North Bend Premium Outlets opened in 1990 at Exit 31 off Interstate 90, timed to a decade-long effort to reroute regional traffic back into North Bend after a highway bypass had diverted motorists around the town’s original downtown core. Simon Property Group now owns and operates the center, part of the wider Chelsea/Premium Outlets portfolio Simon consolidated in the early 2000s.
The center sits 30 minutes east of Seattle at the foot of the Cascade Mountains, drawing from Snoqualmie, Issaquah and Bellevue as well as from pass-through traffic headed to Snoqualmie Falls and the Snoqualmie Casino, all within four miles.
Coach, Nike, Under Armour, Columbia and Eddie Bauer anchor a roster that local press and police have described as facing real theft and vacancy pressure over the past several years, with Nike and Coach alone accounting for a combined 46 reported thefts in 2021.
New store openings since 2022 suggest a partial recovery, and Simon continues to report rising occupancy and rents across its broader outlet portfolio even where individual centers like North Bend face the theft and turnover problems that come with a smaller, single-loop outlet format built around parking-lot-facing storefronts rather than an enclosed mall.
