Bellevue has room for more rooms

Bellevue, get ready for another Marriott.

HEI Hotels & Resorts, a Connecticut-based hotel developer, said Tuesday it plans to build a 14-floor, 378-room Marriott hotel in downtown Bellevue by 2010.

HEI's first hotel project in Washington state will be on a one-acre site on the southeast quadrant on 110th Avenue Northeast and Northeast Third Place. It will have 13,000 square feet of meeting space, a restaurant, fitness facility, indoor pool and a parking garage.

Lately, hoteliers have been flying into Bellevue on the tails of corporate giants such as Microsoft and Expedia that are expanding operations on the Eastside.

A Marriott Residence hotel is under construction near Interstate 405 at the Wilburton interchange, and it's been less than two years since two Marriott hotels opened in the area. A 251-room Courtyard hotel in downtown Bellevue and Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Kirkland debuted in December 2005.

Marriott is just one of the many hotel chains attracted to the area.

Three hotel projects are in the works in Bellevue, said Robert Derrick, economic development director for the city. Besides the Marriott Residence, a boutique hotel under construction in Eastgate will be completed by fall. Hyatt Regency Bellevue in the central business district is doubling its size with a new tower. Each hotel takes about 18 months to build, Derrick said.

Steve Gilbert, economic development manager for the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce, said the Bel-Red corridor and the Crossroads and Overlake areas on the east side of Bellevue hold potential for more hotels.

"I don't think we've come close to the bottom," Gilbert said. "We've got additional capacity here in Bellevue."

Russell Urban, senior vice president of development at HEI, said his company has been planning the Bellevue hotel development since last November.

"We're enthusiastic about it because Bellevue is such a dynamic and high-growth commercial market," Urban said.

HEI is also looking for opportunities in Seattle, including a potential project in South Lake Union, Urban said.

The planned Marriott hotel is designed for business travelers.

With Microsoft taking over about 1.4 million square feet of office space in Bellevue, Eddie Bauer moving its headquarters to downtown Bellevue and Expedia moving in, too, there's a demand for more meeting space, Gilbert said.

"Business leads to business," he said.

All this business might sometimes be a bit of an inconvenience, though.

Gilbert said a board meeting of his was pushed out of the Hyatt Regency Bellevue earlier this week. A news conference with President Bush took precedence.

"We got booted," said Gilbert. "[But] we graciously relocated."

Bibeka Shrestha: 206-515-5632 or bshrestha@seattletimes.com

Information in this story, originally published on August 29, 2007, was corrected on September 4, 2007. In an article about plans for a new Marriott hotel in Bellevue, Steve Gilbert was incorrectly identified as Bellevue's economic development manager. He is actually the economic development manager for the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce.