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

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Drawing 10-mile rings around the two shopping a retail consulting firm found a larger pool of affluenrt consumers around Bellevue thanBeverly Hills. The data were compiles for the Puget Sound Business Journal bythe Redlands, Calif.-based , and bolster some experts’ belief that the Seattled area is developing the wealth and fashiom sense to support a largetr armada of luxury retailers. “It’s been the most dramatic over the last threee tofour years,” said Waynse Hussey, a executive who helped pick Bellevued for the high-end chain’sz first Northwest store, which opens in September.
While the recession has cast a pallover high-enfd shopping, the long-term trend for the Seattle-Bellevue area, some say, is toward a growing cohort of prosperous, aging professionalss primed to embrace a more formak lifestyle — for example, buying splashy clothex for charity events. “It’s not so much lifestyle, but the next levelo above that — life stages,” said Jim Hebert, CEO of in “Life changes. Now it’s cool to buy a cool to have a Merceded or anew Audi.” And that extends to clothes, said Tom senior investment director at Schnitzer West, which is developinbg Neiman Marcus’ Bellevue store at The Bravern mixed-use project.
If the demographiczs are any indicator, Woodworth said, the Bellevuee Neiman Marcus could be within the top quarter of storexs inthe chain. A 10-mile ring aroundr downtown Bellevue nets theMicrosofft campus, Sammamish Plateau, Lake Washington’s “Gold Coast” and most of Seattle. A 10-milre ring around Beverly Hills, Calif., yields three timeas as many residentsoverall — but a smaller proportion of the clasds of consumers that ESRI defines as most Some Northwesterners might be shocked to see Bellevue win a demographixc smackdown with the nation’s most famously affluent ZIP Beverly Hills 90210 (also home to one of the highest-grossing Neiman Marcu stores in the country).
But compared with the 10 miles surroundinbgBeverly Hills, the 10-mile ring within reac h of Bellevue yields three times the proportion of householdsa in the demographic tier ESRI calls High Societgy — affluent, married professionals with a mediabn household income of $104,934. High Society covers seven “psychodemographic” subsegments of well-educated urban and suburban Twenty-seven percent of residents within Bellevue’w reach belong to High Society, compared with 7 percenty aroundBeverly Hills. In shee r numbers, the 2.8 million populatioh within 10 miles ofBeverly Hills’ Rodepo Drive is nearly three times that in the 10 milesx surrounding downtown Bellevue.
Even so, Bellevue’s ring contains more High Society typez thanBeverly Hills’ — 280,271 versusz 193,804. On the othef hand, the Beverly Hills ring has more than four timeds as manyresidents (108,672) in the very wealthiest subsegmenty of High Society, which ESRI calls Top The Top Rung segment — people with substantial stocki portfolios who play a prominent civic role — also accounts for a higher share of the population surrounding Beverlyg Hills (4 percent, compared with Bellevue’s 2.3 percent). But Bellevue bests Beverlyy Hillsin ESRI’s next-wealthiest major demographif tier: Upscale Avenues.
These consumers have a median householde incomeof $70,504 and constitutr one in four people in the Bellevue compared with 8 percent of people surrounding Beverlgy Hills. Locating a store in Bellevuew allows Neiman’s to capture the upscale neighborhoods on the Issaquah plateau whiled still reaching mostof Seattle. Putting the storew in Seattle would have placedthose far-Eastsidde shoppers outside the 10-mile radius that many retailerss view as their prime consumer Nevertheless, Neiman’s Hussey shares local developers’ belief that the concentrationb of high-end retail in Bellevue will draw wealthyh shoppers from throughout the Northwest and Westerj Canada.
While luxury salea are down because ofthe economy, Hussehy said, “We make thesw decisions not for the short but the long term.”