Bellevue city councilmembers approved settlements Monday with Best Buy and Bellevue 116th Avenue, LLC — three weeks after putting their final offers on the table to buy up property for extending Northeast Fourth Street.
The city has been involved in lengthy litigation over the properties, owned respectively by the limited liability company and Best Buy, that are part of the first two phases of the Northeast Fourth Street extension between 116th and 120th avenues northeast.
Councilmembers expressed frustration with the property owners during their April 15 session, stating they were tired of being pressed for more money to obtain the properties. They put their final offers on the table that night for $12.84 million and $6.2 million for the Best Buy and LLC properties, respectively, with Monday being the deadline to accept. Those figures remained unchanged over the past three weeks.
The settlement agreement with Best Buy requires adjacent Home Depot to withdraw its own appeals regarding the condemnation of a portion of a parking lot both businesses share for the extension project.
The city already has granted Best Buy conditional approval to remodel its storefront to make way for the ongoing Northeast Fourth Street extension project and to recover lost retail and parking space.
Best Buy will demolish 11,021 square feet of retail space on the south side of its Bellevue store and add 9,964 square feet to its north side. The store will also add a single-story parking garage on its east side to accommodate up to 226 vehicles.
On top of the $6.2 million the city will pay Bellevue 116th Avenue LLC, for which Corporation Service Company of Tumwater is the registered agent, that settlement agreement includes rezoning the parcels to commercial business. This will allow the Target Corporation to construct a 160,000-square-foot retail store on the remaining portion of the property that is not affected by the street extension.
This includes amending the city’s land use code to allow Target to exceed the 100,000-square-foot limitation in the Wilburton subarea and increases the allowed building height to 75 feet west of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe right of way. The settlement states this is consistent with the city’s comprehensive plan following completion of the extension.
Target proposes 146,648 square feet of the building will be used for its store, with another 15,000 square feet to be used for street-level retail space, according to a weekly permits bulletin released in April. The design includes a 500-stall parking garage.
