James Beard Foundation Award-winning chef Renee Erickson is bringing her Seattle restaurant group, Sea Creatures, to the Eastside for the first time. The group has signed a lease for a new restaurant at The Eight in Downtown Bellevue.
Skanska announced the lease on Oct. 27. The Eight is the company’s 25-story, 541,000-square-foot office tower at 10770 NE 8th St. The restaurant concept and opening date have not been released yet. Both will be announced later.
Erickson, who is also an author, owns and runs Sea Creatures with her partners. The group’s restaurants include The Walrus and the Carpenter, Westward, Deep Dive, Willmott’s Ghost, Lioness and General Porpoise, among others. Its concepts are built around food, drink and hospitality that feature what the Pacific Northwest produces.
“We’re excited to bring Sea Creatures to Bellevue and to become part of the community on the Eastside,” Erickson said. “The Eight gives us a wonderful setting to create something new, and we look forward to sharing more about what we have planned as we get closer to opening.”
Charlie Foushée, executive vice president and regional manager at Skanska USA Commercial Development in Seattle, said Sea Creatures has helped shape the region’s dining scene over the past few decades, and called bringing Erickson and her team to Bellevue an exciting milestone for the tower.
“From the outset, we envisioned The Eight as more than an office tower — we wanted to create a dynamic, welcoming place that contributes to the energy of downtown Bellevue,” Foushée said. “Sea Creatures is exactly the kind of local operator we envisioned as part of that experience.”
The lease fills the last of The Eight’s ground-floor retail space. Skanska’s goal has been a hand-picked mix of food, beverage and retail tenants that serves the people who work in the building and also brings residents and visitors into its public spaces. At street level, the shops, the office lobby and a “Living Room” open to the public all face a landscaped plaza along NE 8th Street. The project also has a carbon-efficient retail pavilion built from heavy timber, with an exposed mass-timber ceiling and floor-to-ceiling glass facing the plaza.
Pickard Chilton designed The Eight, which was completed in 2025. The project added open space, natural light, walking paths and street-level activity along NE 8th Street. It is the first project in Bellevue to earn LEED v4 Core & Shell Platinum certification.
Skanska has leased more than 93 percent of the tower’s office space so far.
