain designations and provide a truncated process, with limited opportunity for public input, for moving specific parcels from one zoning designation to another within the same grouping. The Commission received extensive public comment, mostly from Newport Hills residents, asking that the truncated process NOT be applied in the case of certain rezones for the smaller “neighborhood centers” like the Newport Hills Shopping Center. The Commission listened carefully and decided as follows:
The Neighborhood Business (NB) and Community Business (CB) zoning designations remain grouped as Mixed Use-Lowrise. The Newport Hills Shopping Center is zoned NB. If an owner wants to change from NB to CB they can simply apply for a rezone (staff’s truncated process proposal).
Mixed Use-Low/Medium (MU-L/M) was made its own land use category, which is totally appropriate because it’s technically much larger than the other two and also presently undefined. If an NB or CB property owner wants to apply for an upzone to MU-L/M they will need to go through the rigorous annual Comp Plan Amendment + rezone process, which includes much more public input and requires that the applicant establish that “Significantly Changed Conditions”‘ exist for the subject property.
As soon as the Comp Plan update is finished, the city will move into its more detailed Neighborhood Area Plan process – the “Newport” area, which includes Newport Hills, is one of two areas the city plans to address this late summer and fall. There will be opportunities for residents to give input and help shape the plan for our neighborhood. Both of the Comp Plan and NAP processes have the potential to significantly affect Newport Hills and especially its commercial district. The shopping center owner and its consultant have already demonstrated that they are engaged and want to drive the process. Newport Hills residents need to get engaged and make sure that the eventual Neighborhood Area Plan serves the neighborhood. Resident engagement will be crucial to ensure that the eventual plan is appropriate and beneficial for the neighborhood. Watch this page to find out how to engage with the Neighborhood Area Plan Process as those details become available.
Background on the Newport Hills Shopping Center
The Newport Hills Shopping Center property 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.
The owner of the shopping center continues to seek an “upzone” of the property to allow a large amount of housing to be developed on the site. Currently this means that the owner and its consultant, Heartland LLC, are presenting comments to the Planning Commission and the City Council, and also meeting privately with Planning Commissioners, City Councilmembers, and members of the city’s planning and development staff, lobbying for a higher zoning classification on the site. Current zoning requires that the ground level be retail and allows another 1-2 stories of residential above the retail. The change the owner’s consultant is pushing for would allow up to 6 stories.
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