Bellevue a suburb of Seattle or Sister City (Like DFW/Minn-St.Paul)? (Tacoma: income, living in)

[DevanXL]

Bellevue's population will top out at 200-250 thousand people, and that's wishful thinking. I think the eastside will continue to grow towards North Bend, functioning as a separate area of the Seattle Metro. But no way Bellevue becomes as large or more important then Seattle. 20 years from now Bellevue could look completely different, lets not forget that they were a small suburb in the early to mid 90's. Yes, now there are their own city and prospering but still far from the stature of Seattle.

[Backstrom]

Originally Posted by DevanXL

Bellevue's population will top out at 200-250 thousand people, and that's wishful thinking. I think the eastside will continue to grow towards North Bend, functioning as a separate area of the Seattle Metro. But no way Bellevue becomes as large or more important then Seattle. 20 years from now Bellevue could look completely different, lets not forget that they were a small suburb in the early to mid 90's. Yes, now there are their own city and prospering but still far from the stature of Seattle.

I largely agree with this assessment.

For Bellevue to have even anything close to Seattle's population requires a massive upzoning of multiple areas of the city. Downtown and Bel-Red alone will not be able to absorb that growth. And if the recent neighborhood activism against light rail and the downtown upzone is any indication, the last thing current residents want is more residents.

I've lived in Bellevue for almost two decades now, but I don't think the city holds a candle to Seattle from a development perspective. No city in the country is getting the kind of corporate investment that Amazon is giving to Seattle in terms of its campus expansion. Right now, most Bellevueites can't even fathom commuting in anything other than their car. We know by pure mathematical fact that there has to be a huge mode shift and massive infrastructure upgrades before Bellevue can even begin thinking of playing in the same league as Seattle.

I'm not sure what's fueling this opinion that Seattle will ultimately lose its luster to Bellevue. As Bellevue has grown, so has Seattle.

[BellevueNative]

Originally Posted by Back2Texas

I live in the DFW area and have spent a lot of time in Seattle/Bellevue as well. I completely agree with this. I would say Bellevue is more comparable to Plano. Which is a suburb of Dallas that you've probably never heard of unless you've spent some time in that area Plano's population is approaching 300k, it's home to many Fortune 500 companies, etc... but it's not Dallas, or Fort Worth. It's suburbia.

Whaaa? I've spent a fair amount of time in Plano for business, and it looks nothing like Bellevue. Plano is flat and full of wide open spaces. And it has NO skyline.

[Back2Texas]

Originally Posted by BellevueNative

Whaaa? I've spent a fair amount of time in Plano for business, and it looks nothing like Bellevue. Plano is flat and full of wide open spaces. And it has NO skyline.

Well, yeah; North Texas looks nothing like the Puget Sound area. That doesn't mean that North Texas is devoid of cities. Bellevue has quite a bit of open space as well. Actually, Bellevue's and Plano's population densities are almost identical. And Plano has no skyline because land is cheap and so it's easy to grow out, rather than up. Plano has more Fortune 500 HQs (2) than Bellevue (1), but Bellevue's Fortune 500 company HQ (Paccar) is in a high-rise building downtown while Plano's (J.C. Penney and Dr. Pepper) are in expansive campuses with low-rise buildings and open space. Yes, it looks different, but last I checked, a high-rise HQ wasn't a requirement for a company to be an economic powerhouse.

But, if you still say a city can't be a city without a skyline... how about Irving? It has a skyline, a larger population than Bellevue (about 215k, although its population density is lower), four Fortune 500 HQs and many other Fortune 500 companies with large campuses. It even used to have a professional sports team (the Cowboys played there through the 2008 season) and it's still the location of the Cowboys training facility, although that is moving in the next few years. But, again, no one considers it to be a sister city to Dallas. It's a suburb. Just like Bellevue.

[MaikeerinWA]

Bellevue is has a lot of very significant corporate facilities that are not Fortune 500 HQs, including the Expedia HQ, which is in the top 600. T-Mobile is one of the bigger employers in the Puget Sound area and is headquartered in Bellevue (and now a public company again). Puget Sound Energy and Eddie Bauer are no longer public but are based in Bellevue (PSE has one of the big towers downtown). Publicly traded Symetra is Fortune 1000, I'm guessing. And there are other publicly traded employers based there like Outerwall (formerly Coinstar) and Esterline, along with companies like Microsoft that have a significant corporate presence in the city.

