For the discerning future resident of Bellevue we present Vicino, a brand new 402-unit luxury apartment complex on historic Northup Way. Just two miles from the Microsoft Campus or downtown Bellevue, and a brisk 10-minute walk to the Bel-Red Link light rail station, rents start at $2,200 per month for a one-bedroom apartment.
And the neighborhood is packed with useful amenities. Ali’s Auto Repair, right next door, can reline your brakes, and Exotic Motors, across the street, can make that mysterious dent in your Porsche disappear. And just beyond Exotic Motors, Platt Electric, Star Equipment Rentals, and LL Flooring are among the businesses that can help you with weekend projects. Got the munchies after your visit to the Novel Tree Pot Shop next door? The AM-PM on the corner can help with that.
Ah, and the views! If you are not enjoying the views of SR-520 to the north, you can glance down on the south side of Vicino for a splendid view of the Heidelberg Materials concrete batch plant, a Republic Services garbage truck yard, and Metro’s Bellevue bus base.
Yuk!
It’s hard to know what planners were thinking when they began to encourage the mixing of luxury housing with light industrial and commercial uses in this neighborhood. The result seems pretty awful for both residents and businesses. The area will not morph into a decent residential neighborhood any time soon, and small businesses will feel squeezed by rising rents and the threat of displacement.
Thirty years ago, proponents of growth management found their silver bullet in urban villages that would take shape in underused commercial areas. Packing high-density housing into these areas would allow them to protect single family zones while holding the line on sprawl.
Trouble is, many of the low-density commercial areas slated for redevelopment are not underused at all and serve vital economic functions. They are not especially charming or pretty, and they offend all the cherished principles of good urban planning practice. But they are busy and essential.
In addition to the many auto-oriented businesses in the Bel-Red corridor, the area has a high concentration of small businesses serving interior construction, from flooring to tile to lighting. You will also find small engineering, equipment, and construction firms and a wide array of service businesses.
A few common needs hold all this together:
Auto and truck access and parking. These are auto-dependent uses. Trucks deliver products and trucks and vans service customers. You are not going to take your new bathroom tiles home on the bus.
Storage space. Many of the commercial buildings have a combination of office and
warehouse/storage space. Distributors need to store product, and service businesses need to store equipment and supplies.
Breathing room for environmental externalities. “Externalities” is a fancy term for the noise, smells, dust, bright lights, and other impacts of doing business.
Low cost. While a few national or regional chains might be found here, Bel-Red is full of small local, low-margin businesses that cannot afford high rents.
An area that meets those needs will attract other users, and Bel-Red has an eclectic mix of enterprises that thrive in the same space. The Bel-Red Arts District represents a collection of arts organizations and businesses, and the area has a number of small-scale sports programs from martial arts to table tennis. And scattered among the engineering firms are tutoring and childcare centers.
While not as unneighborly as wrecking yards or chemical plants, many light-industrial and commercial uses are really not compatible with high-rent residential life. Isn’t that why we introduced zoning in the first place? Mixed-use always seems to be the planning goal, but we do need to have areas for necessary services that can conduct their normal business without worrying about their impact on neighbors or being priced out by “higher and better” uses.
Unlike heavy-industrial or warehouse/distribution operations that serve regional, national, or global markets, light-industrial/commercial zones serve relatively small local trade areas. Bel-Red is about five miles from similar districts in Totem Lake and Southeast Redmond, and nine miles from north Renton. In Seattle, think of similar areas such as north Rainier Valley, Interbay, and almost anywhere along Aurora Avenue north of Green Lake.
These districts evolved organically, before anyone planned anything, and while heavy industry mostly has moved to outlying areas, light-industrial and commercial businesses have stayed close to their customers. Our excessively tight urban-growth boundaries have led to claims on nearly all vacant land in the urban area, so there are few places for light industry to move.
In spite of the grim surroundings and the low prospects of improvement in the residential amenity picture any time soon, it seems likely that the Bel-Red area will continue to see residential development. (All those new Amazonians on the Eastside gotta live somewhere.)
The strong will survive — such as all the high-end car dealers gushing sales tax revenue — but the weak will get squeezed out as low-density commercial strips are eliminated in favor of high-density housing.
This will not serve the community well, as people will have to travel farther to access the products and services now available in Bel-Red. Will the Kent Valley and South Everett stand as the last refuges of light-industrial real estate?
Too much planning is oriented around aesthetic concerns. Light-industrial/commercial districts like Bel-Red fail to meet those concerns and they seem ripe for “improvement.” But that misses the point. A transmission shop is never going to be pretty, but when you need one, it’s sure nice to have that shop just a few miles away.
