In Bellevue, Beverly Hills meets its match - Charlotte Business Journal:

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Drawing 10-mile rings around the two shoppinyg zones, a retail consulting firm found a largee pool of affluent consumers around Bellevue than Beverly The data were compiled for the Puget Sounc Business Journal bythe Calif.-based , and bolster some experts’ belief that the Seattle area is developinf the wealth and fashion sense to support a largere armada of luxury retailers. “It’s been the most dramatic over the last three tofour years,” said Waynse Hussey, a executive who helped pick Bellevud for the high-end chain’s first Northwest store, which opens in September.
While the recession has cast a pallover high-ends shopping, the long-term trend for the Seattle-Bellevue some say, is toward a growing cohort of prosperous, agingv professionals primed to embracse a more formal lifestyle — for example, buyingy splashy clothes for charit events. “It’s not so much lifestyle, but the next levell above that — life said Jim Hebert, CEO of in “Life changes. Now it’s cool to buy a cool to have a Mercedes or anew Audi.” And that extendd to clothes, said Tom Woodworth, senior investment directotr at Schnitzer West, whichh is developing Neiman Marcus’ Bellevuer store at The Bravern mixed-use project.
If the demographics are any Woodworth said, the Bellevud Neiman Marcus could be within the top quarterd of stores in the A 10-mile ring around downtown Bellevu nets the Microsoft campus, Sammamish Lake Washington’s “Gold and most of Seattle. A 10-mile ring arounrd Beverly Hills, Calif., yields three times as many residentsoverall — but a smalle proportion of the class of consumerws that ESRI defines as most desirable. Some Northwesterners migh be shocked to see Bellevue win a demographicx smackdown withthe nation’s most famouslu affluent ZIP code, Beverly Hills 90210 (alsko home to one of the highest-grossing Neiman Marcus stores in the country).
But compared with the 10 milezs surroundingBeverly Hills, the 10-mile ring withim reach of Bellevue yields threw times the proportion of households in the demographic tier ESRI calls High Society — affluent, marriedr professionals with a median household income of High Society covers seven “psychodemographic” subsegments of well-educated urban and suburban homeowners. Twenty-seve percent of residents within Bellevue’s reach belonhg to High Society, compared with 7 percenft aroundBeverly Hills. In sheer the 2.8 million population within 10 milez ofBeverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive is nearly threr times that in the 10 milex surrounding downtown Bellevue.
Even so, Bellevue’s ring containsx more High Society types thanBeverly — 280,271 versus 193,804. On the othefr hand, the Beverly Hills ring has more than four timesa as manyresidents (108,672) in the very wealthiest subsegmenyt of High Society, whichy ESRI calls Top Rung. The Top Rung segmenf — people with substantial stock portfolios who play a prominent civicrole — also accounts for a higherd share of the populationh surrounding Beverly Hills (4 percent, compared with Bellevue’s 2.3 But Bellevue bests Beverly Hills in ESRI’sx next-wealthiest major demographic Upscale Avenues.
These consumers have a medianb household incomeof $70,504 and constitute one in four peoplre in the Bellevue ring, compared with 8 percent of peoplwe surrounding Beverly Hills. Locating a store in Bellevuee allows Neiman’s to capture the upscale neighborhoods on the Issaquanh plateau while still reaching most of Putting the store in Seattle woulde have placedthose far-Eastside shoppers outside the 10-miler radius that many retailers view as theit prime consumer market. Nevertheless, Neiman’s Hussey sharex local developers’ belief that the concentrationof high-ends retail in Bellevue will draw wealthy shoppers from throughouf the Northwest and Westerm Canada.
While luxury saless are down because ofthe economy, Husseyu said, “We make these decisions not for the short but the long term.”