On 106th Avenue NE, the Storefronts Keep Changing While the Towers Stay Put

The weekend of September 12, CILO Lab held its grand opening at 550 106th Avenue Northeast. It gave a second item free with any purchase, and it validates three hours of parking in the Bellevue Connection garage. The gelato and boba shop is open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. in Suite 150, the storefront Don't Yell at Me held from 2024.

Five days earlier, the same address was in the news for a different reason. Bungie, the studio behind Halo and Destiny, had listed 210,984 rentable square feet of its headquarters in that building for sublease. On this stretch of 106th Avenue NE, what happens upstairs and what happens at street level run on separate clocks. For anyone who walks this street for lunch or an evening dessert, the storefronts are the part that moves.

The building that emptied upstairs and kept filling downstairs

The Bellevue Connection totals 227,811 square feet, according to owner Unico Properties, so Bungie's listing covers most of the building. The marketing materials break the space into a first floor with motion-capture and streaming studios, a mezzanine, a second floor with playtest rooms and server infrastructure, and a third floor with work areas and a cafe. The listing came roughly ten weeks after Bungie cut 292 jobs at the same address. A state WARN filing put the start of separations at July 9, 2026. A Bungie spokesperson said the studio will keep an office presence in Bellevue but has not said how large it will be or where, according to Downtown Bellevue.

The sublease covers office space only, and the street-level businesses are still operating. In fact the ground floor has had one of its busiest years:

• BA Artisan Bakehouse, Suite 102, was in its soft opening by mid-January 2026. It sells French- and Chinese-inspired pastries, handcrafted breads and coffee.
• Mama Xita BBQ, Suite 101, serves Chinese-Korean-style barbecue with marbled meats and seafood grilled at the table. The menu also carries Korean comfort dishes such as kimchi fried rice and bibimbap. The Seattle Times listed it among the Eastside's new restaurants in June 2026.
• CILO Lab, Suite 150, opened in September as described above.

One street-level tenant has left. Itadaki Yakiniku, the Japanese steakhouse that opened in September 2024 and grilled meats tableside over ceramic charcoal, closed in August. No next tenant had been named as of the September coverage. Next door, Fox & Kit, a coffee shop with an indoor playground from interior designers Devin and Kyoko Westberg, still plans to open what would be its first Washington location. It has not announced a date. About 17,500 square feet of street-level retail at the property is also being marketed, so more storefront news from this building is likely.

Two storefronts, a decade of menus

The pattern goes back further than this year. Two ground-floor spaces on 106th show how often the menu changes while the building above stays the same.

The Bellevue Towers space shows that a building can shape a menu in practical ways. When SuperKim Crab House closed in May 2025, a representative said the all-electric kitchen had made the seafood menu hard to prepare consistently, according to Downtown Bellevue. The next tenant brings a menu that leans on coffee, cream and shaved ice. K-Cafe Dabang & Lounge plans to serve coffee in the morning, matcha in the afternoon and cocktails at night, with small bites all day. The menu includes cream coffees such as the Einspänner, yogurt lattes, bingsu topped with injeolmi, and croffles. The name comes from the dabang, the traditional Korean coffee house. This will be the brand's second location after Lynnwood, and it is a sister restaurant to Wild Wasabi Signature and Wild Wasabi Sushi.

The Bellevue Connection building has changed identity even more than its storefronts. It was built in 1998 over three levels of underground parking and opened as an indoor mall known as the Bellevue Galleria. A renovation finished in 2022 converted interior retail space to office and recreation use.

A street where operators come to start something

Look at who signs leases on 106th and a pattern shows up. Several operators open their first or second location in Washington here.

Rooster & Rice, a Bay Area Thai fast-casual chain known for khao mun gai, opened its first Washington location at 278 106th Avenue NE, inside Soma Towers, by late July 2026. Its other locations include the San Francisco Bay Area, Irvine, Costa Mesa and Beaverton. It joined a lineup in that residential tower that already included La Ma Tou Hot Pot, Xiao Chi Jie and TOASTED. Around the corner at 10606 NE 2nd Street, also in Soma Towers, Chay Concept serves vegetarian Vietnamese food and has been open since at least early 2025.

Fox & Kit would also be a first Washington location. K-Cafe Dabang is a second location for a Lynnwood brand. A few blocks north on the same street, Sano Café opened June 14, 2025, at 453 106th Avenue NE in Centre425.

For someone deciding where to eat, this means the street rewards checking back often. The space where you had a set-menu steak dinner in 2024 now has no named tenant. The pub space Bellevue Towers neighbors knew for a decade will soon serve bingsu.

Walking it, south to north

This is the stretch as of early October 2026, from Soma Towers north to Bellevue Towers:

1. Soma Towers, 278 106th Ave NE and 10606 NE 2nd St. Rooster & Rice, La Ma Tou Hot Pot, Xiao Chi Jie, TOASTED and Chay Concept.
2. 288 106th Ave NE, Suite 203. Ozora Izakaya was announced for this space in June 2025 while remodeling was underway. We found no confirmation that it has opened.
3. Centre425, 453 106th Ave NE. Sano Café.
4. Bellevue Towers, 460 106th Ave NE. K-Cafe Dabang & Lounge, targeted for November.
5. Bellevue Connection, 550 106th Ave NE. BA Artisan Bakehouse, Mama Xita BBQ and CILO Lab are open. The former Itadaki space is empty, and Fox & Kit is still planned.
6. 595 106th Ave NE. Baba's Kebab Shop, a planned Pakistani restaurant. A March 2026 report said project complications had delayed its original late-spring opening. Its website still says "Coming Soon."

That makes four spaces in six blocks where a sign or an announcement is ahead of the opening. Opening dates on this street have tended to slip, so the safest approach is to treat a planned opening as planned until the doors are open.

Where the street meets the season

The fall calendar adds a few reasons to be on 106th in the evenings. The Bellevue Jazz & Blues Music Series runs October 7 through 11 at venues across Downtown. Jazz Overhaul plays the Meydenbauer Center Theatre on Friday, October 9, at 7:30 p.m., and Lady A plays there Saturday, October 10, at 7:30 p.m. On October 9, the Fall in Bellevue Celebration runs from 1 to 4 p.m. at The Meadow. The Meadow is the 1.75-acre open space at 633 110th Avenue NE, across from the Bellevue Transit Center, which opened April 27.

The Bellevue Downtown Ice Rink season at Bellevue Downtown Park is listed for November 13, 2026, through January 18, 2027. Snowflake Lane runs nightly at 7 p.m. from November 27 to December 24 along Bellevue Way between NE 4th and NE 8th streets. If K-Cafe Dabang opens in November as planned, it will be serving bingsu and cream coffees at 460 106th Avenue NE by the time Snowflake Lane starts.

Every storefront change on 106th Avenue NE means a building owner, a new operator and a neighborhood adjusting at once. Linda has spent 17 years helping Eastside households through changes like that, from downsizing out of a longtime home to moving into a downtown tower. If you live near this street and are thinking about your own next move, Linda Nelson is glad to talk through what's changing on your block and what it might mean for you. Let's Connect.