Crossroads, Bellevue WA

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Brian Lutz
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Location: Bellevue, WA
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Crossroads, Bellevue WA

Post by Brian Lutz »

This is something that started as a discussion over on the Northwest board, but in order to avoid too much digression on that topic, I'm moving this one to here. For a number of months now, I have been working on a project to profile all of the malls found in the Seattle area, and try to find out some of the history behind them, especially as two of the nearby small neighborhood malls are going to be redeveloped in the near future.

Crossroads is a relatively small shopping mall located in Bellevue Wasington with an interesting story behind it, and I am trying to piece together some of its history. Originally, this shopping center opened in late 1963 (although only a small portion of what is there now was completed at the time) anchored by a Market Basket grocery store (apparently unaffiliated with the chain of the same name in california, although I haven't been able to definitively determine this yet.) That store would later become a Big Bear and a Lucky store (I'm not sure which came first of those,) and is now a Michaels Arts and Crafts store. The rest of the mall was built over time, would later be anchored by a Rhodes of Seattle department store that soon became a Lamonts (which became a Gottschalks for a few years after Lamonts' bankruptcy, and is now a large Jo-Ann Fabrics store) and at various times the mall included a 2-screen cinema and an ice skating rink.

Faced with competition from Bellevue Square to the north and a relatively distant location from the highways, over the years the mall declined, to the point that it was considered to be a failed mall by 1984. In 1985, new ownership took over the mall, and through the use of some decidedly non-conventional means they were able to turn around the mall's fortunes, converting it into more of a community center than a traditional shopping mall. Among the unique features found at Crossroads are the Market Restaurants (a food court populated almost entirely by locally owned non-chain ethnic eateries serving up a large variety of different cuisines,) a stage which hosts live music performances several nights a week, a weekly farmers market during the summer, and a large number of local cultural events. Crossroads also maintains a healthy stable of retailers, and has a rather low vacancy rate, especially compared to other small malls in the area that have declined significantly over the last few years.

Major tenants inside the mall:
-QFC (grocery store, Kroger-owned)
-Bed, Bath and Beyond
-Old Navy
-Jo-Ann Fabrics Superstore

Major tenants outside the mall:
-Sports Authority
-Barnes and Noble
-Petco
-Circuit City
-Michaels Arts and Crafts

My profile of this mall for my site is still a work in progress, but you can find the first part of it here:
A Tour of Crossroads Bellevue: Part 1 - The Mall

Some of what my research has turned up so far

Although I was able to get some info from the other thread on the Northwest board, I would be interested in any other info that people might have on this mall (or any of the other malls in the Seattle area, for that matter.)
The Sledgehammer - Version 2.0 - Seattle Area Malls, Retail History, and other random things.
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