The content for this article was originally featured in the Daily Journal of Commerce A&E Perspectives Special Section on March 27, 2025.
What’s going on in Bellevue?
Just in case you’ve scrolled past all the articles in your news feeds lately, 2025 will be a big year for the Eastside. The long overdue East Link Light Rail Extension will finally open, creating the first new mass transit connection between Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond since the opening of the original Evergreen Point floating bridge in the 1960s.
To respond to such a major infrastructure overhaul, the city has been busy reconsidering land uses and rewriting code to upzone land around those stations. The largest upzone will occur in the Wilburton neighborhood just across I-405 from Downtown Bellevue, transforming nearly 300 acres of warehouses, parking lots and car dealerships into high density Transit Oriented Developments (TOD), with big incentives for all housing types.
Paired with the explosive job growth on the east side in the last decade, these changes are laying the groundwork for a new type of urban center; one built around light-rail, bike, pedestrian and automobile corridors, all coalescing in relatively low-density zones that have huge potential for growth.
What can we look at for inspiration?
Imagine South Lake Union and Denny Triangle with a new light rail system running through its heart. Or consider B.C. to the north, where Vancouver’s former suburbs of Burnaby, Surrey and Brentwood, all exploded with shopping, entertainment and high-density residential centers when the new light rail and upzoning occurred.
It’s a concept known as polycentric cities, where the urban center becomes decentralized, giving people opportunities to live outside the single downtown core but still near amenities, housing and transit. This model blends the benefits of suburban and urban planning, distributing population and jobs across a larger urban area to reduce congestion, travel time and carbon emissions and increase accessibility, diversity and resilience.
Artist rendering of a well-connected, pedestrian focused ground plane for a large-scale development.
Where are the opportunities?
How can we design and plan buildings that meet the challenging market conditions facing development, while also creating a new type of urban center that is not car dependent and is more engaging at grade? Cars are not the enemy here, but it is short-sighted to assume all future development should treat cars and parking as the priority simply because that’s how we do it today.
The Eastside developed around a car-centric culture. As a result, the buildings and neighborhood amenities are spread out, a problem that the light rail network and new pedestrian amenities improves upon but does not completely solve.
People in the Northwest love the ability to drive for weekend fun: skiing, hiking, or a weekend road trip, but the daily commute, a dinner downtown, or running errands is where we can reduce vehicle dependency with strategic planning and excellent design. An at-grade network that encourages walking, biking, and easy access to light rail and other public transit stations makes those quick trips possible without flooding the streets with more traffic. Design can support this by creating more engagement at the ground plane, with a mix of uses and more residential amenities, an opportunity that the new Wilburton zoning will provide.
Addressing housing and the ground plane
The two largest challenges we face today are tackling the housing crisis and finding new ways to activate the ground plane to encourage interconnectivity without zoning-required retail. Bellevue’s 2044 Comprehensive Plan and upzoning of targeted neighborhoods is a step toward increasing density and the housing supply, but the design community needs to remain diligent in communication with these jurisdictions and stakeholders, to ensure momentum is maintained and that zoning aligns.
At the ground plane, the traditional method of screening the ground level in retail and assuming it will provide vibrancy on the street can no longer be the only solution in the post-Covid and online shopping era.
Developers and cities should consider how lobbies, amenities and hybrid environments can connect to the pedestrian realm instead of just relying on a specific use. Transparency is important, but so is character and activity, both of which are missing from an empty retail storefront.
Housing can help remedy the issue by placing residential balconies, windows and units closer to grade, with updated zoning that removes arbitrary step backs and allows flexibility at the property line facades. We should move beyond requirements that are vestiges of early century planning allowing housing to be closer to grade, both increasing density and providing activity and more eyes on the street.
Towers can exist above and connect with public space below instead of always being required to step back, where those step backs result in forced massing that is disconnected from active uses. Current zoning is working against new design solutions to preserve century-old practices and ideologies, and so perhaps the traditional wedding cake zoning needs a quiet death.
The big picture
New larger residential floorplates that increase efficiency, much taller zoning heights that align with construction types and methodologies, and unlimited or bonus FAR for housing are just a few of the changes in the pipeline for these upzones. Paired with the effects of House Bill 1293 that is targeted towards streamlining and shortening the entitlement and permit processes; by clarifying design guidelines and the submittal process, regulations are finally taking a step into the 21st century.
Transit, upzoning and new state laws are combining to create a torrent of opportunity and unlocking density for underutilized areas on the Eastside. Our design approach needs to evolve with it, prioritizing how large projects can fully capitalize upon the new transit, bike and pedestrian infrastructure to create highly livable and desirable neighborhoods, not just suburbs.
This article was co-written by High-Rise Studio team members Skye Bredberg and John Stout.