Page 1 2 3 4

Slow growing

Moving fast has never been one of Bellevue’s strengths. The pioneer town was born out of a densely wooded wilderness that for decades sat quiet while Seattle frothed into a lively port city. In 1869, a Seattle baker named William Meydenbauer rowed the three miles across the deep blue waters of Lake Washington and staked a claim on land that curved around a charming bay.

By 1900, 100 people had settled along Meydenbauer Bay, and another 300 were living close by. They came for the abundant timber, land, and wildlife. But jobs were scarce in Bellevue, so folk worked in Seattle to pay for improvements to their east-side land. And as late as 1909, they were shipping their children across the lake to high schools in the city.

Over the next few years fields were cleared for strawberries, forage for milk cows, and produce that the pioneers trucked in to Seattle to sell. In the 1910s, a Japanese community moved in, bringing families who worked small tracts of land and pooled their resources to build a large packing house and a thriving agricultural community. Theirs is one of Bellevue’s sadder histories. Fifty-five Japanese families from Bellevue, about 300 people, were interned at camps in California and Idaho during the Second World War. Few ever returned.

The war changed the community in other ways. Workers flocked to the area for jobs in nearby shipyards and at Boeing in Renton, where they made B-29s. But Bellevue didn’t have enough stores, schools, or services to meet their needs.

Kemper Freeman Sr. seized the opportunity, and in 1946 opened Bellevue Square, with the Bel-Vue Theater, Frederick & Nelson as the anchor store, and restaurants like the Kandi Kane offering places for friends to meet. Freeman’s son Kemper Jr. was a toddler when Bel-Square first opened its doors. He would inherit the business, his family’s legacy of building community, and much of downtown.

By the early 1950s, Bellevue’s population was surging. An attractive suburb, with architect-designed homes sprouting on subdivided farms, it had golf courses, shopping, schools, and spectacular water and mountain views to lure families across the floating bridge from Seattle. Realizing the need for a general plan and government, the citizens voted in 1953 to incorporate as a city, trailing Seattle by 88 years and its east-side sister, Kirkland, by 48.

Charles LeWarne, a Washington State historian who grew up in Bellevue, recalls the days when his family lived in a bungalow on Northeast Fourth Street and ran a 10-cent store downtown. LeWarne describes four very different Bellevues: the pioneer settlement, the small Norman Rockwell-type town of the 20s and 30s, the burgeoning suburb of Seattle from the 40s on, and today’s metropolitan city. “I find the story of Bellevue fascinating,” says the 75-year-old scholar. “My parents could have never imagined what has happened with the high-rise buildings and offices.”

From the 50s until just recently, Bellevue was stuck in its identity as Seattle’s bedroom community. “It was thought of as this sort of lily-white suburban neighborhood,” says Bellevue’s deputy mayor, John Chelminiak (’75 Comm.). It was a place with super-wide streets and super-sized blocks (600 feet, rather than the 200 feet in most cities), a place where you didn’t go too far without a car.

In the 1980s, a few office buildings stretched into the sky—the pink-hued Skyline Office Tower, the blue-toned glass Symetra Financial Center (also known as the Rainier Plaza), and the 27-story rose-colored City Center Bellevue building. But for food, arts, culture, music, and even work, residents still piled into their cars and drove to Seattle.

Then Microsoft and other technology companies settled nearby, and Bellevue began to change. Firms like Onyx, Western Wireless, and Expedia stirred new development downtown, luring major chain restaurants and stimulating more local housing.

City planners had a vision of pedestrian corridors breaking up the long blocks, public spaces and parks scattered throughout, a farmers market, an artists’ community. But then, “In 2001 we had a real serious downturn in the economy,” says Chelminiak. Tech stocks dropped, layoffs came. And the construction crews drove off.

Page 1 2 3 4

Continued