What’s going on with the Shopping Center? Update on Bellevue’s Planning Process:
October 2025
The city of Bellevue is working on an initiative called “Housing Opportunities in Mixed-use Areas” (HOMA). The idea of HOMA is to modify some of the requirements of its existing land use rules for parcels in mixed-use zoning categories (“mixed-use” means the zoning allows a combination of retail/commercial and housing uses on the same parcel), in order to encourage developers to include housing in the redevelopment of those parcels. HOMA is a city-wide initiative; in Newport Hills the parcels affected would be the Newport Hills Shopping Center, the S-Mart/Terry’s Kitchen parcel, and the Jax Dog Drop/Hairstudio 60 parcel.
In Newport Hills the HOMA changes would increase allowed building heights to 5-6 stories; allow bigger building footprints; reduce parking requirements and setbacks; reduce or eliminate transition zones between commercial and residential parcels; and eliminate requirements for ground floor retail, changing the focus of Neighborhood Centers from neighborhood-serving commercial spaces to primarily dense housing and “pedestrian-oriented” (very limited parking) retail similar to Newcastle Commons.
The city has heard from developers that its current mixed-use zoning categories impose requirements that make it uneconomic to redevelop and include housing. The HOMA changes are intended to remove or modify those requirements to expand how a mixed-use project can be configured, thereby encouraging developers to include housing in new projects.
The HOMA changes are broad and general – they specify things like maximum building height and maximum FAR (floor area ratio), but any project that fits within those limits could be built. As a result there is no specific project for Newport Hills residents to react to, as there was in the case of prior rezoning proposals for the shopping center (in 2016 and 2018 the owner of the shopping center brought proposals for site-specific amendments to the Comp Plan that would have permitted the existing shopping center to be replaced with a small fringe of retail on the 119th Ave SE side of the parcel and the rest filled in with townhouses and stacked flats).
These HOMA changes, if adopted, would be in addition to the land use changes Bellevue adopted in the summer of 2025 that allow at least 4-6 housing units to be built on any single-family zoned lot throughout the city.
The changes being proposed were developed by city staff with lots of input from housing advocates, developers, and other special interest groups, but very little from the residents near the Neighborhood Centers. The Planning Commission began considering HOMA last spring, paused over the summer, but has taken it up again now – so now is the crucial time for residents to give input. The Commission needs to hear residents’ perspectives and use our concerns to help shape the final version of these changes.
The Planning Commission has already held one HOMA study session, and has scheduled a second for Wednesday, October 8, at 6:30p.m. at City Hall. It’s likely that at this meeting they will schedule a public hearing – after which the Commission may adopt a recommendation to send the HOMA changes to the City Council for adoption.
