Bellevue’s Grand Connection Crossing gets county assistance

Published 9:55 am Tuesday, May 12, 2026

King County will be helping the city of Bellevue build a vehicle-free crossing over I-405 through a 25-year tax increment financing (TIF) plan.

At the May 5 King County Council Meeting, the council approved King County’s partial participation in Bellevue’s TIF project in the construction of the Grand Connection Crossing.

The project will link Eastrail corridor, the Wilburton neighborhood, downtown Bellevue, and Meydenbauer Bay Park. The county will not incrementally increase the property taxes in the Tax Increment Area (TIA) over the next 25 years to allow the city of Bellevue to make debt service payments on the project.

“The city of Bellevue is pursuing funding for a really regionally significant and generationally impactful project to create a pedestrian community overpass. It’s a bit more than an overpass, that’s why they call it the Grand Connection, over I-405 connecting the west side of downtown Bellevue to the east side of our growing civic center,” Councilmember Claudia Balducci said.

The city of Bellevue has gotten approval from all the taxing districts in the TIA and recently adopted state Engrossed Senate Bill 5801, which allows the city to form a TIA with a maximum of $500 million of assessed value. The TIA consists of 63.3 acres of parcels that the city and a consultant team have identified as having a “clear development nexus to the Grand Connection Crossing project.”

“This is the first time we’re doing something exactly like this and I’m really interested to see how it works, really interested to see what benefits we can provide to the community through participating in this way,” Balducci said.

Councilmember Rod Dembowski said the project is similar to a recent pedestrian crossing in Shoreline in which the county contributed $10 million for the project. He said you can already see hundreds of new housing units springing up because of that project’s progress.

“Infrastructure like this does make a difference for development. The county has participated in a very similar project, but on a not grand scale, a small scale, and it worked. So the testimony about this project rang true to me because I’ve seen it in my own community,” Dembowski said. “This is a little bit bigger of an investment, but what’s good for Shoreline is good for Bellevue in my book.”

The crossing is a part of a larger Bellevue Grand Connection to transform the public spaces along the corridor between Meydenbauer Bay and Eastrail. The project is expected to generate additional sales tax revenue of approximately $30 million from 2027 to 2031, based on county sales tax increments and expected taxable activity from construction and new commerce. The most conservative estimate for future development predicts 6.54 million square feet of multifamily, office and retail space in the area and $6.1 billion of taxable real market value.

The city of Bellevue and King County together make up more than 70% of the total projected TIF revenues for the project, but the other overlapping jurisdictions include Sound Transit, EMS, King County Library District, Port of Seattle, and Flood Control.

“I’m really encouraged to see the collaboration and the partnership that has gone into creating the legislation that’s in front of us today. It bodes well for future partnership,” Councilmember Rhonda Lewis said. “I want to echo what my colleagues … said about using such creativity in some of our opportunity areas that don’t have the same assets that we’re finding for those involved in this project. So I do support expansion of the trail system and there’s been a lot of work going into this. So I just want to ask my colleagues to keep this in mind in the future.”