Restaurant scene expands in booming Bellevue, Wash.

BELLEVUE WASH. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

After years of promoting Belle-vue, Freeman, a developer and native son of this city just 10 miles east of Seattle, is watching the sleepy suburb awaken as Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. grows its downtown presence, upscale retailers like Neiman Marcus move in, and affluent residents looking to shop, play and eat follow. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Today, so-called Eastsiders have a choice of nabbing one of the 3,000 new restaurant seats that have been added to downtown in the past two years, most of which are part of Freeman’s Lincoln Square, a huge mixed-use development that was completed in 2005. More restaurants are on the way, thanks to an unprecedented building boom in the region. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

“It took 20 years to get people over here and have the guts to open up,” Freeman said. “It seemed to me that people did want to [stay on the Eastside to eat] but had no place to do it.” —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Lincoln Square houses a Westin Hotel, multimillion-dollar condominiums, a 19-screen movie theater, office space and units of such full-service restaurant chains as Trader Vic’s, Maggiano’s Little Italy and McCormick & Schmick’s, as well as independents like The Parlor Billiards and Spirits. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Lincoln Square sits just east of another Freeman development, Bellevue Square, a regional shopping mall that brings in some of the highest per-square-foot sales of any mall in the nation, Freeman said. It also is near Freeman’s Bellevue Place, an office complex that is home to the Bellevue Hyatt, which is undergoing an expansion that will give the hotel some 700 rooms. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

“We built as many restaurants as we could as fast as we could, and the more we built, the better they did,” Freeman said. “We now have 19 full-service restaurants within two blocks of each other, all of which are just shooting the lights out.” —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

In downtown Bellevue, Freeman has “three restaurants doing $10 million to $12 million, and I don’t know how many are doing $900 to $1,000 a square foot [in revenues],” he said. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

While operators would not confirm those numbers, most industry watchers say that the top three include Lincoln Square’s Maggiano’s, which opened in late 2005; The Cheesecake Factory, which has been open for several years in Bellevue Square Mall; and Daniel’s Broiler, an upscale steakhouse locally owned by the Schwartz Brothers family of restaurants, which sits on the 21st floor of the Bank of America building. P.F. Chang’s, and McCormick & Schmick’s are reportedly pulling in big numbers as well. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Such success has people calling Bellevue one of the hottest markets in the country for restaurant operators. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

“The growth has been nothing short of phenomenal,” said Rick Giboney, who recently left Seattle-based Restaurants Unlimited to open his own restaurant-consulting firm, Giboney Associates in Seattle. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Bellevue and what’s known as the “Eastside of Lake Washington has become Seattle’s technology corridor,” Giboney said. “Those people need the entertainment options that Seattle used to provide but are no longer convenient” because of traffic congestion. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

“Bellevue’s growth is insane,” added Paul Reder, general partner of the Trader Vic’s in Lincoln Square and owner of the Taphouse Grill in Bellevue’s Galleria building. “Bellevue can pretty much hang its hat on Microsoft. When they come to town, whole busloads of people decide where to see a movie and where to eat.” —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Bellevue’s current building boom is expected to more than double the office space and number of residents living downtown. Seventeen cranes around Bellevue’s 500-acre downtown are helping to erect 30 projects worth an estimated $4 billion. When completed in 2009 or 2010, about 5 million square feet of office and residential space will be available. The number of downtown residents is projected to reach 5,000 and the downtown workforce is expected to total more than 50,000. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Following Neiman Marcus, other high-end luxury retailers are moving into The Bravern, a mixed-use development under construction. And Microsoft in April leased 1.3 million square feet of new office space under construction in Bellevue, where it already has sizeable operations. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Bellevue’s ace in the hole is its wealthy demographics—a big reason why upscale retailers and restaurant operators are eyeing the city. Hunts Point and Medina, wealthy neighborhoods within walking distance of downtown Bellevue, are home to billionaire Bill Gates, several Microsoft millionaires and many of the area’s high-tech entrepreneurs. Belle-vue’s median household income is $69,880, while its mean household income is $94,756, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2005 American Community Survey. By comparison, the national median household income is $46,242, and the national mean household income is $62,556. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

“We have great people who have expendable income, and they love to go out to eat,” said John Howie, chef and owner of the SeaStar restaurant, which opened in downtown Bellevue in 2001. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Steven Olson, who sold his dental practice to open The Parlor Billiards and Spirits in Lincoln Square, has been pleased with his career change. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

His 20,000-square-foot venue, which cost $4.5 million, boasts 19 pool tables, seating for 150, cocktail seating for another 200 and private banquet facilities. Seattle chef Ted Furst created the menu and executive chef Alfredo Ganacias manages the facility. Seattle restaurant consultant Arnold Shane of the Restaurant Group Inc. helped Olson open The Parlor. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

“When I first got here, Bellevue went to bed at 9 p.m.,” Olson said. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

When the pool hall and restaurant opened a year ago, he said, “we had lines out the door, and we still had people waiting to get in at 1:30 at night.” —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

While many restaurateurs are drawing crowds in Bellevue, operators note that making money is nonetheless challenging. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

“It’s expensive to open in Bellevue, which has all new buildings,” said SeaStar’s Howie, who is also in lease negotiations to open a steakhouse at The Bravern. “In Washington, our tipped employees make $7.93 an hour. That’s [more than] $5.50 an hour over [the federal minimum wage in states that allow a tip credit]. It’s incredibly harder to make money here.” —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Washington state does not allow employers to count tips as credit toward the minimum wage. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

With server wages so high, it’s also harder to find good kitchen help, Howie said. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Despite the costs, however, new restaurants continue to arrive in Bellevue, observers said. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

“The restaurant performance in Bellevue is tremendous, and Bellevue will almost remake itself again as these projects come online in a few years,” Giboney said. —Kemper Freeman’s efforts to convince restaurant operators that this Seattle suburb had the potential to be a dining destination are finally paying off.

Estimates of Bellevue demographic characteristics2005 American Community Survey estimate*