The best mall in Washington State (Seattle, Redmond: real estate, sex offenders, crime rate)

[ChevydaKidd425]

Originally Posted by Balco9

Bellevue Square Mall!

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i really don tlike bellvue Square Mall
Alot of new High-end stores are opening in Alderwood

[ChevydaKidd425]

Originally Posted by Balco9

Sorry will never happen!!!!
Bellevue is one of the best places to live in the US
and Southcenter area doe's not compare and will
not compare after a makeover!!!
It's nonsense.
Bellevue Square Mall is the best mall in the tri-states
period!!!!
WA, PDX, ID..............

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Bellvue Sqaure is big i agree.
But all their stores are corny.
I vow to not return to Bellvue Square for another 3-5 years

[haggardhouseelf]

It's not in Seattle - it's about 40 minutes north up I-5 sorta near Marysville? - but I LOVE the Seattle Premium Outlets. It's a really great place to go for lots of clothing and shoe shopping and other things. There's a great Sony store there. We were just there over the weekend and they were having massive sales on all their winter stuff, and these are sales on already low factory outlet prices so it was really great. My husband got a really nice Eddie Bauer winter coat which was normally $135. for $25. We also hit the Ralph Lauren / Polo store and bought two huge bagfulls of their super soft comfy sweats for practically nothing. They were handing out $25. off coupons on top of the sales on the already marked-down items. It was so much fun, and I've got a lifetime supply of really nice comfy sweats. Yum. It's the nicest Factory Outlet mall type place we have ever visited. Much nicer than the ones out in the North Bend area. Though during the Summer there are some good hot dogs there!

I do occassionally go to Bellevue Square but only for two particular stores - LUSH and LEGO. My kids and I love LUSH bath bombs, and we are a total LEGO-maniac family. Love Lush and Lego and are so happy they are there.

I do love the Border's Books store in Redmond Town Center, it just has a good feel to it and the people there are always so nice to me. Half Price Books is very close-by, too. I also love the Sprouts Children's Theater (broken link)which is right by Borders! There are also some fun places for the kiddie crowd there... a nice hair cutting place geared especially towards young kids, and a couple of really great toy stores and clothing stores. Other than that, Redmond Town Center doesn't really appeal to me.

The Crossroads Mall in Bellevue has a few things we like - Piroshky Piroshky! Ok, that's food... but it's worth mentioning because the food is so good there. Also there is a good Half Price Books there... and also the Michael's MJ Designs store there is WAY better for buying your artsy craftsy supplies than the Ben Franklin here in Redmond which seems to cater more towards scrappers and home decorating. (Although one of our favorite toy stores is right next to Ben Franklin and for the life of me I can't remember the name of it right now! Ugh... Lakeshore Toys? That doesn't sound right... hey - and Soul Food Books next to the toy store is a very cool place for wonderful live music, organic coffee, some yummy food/pastries, books, stones, candles, and other lovely interests...)

Back to Crossroad's though - Even the Joann's at Crossroad's - and I thought Joann's was more of a fabric store - has more art supplies and creative goodies than the Ben Franklin in Redmond. I find that a bit odd, you know? Oh... The GIANT chess board at the crossroads mall and the Uncle Henry's game shop is also a favorite of our family. We also like the DIY ceramics studio there. Fun. Crossroad's can actually be a fun place. It's also mostly indoors, so it's a good place to go anytime of the year. Not much in the way of clothing there though unless you like Old Navy (which I don't...)

We do shop online, too. We order hard to find books and films online, and we've ordered toys and gifts online from places like Magic Cabin... We love Magic Cabin for really awesome kids games, books, toys, and gifts. We also do Bookins.com for books which is a really great book swap site. I love to order books from Books of Wonder... they have some hard to find books there...

[sykesfamily]

Originally Posted by MichaelinWA

Jantzen Beach SuperCenter. OK, so it's technically in Oregon, but there is no sales tax.

I hope you are talking about outside of the mall. Because inside is very dreadful. Don't get me wrong I live across the bridge and take advantage of the no sales tax (which I will miss dearly when we move to millcreek). But the whole inside of that mall is drab and depressing IMO.

[LordBalfor]

Originally Posted by haggardhouseelf

The Crossroads Mall in Bellevue has a few things we like - Piroshky Piroshky! Ok, that's food... but it's worth mentioning because the food is so good there. Also there is a good Half Price Books there... and also the Michael's MJ Designs store there is WAY better for buying your artsy craftsy supplies than the Ben Franklin here in Redmond which seems to cater more towards scrappers and home decorating. (Although one of our favorite toy stores is right next to Ben Franklin and for the life of me I can't remember the name of it right now! Ugh... Lakeshore Toys? That doesn't sound right... hey - and Soul Food Books next to the toy store is a very cool place for wonderful live music, organic coffee, some yummy food/pastries, books, stones, candles, and other lovely interests...)

