There are several occasions, in Downtown Bellevue, where it’d be nice to go out later than 9:30pm on the weekdays, other than to a bar or restaurant. The options in Downtown Bellevue are scarce; I found one and wanted to make sure that all are familiar with it!
The Starbucks, at 626 106th Ave NE, next to Barnes and Noble, remains open until 10:30pm on weeknights. It’s actually quite a popular place to hang out. At 10pm last night, about 30 people occupied the store, inside and at the outside tables. If you’re meeting up with friends, or have some work to do and need to get out of the house, it’s nice to have this outlet.
It seems apparent that Downtown Bellevue could benefit from more places, such as this, which are open after 9pm on weeknights, as well as weekends. For example, Top Pot Doughnut closes early at 7pm. On Main Street, all non-restaurants close early and don’t leave any time to enjoy after-work hours. There are some venues I’d like to see open beyond 7:00pm, as well as opportunities for new stores to accommodate this urban crowd that is steadily occupying Downtown Bellevue.
Store Hours:
Mon – Thur 5:30am – 10:30am
Friday 5:30am – 11:00pm
Saturday 6:30am – 11:00pm
Sunday 7:00am – 10:30pm
It’s not just downtown Bellevue, it’s the whole Eastside. After 9pm practically everything closes, and by 10pm you’ve got nothing but fast food, a Denny’s or two and Burgermaster (until Midnight or so.) Granted, Burgermaster is better than nothing, but still…
I couldn’t agree more. The entire eastside is very much a bedroom community in that respect.
We were with friends the other night and we wanted to goto a place to have some coffee and chat after dinner. All places we went to were either closed or were closing around 9 pm!. We ended up driving all the way to downtown Kirkland to have our coffee.
Wish we knew about B&N Starbucks.
Hmm, I never have this problem. Pretty much every restaurant is open till 12. Then there’s Parlor, Vertigo, Lucky Strike. If you narrow the problem to attempting to find places where you could study late night + have coffee, then I guess there’s not much.
Yes all of these restaurants are open late. The point of this post was to communicate how there aren’t many places besides restaurants or bars that are open late.
I would suggest that the great weather we’re having opens up a whole ‘nother set of possibilities: public open spaces downtown. From City Hall Plaza on the east, the new City Center Plaza (by transit center), the Ped corridor, Ashwood Park, the Ten20 plaza, Downtown Park, the list goes on. Great spaces to hang out in the fresh air in a relatively quiet downtown environment. We’re lucky developers have put these spaces aside for us to enjoy!
Thanks for reminding us of our fabulous open spaces, Leslie. Now we just need later-night programming to enjoy them to the fullest. Michael, maybe you can promote the movies that will take place in Downtown Park, Shakespeare in the Park, or better yet, wouldn’t it be fun to have permission to line up some lower-key,live music outside Grand Cru in the Ten20 Plaza at Ashwood Park?
I completely agree! There is nowhere to go after 10 p.m. aside from a bar! Keep sharing when you find places like these!