New Bellevue Safeway has lessons to learn for future downtown Kirkland QFC
On Saturday, I visited the new 55,000 square foot Safeway on NE Fourth and Bellevue Way as it opened its doors for the first time this weekend. The Bellevue grocery store was designed as a part of a mixed-use development and there are many lessons that can be learned about what works well and what does not. Let us hope that Touchstone is taking tours and lots of notes. The general concept of the Parkplace plan includes a new QFC with underground parking - not all that dissimilar to the Bellevue Safeway.
The new Bellevue Safeway is considered a “flagship lifestyle store” and it is of the design of those found in the most dense portions of downtown Seattle: residential above ground with grocery and parking below. My impressions were as follows:
Parking: Access was easy despite the looky-loo crowds. The parking garage was well marked and easy to enter from the street. High ceilings helped immensely in minimizing the negative impression I have when entering underground garages. If given the choice I always prefer street parking. That said, Safeway’s parking spaces were ample and it did not appear that the builder cut corners by squeezing in extra parking spaces, thereby making every space miserable and lanes too narrow. One should not have to feel like a sardine when one enters a parking garage — especially a garage needed for grocery shopping.
There are different expectations with regard to parking on the Eastside when compared to Seattle. Parking here is plentiful, free and easy to use. In Seattle that is simply not the case. Many despise the parking hassles of Seattle and we do not wish to recreate Seattle-style parking hassles in Kirkland. When given an option, people will chose the easiest route. Let us not make Kirkland a difficult place to shop.
Parking is my greatest concern with the Parkplace project. My sincere hope is that the utmost attention is paid to ingress and egress issues. Parkplace will be visited by many of us multiple times a week. The experience of grocery shopping is bad enough without added hassles of having to park in a dark, low-ceilinged underground garage with small parking spaces, tight corners and poor ventilation. That is the nightmare we want to avoid. My impression is that it is in Touchstone’s best interests to design a successful building for every user. That includes the neighbors who will shop at the QFC.
Entry from the garage: To enter Safeway from the underground garage there is a large industrial staircase that is both ugly and uninviting. There is also a couple of large elevators but they are located around a corner and hidden from view for much of the garage.
At the Whole Foods in Ravenna, for example, your purchased groceries go on a special dumbwaiter down to the garage where employees load your car for you when you pull up. No grocery carts allowed in the parking garage.
The Bellevue Safeway allows for grocery carts to be wheeled into large elevators and right up to your car - just like you do today at street level. This was a happy surprise. I very much prefer the design where the customer does not have extra hassles added to the grocery shopping routine. In comparison to the Ravenna Whole Foods method of getting groceries to your car, Bellevue Safeway has done a better job.
Beyond that, it was a regular Safeway with a few spiffy additions. I would also say that the Bellevue Safeway is at ground level and it is as inviting to enter to a pedestrian as a grocery store can be. Examples of below-grade grocery stores that I am aware of are both on Mercer Street in lower Queen Anne: The Tribeca Safeway and the Metropolitan Market (formerly Larry’s Market). These two stores require the customer to enter below grade, and they are far less pedestrian friendly and inviting than stores with better design. I hope that Touchstone designs a grocery store with ease of access and ease of use as the primary design elements. Much can be learned by visiting similar developments and hopefully, Kirkland will have a local grocery store we want to visit, not one we must visit simply because there are not alternatives.
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6 Responses to “New Bellevue Safeway has lessons to learn for future downtown Kirkland QFC”
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From the outside, the project looks like a carbon copy of Tribeca. Ho hum. Whatever, it’s Bellevue. We need to be sure that Touchstone & their team will design structures for Park Place that fit with the character of Kirkland.
As for the functionality of the grocery and parking etc, you’ve made good observations & suggestions, Rob. I hope you’ll forward a copy to Touchstone and to the Planning Commission.
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Thoughtful post! I hadn’t thought about how to make an underground parking garage inviting for grocery shopping before.
For below-grade grocery stores, we now also have the example of Kress IGA on 3rd Ave in Seattle. (They cater exclusively to pedestrians.) They do a masterful job of presenting an inviting view down the escalators with all the fresh produce, but they have other deficits — the cashier workflow is horrible during the lunchtime crush, and apparently the city made them keep a step that goes down from the escalator platform to the regular floor.
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Hmmm… interesting post and comments. This makes me think about which direction ParkPlace is heading either as an accessible mall for everyone or only for pedestrians and transportation issues in general. I have no illusions that it could ever be car-friendly to the exclusion of pedestrians but the reverse is certainly possible. In the current climate, pedestrian and non-car modes of transportation are needed but not to the exclusion of the mode of transport we all use daily: the car. A pedestrian only grocery store works for parts of Seattle but it would never work here in Kirkland no matter how painful those in power want to make it for customers and merchants to conduct commerce. The worthy goal of creating better bus/transit/bike/pedestrian access to a property should be achieved through means that do not limit the success of the project by making it difficult to access or expensive to visit. The best projects in the world (and that is what our goal for ParkPlace should be) cater to the needs of all of these groups and they do not have to be mutually exclusive. Like it or not, cars exist. No sane individual would want to limit the success for the project in order to discourage people from visiting by car. Why build the thing if you plan to make it painful for your users? Who would want to shop at such a place?
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The Safeway in northeast Seattle, off I-5 on NE 75th Street, has some surface parking and some underneath the store. The lower parking seems to work just fine.
The new IGA that Eve mentioned had to be retrofitted into the existing building, so I’m not surprised that they have some crowding issues. Park Place will have a whole new building, so it should have more elbow room by design.
I appreciate Sandleman’s concerns, but I am sure that Park Place will handle both cars and pedestrians well. I’ve attended some of the presentations, and the Touchstone folks are very concerned about the pedestrain expenrience on the surface. As for cars, no commercial development owner on the Eastside would not try to make it easy for cars to come, park, shop and leave. The system that has most of the parking below and lots of walking areas on the surface sounds like a good one to me.
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Ghost–If Touchstone is so concerned about the experience and making parking work, why are they proposing fewer parking stalls than required, or recommended, for a development of this size? Given, at this size it’s a mall, not a shopping center, why wouldn’t they provide adequate parking for those traveling out of the immediate area to shop here? I don’t think they have the city’s best interests at heart if they are short cutting parking.
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WtbK, I was referring to the interaction between cars and pedestrians that the previous poster was worried about. I wasn’t talking about the amount of parking that Touchstone proposes. I do not claim to be a parking expert.
However, would a Touchstone deliberately build a project without enough parking? Wouldn’t that just drive away their customers?
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