Bill Pace sits at the back of his empty market. Against one wall are refrigerated shelves, ready to be stacked with produce; chairs and tables are pushed into another corner and a few crates are piled with squash. At the back is a walk-in full of apples harvested last fall.

Though modestly outfitted, this space in the Newport Hills neighborhood of South Bellevue gives many residents hope that a commercial core can be restored.

“That’s my idea, to get some activity going and attract other businesses,” Pace says, as he scans the room. “[I want] to bring a little life back into this strip mall.”

Though best known for his fruit stand south of downtown Bellevue, Pace is expanding to the Newport Hills neighborhood. When it opens, the back of the market will be outfitted with a coffee shop. He’ll sell produce, milk and eggs, frozen meals and fruit pies.

In 2009 Newport Hills lost its neighborhood grocer, Red Apple.

“When we lost that business it was like a balloon deflated,” says Heidi Dean, president of the Newport Hills Community Club (NHCC).

Other businesses soon followed suit. A family-owned pharmacy across the way and a Hallmark store shuttered their doors. The burger place closed, then Bank of America.

Shopping centers like the one in Newport at 119th Avenue Southeast and Southeast 56th Street, have struggled in recent years as they’ve been outpaced by bigger malls and chain stores.

Today in Newport Hills, life seems to follow a different pace than the rest of Bellevue. The old Red Apple plot adjacent to Bill’s fruit stand is still vacant, though well-kept. The shopping center parking lot is half-full, and with so few businesses or public spaces, it can be difficult to find a gathering place for community events.

But though it’s weathered difficult times in recent years—including a November apartment fire that displaced six families — Newport Hills is a neighborhood of survivors, says Dean: “We’re not a community that’s sitting back, waiting for somebody to rescue us.”

Many residents hope Bill’s fruit stand will offer the start of a new chapter.

“We can’t control very well, what businesses come in, other than welcoming them with open arms,” says Robin Bentley, vice president of NHCC. “But we’re hoping this will be a catalyst.”

Restoring the retail core

Bill Pace Fruit and Produce opened in 2001, off Bellevue Way and the Mercer Slough Blueberry Farm. Operating out of the small stand, Pace sold items from the Bellevue farm and his own Yakima orchard: apples, cherries, nectarines, pears, peaches and others as the season permitted.

But light rail threatened to impact business and when a feasibility study revealed that Newport Hills residents were hungry for fresh produce, Michelle Hilhorst, club merchant of NHCC approached Pace about expanding his business to the shopping center.

That proactive endurance defines Newport. Pace, who’d hoped to open in November, took two and a half years to secure the lease and is still waiting on permits to finalize his opening, but says the community’s incredible enthusiasm propels him forward.

“If I’m involved in something, you’ve got me [100 percent], all of me,” says Pace. “…I want to have the best place in Newport Hills. I want to have more traffic up here than they’ve seen in years. I can see this parking lot full.”

‘Not going down without a fight’

The added time, also has allowed for more community input. Like a general store in a small town, Bentley and Dean are eager to use the space as a community gathering place. Dean suggests posting “recipes of the week” featuring different seasonal produce, and a bulletin at the back to serve as a sort of neighborhood calendar. Residents regularly poke their heads in to check on the status of Bill’s opening, and on his Facebook page they promise to make the fruit stand a pit stop in their daily commute.

“It’s going to be very hard to get the city to notice us,” says Bentley, “because their initiatives are downtown livability…and the brand new Bel-Red Spring District that’s the darling of the planning commission. Older neighborhoods with buildings that are struggling, like us, just are not going to be on their agenda. Though we hope we’re second or third.”

Dean, Bentley and Hilhorst are optimistic. The Coal Creek culvert replacement project, they suspect, will funnel more traffic through the neighborhood as commuters attempt to bypass the construction. Dean hopes to begin cold-calling tenants again, to fill the old Red Apple, and says better signage off the highway and in Newport’s main thoroughfares could attract more business.

“We’re not going down without a fight,” says Dean. “We’re not dead yet. Sometimes, being where we are, people forget about us, but we’re not willing to let that happen.”

And while Dean and Bentley say they hope to revive Newport’s commercial core, they don’t want to lose that small suburb spirit. Both hope Bill’s fruit stand will be the momentum they need.

“The people here are really amazing,” says Dean. “We are not ‘rich’ compared to some of the other Bellevue neighborhoods but we are rich in community spirit.”