Anyway, that's just off the top of my head. My point is that Bellevue has a lot more going for it than just Paccar. Not saying that it will ever overtake Seattle in size or visibility, but it long ago ceased to be a typical "bedroom community" suburb. It's become a major corporate force in its own right.

Originally Posted by Back2Texas

Well, yeah; North Texas looks nothing like the Puget Sound area. That doesn't mean that North Texas is devoid of cities. Bellevue has quite a bit of open space as well. Actually, Bellevue's and Plano's population densities are almost identical. And Plano has no skyline because land is cheap and so it's easy to grow out, rather than up. Plano has more Fortune 500 HQs (2) than Bellevue (1), but Bellevue's Fortune 500 company HQ (Paccar) is in a high-rise building downtown while Plano's (J.C. Penney and Dr. Pepper) are in expansive campuses with low-rise buildings and open space. Yes, it looks different, but last I checked, a high-rise HQ wasn't a requirement for a company to be an economic powerhouse.

But, if you still say a city can't be a city without a skyline... how about Irving? It has a skyline, a larger population than Bellevue (about 215k, although its population density is lower), four Fortune 500 HQs and many other Fortune 500 companies with large campuses. It even used to have a professional sports team (the Cowboys played there through the 2008 season) and it's still the location of the Cowboys training facility, although that is moving in the next few years. But, again, no one considers it to be a sister city to Dallas. It's a suburb. Just like Bellevue.

[Back2Texas]

Originally Posted by MichaelinWA

Bellevue is has a lot of very significant corporate facilities that are not Fortune 500 HQs, including the Expedia HQ, which is in the top 600. T-Mobile is one of the bigger employers in the Puget Sound area and is headquartered in Bellevue (and now a public company again). Puget Sound Energy and Eddie Bauer are no longer public but are based in Bellevue (PSE has one of the big towers downtown). Publicly traded Symetra is Fortune 1000, I'm guessing. And there are other publicly traded employers based there like Outerwall (formerly Coinstar) and Esterline, along with companies like Microsoft that have a significant corporate presence in the city.

Anyway, that's just off the top of my head. My point is that Bellevue has a lot more going for it than just Paccar. Not saying that it will ever overtake Seattle in size or visibility, but it long ago ceased to be a typical "bedroom community" suburb. It's become a major corporate force in its own right.

I fully agree that Bellevue is a major corporate force in its own right. (As are Plano and Irving.) I just disagree that it's to the level of a true "sister city."

[MaikeerinWA]

I don't think it's a true "sister city" either. At least not yet.

Originally Posted by Back2Texas

I fully agree that Bellevue is a major corporate force in its own right. (As are Plano and Irving.) I just disagree that it's to the level of a true "sister city."

[Xanathos]

Yeah, there are a TONNE of big corporations with significant presences in Bellevue. The PACCAR reference struck me as odd given that, even though they have a building in Bellevue, pretty much all of their workforce is in Renton by the Boeing 737 plant. British Telecom (operator of the largest backbone network in the world) has their US operations in Bellevue, heard somewhere that Nuance recently bought Tweddle, which is based in Bellevue, and is considering buying that Chm2Hill building that Tweddle is presently in and moving all of their people from Pioneer Square to there, etc. The East side is becoming the local base of operations for a lot more big companies than Seattle is at present.

[MaikeerinWA]

It's more than just a building - it's the global headquarters of Paccar. Yes, more employees work at Peterbilt and Kenworth plants around the country, but Fortune 200 HQs are very much symbolic of 'major city' status. So I don't think the mention is odd at all.

That said, Fortune 100 member Costco is headquartered in Issaquah, the very epitome of suburbia. But not in a high rise.

[usernametaken]

Add Zillow to the companies listed earlier. Traffic in Bellevue during rush hour certainly seems like big city traffic. Assuming the Microsoft ship stays steady, I would not be surprised if Bellevue hits 200k residents by 2025. The downtown Bellevue fireworks crowd this past July 4 was insane.