December 18, 2023

City of Bellevue has TOD dreams for sites linked by Grand Connection

Rendering by VIA/Perkins Eastman [enlarge]

Looking west along the crossing, in a purely conceptual rendering, the light rail tracks are at right.

During the long planning of the coming 2 Line for light rail to the Eastside, possibly to open in 2025, there were various land deals involving government agencies that drew little public notice. In a pair of deals, years apart, the city of Bellevue paid about $35.4 million for two sites, west and east of Interstate 405, both near future light rail stations.

The vacant west site is tucked between City Hall and Bellevue Downtown Station, facing 112th Avenue Northeast. That offers about 35,150 square feet.

The roughly L-shaped east site, in Wilburton, is at 515–555 116th Ave. N.E., also bounded by the tracks to the north and the freeway to the west. It's a few steps south of Wilburton Station, and offers about 4.2 acres.

The city intends to link the two sites, east and west, with its freeway crossing bridge.

Last week the city put out a request for proposals, published in the DJC, for a consultant to formulate a plan for the pair. Services are to include “architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, engineering, community engagement, market/economic analysis and partnership structuring.”

Responses are due Jan. 24. The RFP is basically the first step toward eventually hiring a developer, or separate developers, for the two transit-oriented properties.

Is housing the goal? Yes, but not only housing. The RFP envisions uses “potentially including municipal office or operations space, affordable and/or market-rate housing, arts and culture space, and outdoor plaza or gathering space.”

The sloping and smaller west site has high-rise zoning, is separated from City Hall by a lower alley, and is somewhat constrained by the station on its north side.

The larger east Wilburton site is more carte blanche. Some tired old office buildings — Lincoln Center — await eventual demolition. Current zoning is less favorable, but the city does have upzone plans for Wilburton. Those might come to a City Council vote next year.

Both sites lie along the path of the city's long-planned Grand Connection — a kind of half existing/half dreamt pedestrian and bike corridor that would run from Meydenbauer Bay Park to Eastrail in Wilburton. The existing portion is Northeast Sixth Street, from Bellevue Square to City Hall and the light rail station. Then the city plans to extend that corridor farther east via a bike/ped crossing above the freeway, just south of the tracks. It would be over 2,000 feet long.

The city wants the east and west TOD sites to be fully integrated with the Grand Connection freeway crossing — to serve as landings, or bookends, to that span. It has some prior conceptual schemes, but no set budget or funding. (Amazon recently contributed $2.5 million to help launch the new design effort.) And a project manager, WSP USA, was selected this year to lead the effort, working in concert with the city.

The city's timeline for that crossing is to reach 30% design by the end of next year, following public outreach and presentations. The team there now also includes LMN Architects; Concord Engineering Group, traffic engineering and design; Fehr & Peers, multimodal planning; Furtado & Associates, surveyor; OJB Landscape Architecture; Ott-Sakai & Associates, construction consultant; and Toole Design Group, trail integration.

The most ambitious and expensive freeway crossing scheme would be a lid park extending south to Northeast Fourth Street. That notion has been tabled for now, but could reemerge later as a separate future project, per the city.

Past design studies by Balmori Associates — and, separately VIA/Perkins Eastman and KPFF — also envisioned a much skinnier crossing, but with landscaping, benches and overlooks not unlike the High Line in New York. That seems to be informing the latest concept design, which the city calls an “initial bridge that is forward-compatible with the full lid.”

You can't always trust the early renderings versus the final engineering product. But city handouts show the elevated crossing also extending east over 116th, a heavily trafficked street, and then above an automotive property owned by KG Investment Properties — then returning to grade at Eastrail. (KGIP is working with Solomon Cordwell Buenz on a master plan for the former home of Bellevue Cadillac.)

The city says that federal funding will eventually be sought to help underwrite the possible lid, now labeled Phase III of the Grand Connection. Phase I is the work at grade to the west, better linking Downtown Park and Sixth to the station.

For the bike/ped crossing, aka Phase II, the city's optimistic timeline is to complete the design, engineering and permit process by mid-2026. Depending on the budget and funding, construction might begin that year, with completion by the end of 2028.

So the city's future consultant on the east and west TOD sites will have to work closely with the Grand Connection crossing team — as will any future developer for those two properties. And actual construction would probably have to wait until after the crossing is done.

And still later … a lid?