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发帖数: 4431 | 1 It’s Bellevue vs. Seattle in battle of holiday magic and shoppers
By Lynn Thompson
Seattle Times staff reporter
Even before the delight and madness of Black Friday, the state’s two retail
leaders — Bellevue and Seattle — were preparing for the spending hordes.
At Westlake Park, workers wrestled antique horses into place on the holiday
carousel. At Bellevue Square, the mall’s scene-setters plumped teddy bears
at Santa’s workshop, the setting, over the coming month, for about 40,000
photos with the jolly old elf.
Seattle and Bellevue say they don’t directly compete for holiday shoppers,
but they do compete, passionately and with hometown pride, to create the
holiday magic that draws in customers as surely as 6 a.m. doorbuster sales.
Bellevue, the state’s sixth-largest city, is second only to Seattle in
annual retail sales. And if you draw narrow boundaries around Seattle’s
retail core, as Bellevue Square owner Kemper Freeman Jr. likes to do,
downtown Bellevue pulls in more money.
But if you take a more expansive definition of downtown Seattle, used, not
surprisingly, by the Downtown Seattle Association — from Sodo to Seattle
Center and from the waterfront to Capitol Hill — downtown Seattle in 2014
is a far bigger economic engine than all of Bellevue, $8.6 billion to $4.3
billion in retail and restaurant sales, according to ZIP code estimates by
Nielsen, a marketing and demographics research firm.
Each city has its partisans, residents who return year after year with their
families for the same traditions and shows.
“That warm and fuzzy feeling in downtown Seattle at the holidays, that’s
hard to replicate in a mall,” said Butch Blum, owner of the men’s clothing
store of the same name that’s operated in the city’s retail center for
the past 40 years. He ticks off his favorite Seattle attractions, starting
with locally owned specialty stores and going on to include horse-drawn
carriages, the Westlake carousel and Santa photos of his now-grown sons,
including the year one was in tears.
Jennifer Robertson, a Bellevue City Council member and mother of three,
feels the same way about her downtown.
“When my kids were little, we used to take them to downtown Seattle at
Christmas. Now we don’t. We have so much here now,” she said, rattling off
some of the annual events — including the nightly Snowflake Lane show in
front of Bellevue Square that features hundreds of costumed performers, plus
music, dancing and thousands of blinking lights.
“It’s one of the best gifts the company (Kemper Development, owners and
operators of Bellevue Square) could give to the community,” Robertson said.
Freeman, chairman and CEO, is the booster and benefactor-in-chief of
Bellevue’s signature holiday event. His family spends about $1 million a
year producing the Christmas extravaganza. He said he started it to create a
memorable outdoor holiday event that would link his three properties,
Bellevue Square, Lincoln Square and Bellevue Place.
But as Snowflake Lane celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, he said it
’s evolved into something that “radiated traditional Christmas values,
family values. It brings back memories of being a kid.”
In public presentations, Freeman has asserted that Bellevue’s central
business districthas bigger annual retail sales than Seattle’s central
business district, by about $45 million. Those figures are in line with
Nielsen’s estimates, which show Bellevue’s two downtown ZIP codes will
total $3.19 billion in retail sales for 2014, while Seattle’s two downtown
ZIP codes that include the retail core will bring in $2.75 billion.
He says his team’s research also has found that fewer than 6 percent of
visitors to Bellevue Square come from across the lake.
And in a gentlemanly “Take that, Seattle” jab, he also lists some of the
reasons people who once traveled to downtown Seattle from the Eastside for
Christmas magic, including himself, no longer go. He said customers report
that the top draw at Bellevue Square is free parking, followed by a
plentiful selection of merchandise and a perception of safety. Eighty
security guards help patrol the three properties.
“Customers expect it. If it isn’t a safe place, they won’t come,” he
said. “That’s true of Seattle, too.”
Seattle has suffered a black eye over downtown safety in the past few years.
One visitor snapping a photo of the Macy’s star from a corner of Westlake
Park in December 2011 was jumped, beaten and robbed of his iPhone. A picture
of his battered face ran in The Seattle Times.
Seattle police plan to add patrols around the downtown shopping district
over the holidays, said Patrick Michaud, a department spokesman.
And the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) said the police will be a visible
presence, overseeing crowds and directing traffic.
The DSA is partnering with Seattle Center and Visit Seattle, the regional
tourism office, to promote the city’s unique holiday attractions, said
James Sido, public-relations manager for the group.
Sido also urges the organization’s more expansive definition of downtown —
one that includes Pioneer Square, Pike Place Market and east to Broadway on
Capitol Hill — because, he said, it reflects the varied venues that
shoppers seek out.
And there are big-city experiences the suburbs can’t match, he said.
“You can have such a varied experience downtown, from the Christmas Ships
to the carousel to flagship retailers and locally owned shops. The whole
area lights up and creates that magical feeling people want at the holidays,
” Sido said.
At Visit Seattle, David Blandford notes that the tourism office promotes
both Seattle and Bellevue. “We’re not partisan here,” he said.
“Bellevue has great stores and restaurants. Seattle has big-city things,
like the ‘Nutcracker’ or The Irish Tenors at Benaroya. Bellevue Square is
walkable and out of the weather, but Seattle being out-of-doors has a
certain ambience, that ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ feel,” he said.
On Friday night, Kemper Freeman will have several friends over to meet him
and his wife, Betty, at their downtown Bellevue condo atop The Westin
Bellevue. They’ll walk over to Bellevue Way to watch the 20-minute
Snowflake Lane show, then go out to dinner.
“We just have fun,” he said.
Matt Griffin, whose team at the Pine Street Group developed and opened
Pacific Place in 1998 and sold it last year, lives in a downtown Seattle
condo on the edge of Westlake Park. He describes a similar routine. He and
his wife, Evelyne Rozner, invite friends over to watch the Macy’s star and
the Westlake Christmas tree light up. Then they walk over to watch the
nightly snowfall and hear Christmas carols at Pacific Place. |
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