Two aging office buildings on 112th Avenue NE will be torn down and replaced with 42 townhomes after the city granted approval for the Bellewood Townhomes project in Northwest Bellevue.

The 3.2-acre site at 2229 and 2233 112th Ave. NE, on the southwest corner of NE 24th Street, currently holds a pair of buildings from the Bellewood Office Park built around 1978. Together they contain 53,218 square feet of office space. Both will be demolished.

In their place: seven four-story, wood-framed residential buildings designed by Bellevue-based Freiheit Architecture, according to city permit records published July 29. The city's land use director issued approval with conditions. William Lindgren of Freiheit Architecture is listed as the applicant in city filings.

The project still faces a Hearing Examiner public hearing scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 27 at 6 p.m. at Bellevue City Hall, 450 110th Ave. NE. That hearing will be hybrid, with a virtual option via Zoom. The appeal period for the director's decision ends Wednesday, Aug. 12 at 5 p.m.

The conversion fits a broader pattern along Bellevue's suburban office corridors. Downtown Bellevue office properties lost $1.61 billion in value between 2022 and 2025, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal. While the Bellewood site sits outside downtown, the same market pressure is pushing aging office stock toward residential redevelopment.

The site is zoned Office within a transition overlay. To proceed, the project required a conditional use permit, design review, permission to build near a steep slope and modifications to an existing zoning agreement tied to the property. It is exempt from state environmental review.

The finished community will include a nearly 3,000-square-foot fenced play area for children on the western edge of the property, exceeding Bellevue's 2,400-square-foot minimum for a development this size, the Downtown Bellevue Network reported. The seven buildings will share a unified architectural style with varied materials and colors, and the developer plans to build all 42 units at once rather than in phases.

A building permit application for one of the seven buildings was filed May 4 and remains pending. No construction start date or completion timeline has been announced. Pricing and whether the units will be sold or rented has not been disclosed.

Residents can submit written comments to [email protected] by 5 p.m. on Aug. 27. The assigned city planner is Wayland Barton, reachable at 425-452-2725.