When Interstate 405 blazed through the Eastside in the 1950s and 1960s, it set Bellevue on a new path, helping transform the rural farming community into Seattle’s glinting second city.
Now, as Bellevue tries to convince its residents and workers to get around without a car, it still has its eyes on the future — and the interstate is in the way.
To get over the wide road, the city is building a half-mile-long promenade bridge for pedestrians and bicyclists that links downtown to Wilburton, a part of town historically known for its stretch of auto dealers but now described as the next chapter for Bellevue.
The vision for the bridge — part of the larger Grand Connection project to pedestrianize a 1.5-mile corridor connecting Meydenbauer Bay on Lake Washington to Wilburton — recently took a step closer to reality, after the city and a handful of local tax districts promised 25 years of future property tax revenues to the bridge’s completion in 2030.
When done, the bridge will connect Bellevue City Hall to Wilburton, a neighborhood the city has been focusing on as a logical extension of downtown and its cluster of high-rises, with new rules allowing denser development, more housing and taller towers.
“This is an economic development project,” said Anthony Gill, the city’s corridor manager for the Grand Connection Program. Wilburton “is going to be a big part of our economic future.”
Katherine Hollis, executive director of Eastrail Partners, said she sees public dollars going to things like the Grand Connection project and the recent opening of light rail over Lake Washington as “social infrastructure investments.”
“The idea of the Eastside being suburban and car-centric is changing,” she said. “The crossing and light rail is all part of the change. It’s not saying you can’t drive your car. There are just that many more options.”
To help fund the promenade over the highway, the city is employing a complex taxing tool — tax increment financing — that will basically gather up all increases in property tax revenue in a 63-acre area surrounding the bridge, and put the money toward the project’s construction costs, estimated between $175 million and $230 million.
Those revenues could be substantial, to say the least. Under projections and project analysis approved by the office of the state treasurer, the 33 properties within that taxing area currently have a total assessed value of $489 million.
These properties are expected to see a surge in development, tied in part to the project and other city efforts to encourage growth, that will add a jaw-dropping $6.1 billion to their total assessed value. That, in turn, will lead to about $2.5 million in new property tax revenue every year for the next 25 years. All of that new revenue — estimated at $60 to $70 million — will go to the bridge’s construction cost.
To pay for the rest of the bridge’s cost, the city has allocated another $46.7 million. Amazon has put $2.5 million to the project, and helped co-found Friends of the Grand Connection.
The city has not said how it will raise the remaining, roughly $100 million. More private dollars and state funding are anticipated, but federal support is unlikely under the current administration.
At a recent Bellevue City Council meeting, city Chief Financial Officer John Resha described the funding tool as “growth paying for growth,” and said the financing mechanism doesn’t create a new tax or divert money from schools.
Still, the city’s plan relies on Wilburton booming, raising the value of the neighborhood and all its properties, which will lead to an increase in assessed value and, therefore, how much each property owner owes in taxes.
Resha gave a simplified explanation for how property owners within the tax increment financing district will pay for the bridge: Someone currently pays $100 in property taxes. After a substantial remodel of their house, their taxes go up to $300 a year. Under tax increment financing, $100 goes to where it was originally going, but the additional $200 goes to Bellevue for this project. After 25 years, Bellevue no longer gets the increase in tax revenue.
The money raised by the tax tool, by law, can only be used to fund this project and repay the debt associated with it. If the debt can be paid off before the tax’s 25-year sunset, the funding tool will end early.
To put the tax increment financing in motion, Bellevue had to get approval from the five local taxing districts that overlap around the bridge, diverting the increase in property tax revenues from their own coffers.
All five — the King County Library System, the Port of Seattle, Sound Transit, and the Metropolitan King County Council and its independent flood control district — unanimously approved. The King County Council, however, capped its contributions at $30 million, according to Councilmember Claudia Balducci, a booster for the project who has supported its vision since her days on the Bellevue City Council.
In the end, Bellevue drew the boundaries to target parcels that were most likely to redevelop in the next few years, due in part to their proximity to the bridge. It excluded some parcels where dense housing could go, as developers take advantage of tax breaks under the city’s Multifamily Housing Property Tax Exemption, which requires a proportion of affordable housing.
Auto Row to trail development
The fortunes of Wilburton and its residents have risen and fallen over the decades.
The area prospered with farms through the 1930s, after the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway. A different kind of growth — suburban — came with the openings of the floating bridges across Lake Washington, in 1940 and 1963. Wilburton was annexed by Bellevue in 1967, and as car dealerships opened in the neighborhood, it was given the moniker Auto Row.
That’s all so 20th century. The vision for Wilburton is firmly 21st century.
Balducci, who sat on the Bellevue City Council from 2004 to 2016, the last two years as mayor, said the Bellevue of today was largely built in “the era when the future of America was a vision of cars and shopping malls.”
She said city leaders have been working to change that vision, and said the bridge is part of it.
A year ago, the Bellevue City Council approved new rules for the neighborhood, which is bordered by the interstate, home to a light rail station and cut through by the ambitious Eastrail corridor, a 42-mile walking and biking trail that will connect Renton to Redmond, including over the Wilburton Trestle when it opens next year.
The changes are meant to capture the potential of light rail, with buildings as tall as 450 feet now allowed around the Wilburton light rail station, a height limit that rivals the city core’s towers.
In all, up to 5,000 new residences are expected, concentrated in the commercial district and replacing Auto Row with what’s referred to as transit-oriented development.
Yet with the connection between Eastrail and the new bridge, a new term has emerged: trail-oriented development.
The crossing is part of the Grand Connection, a walking corridor that varies from 40 feet wide over the highway to the use of existing sidewalks. It will traverse the city from Meydenbauer Bay Park, which was renovated in 2019; to Downtown Park, which was partly renovated in 2021; through Old Bellevue and its slower auto traffic and “older and more human scaled aesthetic,” as city documents describe it; by City Hall and the Bellevue Downtown light rail station; over I-405; and all the way to Wilburton, its light rail station and Eastrail.
The idea to bisect Bellevue with a trail gained inspiration from other U.S. cities: the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, the High Line in New York City and the Atlanta BeltLine.
The interstate crossing — the biggest piece in Bellevue’s puzzle — is expected to open in 2030. The city has already selected the general contractor to do the job, Kraemer North America, which is rehabilitating the Wilburton Trestle and repaired the West Seattle Bridge after cracks appeared in 2020, forcing the bridge to close for two years.
The Eastrail’s bridge over Interstate 90, just south of Wilburton, is also expected to open in 2030. By then, the housing of Wilburton may already be obscuring the skyline, competing with downtown, but Eastrail’s Hollis has a longer view.
“It’s not just about what’s there today, but what will be there in 20 years,” said Hollis. “The time is now. It’s the right time and the right place to do it.”
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