Downtown represents one of Bellevue’s iconic images. Skyscrapers visible from across Lake Washington have jutted out of the ground over the last decade, cementing Bellevue’s place as one of the state’s urban centers. With the new-found development is the need to manage it. This week, the Reporter sat down with Leslie Lloyd, president of the Bellevue Downtown Association to talk about the state of downtown, where things are going in the future, and key factors to the area’s continued success.

What is the state of downtown?

It’s vision fulfillment time. If you look back to the origins of the Bellevue Downtown Association in the 1970s, the property owners and city planners came together to envision what downtown Bellevue would become. By and large, what you see today is what they had in mind.

It continues to be a really superb workplace, particularly for knowledge workers and innovative companies.

Talk about the future?

I think we’re really going to see more progress on the path we’re on. People by and large give downtown very high marks on all the things we’re trying to do. I think there are areas of improvement: more dining, entertainment, more things to do when you get here. I think the main goal as well is to ensure that people can continue to get here. Regional transportation is a huge deal for us.

Some people will say Vancouver (British Columbia) is kind of good model for our future in terms of form of city and diversity and its sense of vitality. We’d like to connect our downtown to our waterfront. It’s a shame we don’t have this stellar public water front; it’s just right over the hill there.

Effect of economy?

We can’t say we’ve been immune to the Great Recession, but I think we have fared much better than most other communities in the country. I’ve been here long enough to know we have cycles, and they’re pretty predictable. We might be in a little bit deeper trough, and we might be there a little bit longer, but it’s not a new phenomenon. The city has not been on a straight trajectory, we go up and down, up and down. I think we’re on our way back up. Things are looking promising. Vacancies are going down, storefronts are filling up. Businesses are coming and opening their doors and apartments and condos are starting to fill up as well. We’re seeing more people around and feeling more vitality, and I think the numbers bear that out as well.

Future projects you are excited about?

Tateuchi center I think is very much anticipated. The cultural footprint of Bellevue will get a lot bigger with that. That’s just not the space, but the things that go on, the visibility and profile of downtown Bellevue as a destination for that sort of thing. I think right now it’s a little thin. Wintergrass has been really successful, the Jazz Festival is getting more successful every year; we have a lot of events. But we’re talking about a whole new ball game when we’ve got Tateuchi Center bringing entertainment on a regular and prolonged basis.

The other thing we’re eagerly anticipating is the arrival of (East Link) light-rail. With the added importance of having more capacity to serve our workforce demand in downtown Bellevue it can’t be overstated. We absolutely need that to happen in order to continue to grow and evolve as we have been.

How important is light-rail in the future of downtown? What are the transit needs here?

According to our city and traffic engineers, we don’t have very many more buildings we can build and manage congestion to be no worse than it is, so we’re coming to the end of the trajectory without something different. Cars are important, we’re going to continue to see people coming to work in their cars by a huge measure, that’s going to be dominant mode choice. Buses are important, and bus service levels have gone up. Bellevue is well positioned in the county with reductions of service hours, and the whole revamping of how they allocate service.I think Bellevue fares pretty well because we are a big destination, second only to Seattle. But that being said, we can’t get all the trips we need between cars and buses. There’s not enough room on the roads for all the buses we need, so that’s why we need light-rail as a dedicated capacity that’s not impacted by traffic, or buses. People may think that matter was decided by voters when Bellevue voted 57 percent to approve Sound Transit’s phase two, but we sense there’s a weakening resolve on the part of our council to pursue that. We’re concerned about the political will there to make it happen.

Importance of the tunnel?

The tunnel is kind of a no-brainer for us from the very beginning. We’re concerned about the impact of a train crossing mainly our east-west corridors, (Northeast) Fourth Street in particular. We’re concerned about the impact of a train crossing mainly our east-west corridors, (Northeast) Fourth Street in particular. We know how much demand there is to travel that way between Bellevue Square and the freeway, so having a train go across there could potentially disrupt downtown. Not only that, it would slow the train down. Although an at-grade system is cheaper to build and gets done a lot more quickly, and it works in other cities, we’re fearful that it would not be very desirable here, and so that’s why we’ve always been behind the tunnel. There’s value in the tunnel, not only to Bellevue, but also to the system and the people who ride it to be able to get through downtown Bellevue in a predictable way.

How has downtown evolved as a residential hub?

I’ve been in this job for over 10 years now. And just the change since 2001, I think we had 300-400 housing units, we still had some single-family homes. And now we have over 7,200 residents downtown, with a theoretical population once these buildings fill up, of over 10,000. That makes downtown the fastest growing neighborhood in Bellevue and one of the largest of all. I’ve always felt that how good we do at the job of making downtown Bellevue livable – making it work for people living here – that’s sort of a litmus test for how good of a job we do for everybody.

How to reduce vacancy rates in new buildings?

Marketing is probably the best thing that we can do to point out to people that this is a great place to live. The problems in the for-sale housing market are structural, deep, and prolonged, owing to problems that have to do with financial markets and government-backed securities, and commoditization of mortgages. We can’t do anything to change that stuff. All we can do is continue to be cheerleaders and conveners of the dialog about what a great place downtown is and how great Bellevue is.

How to keep Bellevue a desirable biz location?

In the old days, it used to be where the CEO wanted to live. Nowadays, there’s such tough competition for talent that employers realize they need to be in a place that employees want to work. Probably the biggest attribute for workers in that 25-34 age market, which is people starting out careers and also families, is the school district. The presence of the Bellevue School District and its award-winning education at every level is a big attraction for workers. That’s a huge advantage we have over cities like Seattle.

Importance of a long term plan?

The constancy of our vision has been the biggest key to our success as a community. They decided in the 1970s they wanted to be urban. At that time, downtown Bellevue was a neighborhood shopping area. Staying with your vision is critical. During this transformation we had one planning director, Matt Terry, who bought into that vision and was very tough on builders about quality and urban form, but he had a large hand in making downtown Bellevue as pleasing as it is.

Nat Levy can be reached at 425-453-4290.