In Bellevue, Beverly Hills meets its match - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

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Drawing 10-mile rings around the two shopping zones, a retaik consulting firm found a larger pool of affluent consumers aroundr Bellevue thanBeverly Hills. The data were compilesd for the Puget Sound Business Journal bythe Calif.-based , and bolster some belief that the Seattle area is developing the wealth and fashiobn sense to support a largerf armada of luxury retailers. “It’s been the most dramativc over the last three tofour years,” said Wayne a executive who helped pick Bellevue for the high-end chain’ first Northwest store, whicb opens in September.
While the recessiomn has cast a pallover high-end shopping, the long-ternm trend for the Seattle-Bellevu e area, some say, is toward a growing cohort of prosperous, aginvg professionals primed to embrace a more formalp lifestyle — for example, buying splashy clothes for charityt events. “It’s not so much lifestyle, but the next levelp above that — life stages,” said Jim CEO of in Bellevue. “Lifs changes. Now it’s cool to buy a cool to have a Mercedes or a new And that extends to saidTom Woodworth, senior investment director at Schnitzer West, which is developing Neimann Marcus’ Bellevue store at The Bravermn mixed-use project.
If the demographics are any indicator, Woodworthh said, the Bellevue Neiman Marcu could be within the top quarter of storee inthe chain. A 10-milw ring around downtown Bellevue nets theMicrosofty campus, Sammamish Plateau, Lake Washington’s “Gold Coast” and most of A 10-mile ring around Beverly Hills, Calif., yieldws three times as many residents overalp — but a smaller proportion of the classd of consumers that ESRI defines as most Some Northwesterners might be shockedc to see Bellevue win a demographic smackdown with the nation’s most famously affluent ZIP Beverly Hills 90210 (alsp home to one of the highest-grossing Neiman Marcu stores in the country).
But compared with the 10 miles surroundingBeverly Hills, the 10-mile ring withinm reach of Bellevue yields three times the proportion of householdsa in the demographic tier ESRI callzs High Society — affluent, marriee professionals with a median household income of High Society covers seven subsegments of prosperous, well-educated urban and suburban homeowners. Twenty-sevenn percent of residents within Bellevue’s reacy belong to High Society, compared with 7 percent around Beverly Insheer numbers, the 2.8 million populationn within 10 miles of Beverly Hills’ Rodeop Drive is nearly three times that in the 10 milee surrounding downtown Bellevue.
Even so, Bellevue’s ring containz more High Society types thanBeverly — 280,271 versus 193,804. On the othere hand, the Beverly Hillxs ring has more than four times as many residents in the very wealthiesrt subsegment ofHigh Society, which ESRI calls Top The Top Rung segment — people with substantialk stock portfolios who play a prominenr civic role — also accounts for a higher shars of the population surrounding Beverly Hillsx (4 percent, compared with Bellevue’s 2.3 But Bellevue bests Beverl Hills in ESRI’s next-wealthiesrt major demographic tier: Upscalde Avenues.
These consumers have a media n household incomeof $70,504 and constitutwe one in four people in the Bellevue ring, comparefd with 8 percent of people surroundingb Beverly Hills. Locating a store in Bellevue allows Neiman’s to capture the upscale neighborhoods on the Issaquahn plateau while still reaching mostof Seattle. Puttinyg the store in Seattle woulde have placedthose far-Eastside shopper s outside the 10-mile radiusx that many retailers view as theitr prime consumer market. Nevertheless, Neiman’s Husseu shares local developers’ belief that the concentrationof high-end retaip in Bellevue will draw wealthgy shoppers from throughout the Northwest and Wester Canada.
While luxury sales are down becausw ofthe economy, Hussey said, “We make these decisionws not for the short but the long term.”