Back to Crossroad's though - Even the Joann's at Crossroad's - and I thought Joann's was more of a fabric store - has more art supplies and creative goodies than the Ben Franklin in Redmond. I find that a bit odd, you know?

LOL

I can relate to much of what you say. Up to last May my wife was the floral designer at the Michael's store in Crossroads - and had worked there on and off for more than 10 years (she worked first at the Southcenter Michaels, then the Redmond Ben Franklin, then the Crossroads Michaels (when it first opened), then a stint at the Federal Way Michaels', then the Federal Way Joann's (for the opening there), before returning to the Crossroads Michael's again. As I said, I can relate directly to much of what you said.

Back when she was at the Redmond Ben Franklin it had a much more elaborate floral design department - and a top of the line designer (who was both a mentor to my wife and a good friend of ours (she had come with him from the Southcenter Michael's when he was hired into to the Ben Franklin store). When the Crossroads Michael's opened, they both returned to Michael's as the designers there. After that the Ben Franklin store shrank their floral design depart to become as you describe it.

Likewise Joann's branched out for a while with more floral and crafts items than does now. Back when they first opened their "Joann's etc" stores they were much more well-rounded than they are now - but they've pulled back a bit not into their core market (though you are right, the Crossroads Joann's has more craft items than the Redmond Ben Franklin (mainly I think, because it's simply bigger)).

Michael's remains however the crafts store with the widest range of items.

All this is "home turf" to us as my wife (and myself by extension) was pretty heavily involved in the arts and crafts thing. My wife has now retired from retail with the idea that she'll spend a bit more time working on her sculpture (Gail's Latest Sculptures pictures from crafts photos on webshots)

Ken

[haggardhouseelf]

Ken your wife's sculpture's are beautiful!! Thanks for sharing those!

Back to the mall topic... evidently there was a shooting at Southcenter Mall on Wednesday (3/12) night? Isn't the area where that mall is at a bit sketchy? It's right by Sea-Tac airport, isn't it? I was under the impression that that area is a bit of a concern, especially for families with young children.

Here's part of the story posted on the KOMO 4 website:

TUKWILA - Southcenter Mall reopened to nervous shoppers and employees Thursday morning following a shooting the night before, and some people said they weren't that surprised at the violence that broke out after an argument between two groups of young men.

"(There are) a lot of gangs, a lot of people that come and hang around," said Josh Gardner, who works at the mall. "A lot of fights, (it) happens a lot inside the mall. ... You get kind of worried. You never know what's going to happen."

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[MichaelinWA]

There was a shooting at Northgate just last month. I don't think that the surrounding neighborhoods are the problem; big malls just bring a lot of people together and that unfortunately sometimes leads to problems.

Local News | 2 shootings raise question: Are shopping malls safe? | Seattle Times Newspaper

[MichaelinWA]

We're going to have to get back up there. We visited shortly after it opened and parking was a problem (we ended parking at the casino, as I recall), and there wasn't much to eat there yet. But in terms of shopping opportunities it's clearly larger and better than North Bend.

Originally Posted by haggardhouseelf

It's not in Seattle - it's about 40 minutes north up I-5 sorta near Marysville? - but I LOVE the Seattle Premium Outlets. ...

[VeronikaW]

Originally Posted by haggardhouseelf

Ken your wife's sculpture's are beautiful!! Thanks for sharing those!

Back to the mall topic... evidently there was a shooting at Southcenter Mall on Wednesday (3/12) night? Isn't the area where that mall is at a bit sketchy? It's right by Sea-Tac airport, isn't it? I was under the impression that that area is a bit of a concern, especially for families with young children.

Here's part of the story posted on the KOMO 4 website:

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That's so scary! That's where we take our 4 month old son for pictures!!

[haggardhouseelf]

Is there a thread somewhere for shootings in the area? There have seemed to be a lot so far this year. The malls, the nightclubs, the Denny's, the high schools, the Carnation family... There was even that boy who was shot and left in the street and wasn't found for almost a day!? I'm from Dallas, TX and we had crime there in the bad parts of town, and I've also lived near Sacramento, CA and we spent three years in Eugene, OR... I've never experienced anything like this. It's scary. I have a son about to start middle school next year and I'm not feeling too good about it all. The kids here are so out of control.

My husband and I were outside the grocery store the other day in Redmond, and these kids drove by me and shot me with a water gun! They laughed and drove off... My husband was so angry. I was just sort of shocked. I didn't even know what I could have done - call the police? Over a water gun incident? Sounds silly...

There have also been the guys riding on their bikes who have been shot recently by BB guns. What's wrong with people today where things like that would be something you do for fun? When did rude suddenly equal cool and obnoxious equal acceptable behavior?

(this is off-topic... I'm sorry... how can I move it to begin a new thread?)