Bellevue is the 3rd largest city in the Seattle Metropolitan Area of Washington by population (144,000) and is located on the other side of Lake Washington from Seattle.
Downtown is located near the lakeshore's Eastern edge and is a relatively newly developed area with no historic architecture; new highrise and midrise development dominates the grid with both commercial and residential buildings while a large urban park adjoins it to the Southwest.
Nice photos. Though it’s hard to tell if it’s actually walkable or active at street level when the focus of photos is always from the second floor up.
Also seems to be afflicted with that schlocky Sunbelt-esque apartment ‘architecture’, where they insist on mashing several different facades together on the same building.
__________________ There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov
It's sorta walkable. The original grid had very large blocks with overly-wide streets. Since then they've broken many of the blocks up with smaller streets. But even then they generally have push-buttons, the classic f-u to pedestrians.
That said, it's reaching a critical mass and has enough mixture of uses to be pretty busy.
Next up: The old 450' height limits are gone (officially now?) and several towers at the new 600' height limit are planned in the core CBD. Around the periphery of the core, they've upzoned other areas to lower heights. Also light rail (100% grade separated from Downtown Seattle) will arrive in 2023, including a tunnel that exits at a station next to City Hall, plus two stations on the Downtown periphery.
Great pics! I live not too far from DT Bellevue and kept thinking of doing a thread but this is better than I would have done. I dig downtown Bellevue, it's growing quickly with several 600' tower proposals in the works and future direct connection via LINK to Seattle as Mhays stated.....It's pretty functional in my opinion. Lots of residential AND office space, easily walkable to multiple retailers, grocery, and parks. It's functional and clean. Def not for lovers of grit and alleyways populated by interesting characters, but we have that (to an extent) in Seattle just across the lake.
It's generally newish and expensive. But over time it'll be less so...buildings tend to move downmarket over the decades. DT Bellevue has had waves of construction for several decades, including sizable amounts of housing since the 90s. It's also starting to get a smattering of social housing. It'll feel a lot more mixed-income in 2038.
In fact it's already gone through a decent number of repurposings. The Bellevue City Building was originally built for Pacific Northwest Bell in about 1982, then converted in 2006. The kids museum was originally built as a doll museum. An office building I worked in briefly in 1994 was converted to a church.
nice. Looks so different than it did in the 90's. All those strip malls replaced by highrises and condos etc. Was last there in 2012 I think it was. Must get down there again soon.