Sibling Rivalry

Is Bellevue threatening Seattle’s retail supremacy?

By Shannon O’Leary | February 2010 | FROM THE PRINT EDITION

Photograph by Hayley Young

Seattle, Bellevue Not so very long ago, two local developers battled to win the hand of one very high-end retailer. The skirmish commenced around a handful of downtown Bellevue blocks. On one side: Bellevue's native son, Kemper Freeman Jr., who turned his father's original 1946 open-air collection of 16 stores into a nearly 200-shop powerhouse mall, Bellevue Square, now anchoring a conglomerate that includes Bellevue Place and Lincoln Square and their mix of hotels, condos, restaurants and a 16-screen cinema. On the other: Wyoming-born retailing upstart Dan Ivanoff, co-founder of Seattle-based Schnitzer West; he had ambitions for a new 1.6 million-square-foot complex of luxury retail spaces, restaurants, residences and offices, called The Bravern, to be located just a block away from Bellevue's busy Interstate 405 exits. The linchpin to his plan? Neiman Marcus, which Freeman also sought to lure into his mall.

"Neiman Marcus was the A-number-one target we had to go get first," admits Ivanoff, "then Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Jimmy Choo and all those names that ... at any major center that Neiman Marcus is in, those kind of retailers are next to."

The Dallas-based fine fashion purveyor had long been courted by Freeman, who even financed some of the demographic research Neiman Marcus needed in order to pull the trigger on its first-ever Northwest location. However, Ivanoff's luxe vision and The Bravern's blank-slate site appeal ultimately won over Neiman Marcus. Ivanoff's other wished-for signature shops soon followed suit, joining Neiman Marcus in The Bravern.

This tug-of-war tale might seem like just a drama set east of Lake Washington, but the very fact that it was centered in Bellevue and not Seattle raises the question: Has Seattle's sibling city become a worthy cohort or a worrisome rival set to siphon off shoppers and threaten Seattle's reign of retail supremacy?

Their respective retailing personalities couldn't be more different. Bellevue presents a cohesive cluster of largely indoor malls wrapped in SUV-friendly wide streets, ample free or low-cost parking, and a Singapore-style orderliness. (At his malls, Freeman employs 75 security guards and cleaning crews armed with cold-nitrogen-blasting machines to obliterate offending bubble gum traces.) Downtown Seattle counters with a series of distinctive retail corridors, expensive and elusive parking, and streets bristling with dynamic disorder: Whether targeting Urban Outfitters on Fifth Avenue, Tiffany's in Pacific Place, the galleries of Pioneer Square or the hand-made goods of Pike Place Market, shoppers rub up against a big city's mix of rushing office workers, confused tourists, loud buskers and, yes, pesky panhandlers.

"The scale is all different in Bellevue," says Matt Griffin, who led the development