Sibling Rivalry

Is Bellevue threatening Seattle’s retail supremacy?

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

Credit: 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