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Bellevue staff outline economic development plan update focused on small business, tourism and Eastgate opportunities
Summary
Staff previewed the 2025 update to Bellevue's Economic Development Plan, signaling an emphasis on small business support, creative economy, tourism partnerships and neighborhood‑specific strategies for Eastgate and Factoria; commissioners asked for benchmarking, workforce links and marketing actions to attract employers.
City economic development staff on June 25 told the Planning Commission that they are updating Bellevue's citywide Economic Development Plan to align with the recently adopted Comprehensive Plan and a regional target of 70,000 jobs by 2044.
Jesse Cannato, Bellevue's chief economic development officer, and Corbin Hart, business development manager, described a process that began with guiding principles adopted in December 2024, followed by months of community engagement and data analysis. The update will stress small business and startup support, creative economy and tourism partnerships and implementation tools aligning with neighborhood area plans. "We really want to focus through this plan's update on the tourism, small business, startup infrastructure, and other elements...necessary to achieve our audacious job targets of 70,000 jobs by 2044," Cannato said.
Staff outlined recent achievements since the 2020 plan: re‑energizing local merchant associations, forming a BelRed Arts District Alliance, launching a tourism promotion area that funds shuttles, and creating an accelerator program for startups that does not take equity. Corbin Hart summarized data trends by industry: information and professional services showed the strongest recent job growth and geographic concentration, while retail and arts/entertainment reflected pandemic impacts. He flagged Eastgate as a neighborhood with about a 40% office vacancy and a relative lack of walkable retail and amenities, while noting 2 million square feet of office product there and opportunities for mixed‑use transitions.
Commissioners pressed staff for specifics about peer city benchmarking and workforce links. Hart said the team swapped some peer cities for comparables (Irvine and Plano) to include cities that offer useful lessons about creative economy and employer attraction; staff also said they spoke with roughly 60 stakeholders across diverse sectors and employer sizes, and with Bellevue College about workforce pipelines. Commissioners asked how the plan will translate into items that require Planning Commission action; staff said the Economic Development Plan is a functional plan that may lead to targeted land‑use or regulatory changes and will inform neighborhood area plans for Eastgate, Factoria and BelRed LUCA (land‑use code amendments).
Several commissioners underscored commercial displacement concerns for small retail and restaurants when sites redevelop, and asked for policy options to preserve affordable commercial space; staff described Wilburton's new affordable commercial space incentive as a pilot and said programmatic and code options remain on the table. Commissioners also requested clearer marketing and business‑attraction tactics, coordination with Visit Bellevue and Greater Seattle Partners, and more explicit benchmarking and trend analysis back to pre‑pandemic years to understand long‑term trajectories.
Staff said the plan will continue community engagement, finish strategy drafting over the summer, and return to the commission and to council for adoption targeted for December 2025.
