In 1981, Seattle’s tourism bureau sponsored a contest to choose a new nickname for their beautiful city on Puget Sound. Sarah Sterling-Franklin, a California resident who owned a summer home near Seattle, won the competition with “The Emerald City” — a name she chose because “Seattle is the jewel of the Northwest, the queen of the Evergreen State, the many-faceted city of space, elegance, magic and beauty.”

Thirty-four years later, despite phenomenal population growth, Seattle remains one of the greenest cities in the country. Thanks to the Olmsted brothers, sons of Frederick Law Olmsted who designed Seattle’s park system in the early 20th century, the city devotes 11 percent of its land to green space, and trees line most streets. National forests drape the terrain outside the city like an undulating green quilt, and the stunning 14,411-foot, snowcapped Mt. Rainier, an ever-present symbol on the horizon, makes an exclamation point on the city’s intimate relationship with nature.

These days, Seattle “green” also means money. Serious money. Many of America’s wealthiest billionaires live in the area, including Paul Allen (Microsoft co-founder, Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers); Steve Ballmer (former Microsoft CEO, Los Angeles Clippers); Jeff Bezos (Amazon); Bill Gates (Microsoft); Anne Gittinger (Nordstrom); James Jannard (Oakley); Craig McCaw (McCaw Cellular, Clearwire); Bruce Nordstrom (Nordstrom); and Howard Schultz (Starbucks) — all making significant corporate and charitable contributions to the city.

Swedish immigrant John Nordstrom opened his first store here in 1901, but it was William Boeing, a 29-year-old adventurer who bought a small shipyard in 1910 to manufacture seaplanes, who became Seattle’s first corporate giant. Although The Boeing Co. moved its headquarters to Chicago in 2001, the firm maintains its largest manufacturing plant in the Seattle suburb of Everett; and with 81,000 employees in the state, it has been a fixture here through boom and bust cycles for more than 100 years.

High-tech firms drive Seattle’s economy today. With 12 percent tech job growth in the last two years, and 43 percent since 2001, Seattle was named Forbes’ best area in the country for high-tech jobs. Real estate developers, construction companies and city transportation managers strain to keep pace with corporate expansion plans. Amazon alone expects to build more than 5 million square feet of office facilities in the next five years, creating a need for 6,000 residential units, about 60 percent of the city’s new housing projections.

Formerly quiet neighborhoods like Queen Anne, Ballard and Capitol Hill are undergoing frenetic revitalization with mixed-use buildings housing small cloud company startups, multinational tech firms, Thai restaurants, bike shops and eclectic boutiques. In the South Lake Union neighborhood, Amazon plans to create a major urban campus, and throughout the city young professionals are moving into pricey glass condo towers. Novelist and Seattle Times economics columnist Jon Talton said the city is becoming “an elite and expensive technopolis.”

Amazon’s Phase IV building in the revitalized downtown neighborhood of South Lake Union © Michael Walmsley

“Seattle has the hipster sophistication of lower Manhattan, especially with respect to its food, wine and coffee culture, but it doesn’t come, yet, with the expense or hassle of New York, San Francisco or L.A. In addition, it is stunningly beautiful with the mountains, Puget Sound and easy access to nature,” said Lenny Simon, a native of New York City who moved to Seattle in 2007 and works for Amazon, one of the “cool” tech companies in the area to work for. Others include Google, Expedia, MOZ, Nintendo of America, Concur, Synapse, Groundspeak and Apple, which quietly opened a small office here in 2014. Those who work at Tommy Bahama, the Seattle-based retailer of Hawai’ian-style shirts, probably have the “coolest” corporate dress code.

As a relatively new resident, Simon has plenty of company in one of the fastest-growing cities in the country (its eastern suburbs are growing even faster). Between 2012 and 2013, Seattle boasted the biggest population increase among the nation’s 50 largest cities, and with a high concentration of residents in the 25–34 age group, it’s one of the most innovative and ambitious.

With more than 20 million leisure and business visitors in 2013, the hospitality industry jumped on board with development projects. Twelve hotel projects are planned, not including hotels which are part of mixed-use projects, a trend seen nationwide. The 43-story, downtown office project Fifth + Columbia, to open in 2016, will include a 184-room SLS Hotel with a Philippe Stark-designed interior and a menu created by Michelin-star chef José Andrés.

Stanford Hotels plans a 50-story hotel/residential/retail tower with 286 hotel rooms; another developer is eyeing a downtown parcel for a 1,680-room, 43-story convention hotel. The redevelopment of Rainier Square will add office and hotel capacity by 2017; and construction started on an 11-story, 160-room upscale boutique hotel overlooking Pike Place Market, including residential apartments, a restaurant, 5,000 square feet of indoor meeting space and a rooftop deck.

Seattle’s restaurant scene rivals San Francisco’s for culinary diversity and venue design. Westward (2013) on Lake Union features a private dock, stunning views and Executive Chef Zoi Antonitsas’ Mediterranean and Northwest dishes; Stoneburner (2013) serves lunch and dinner in a beautifully designed groundfloor space with a European feel in the trendy Hotel Ballard; and Stateside (2014) offers elevated French-Vietnamese cuisine behind a cozy brick and glass façade in Capitol Hill.

“Creative, young workers appreciate a diverse and active urban environment, and Seattle’s strategy has been to invest in our urban neighborhoods to create attractive places where people and businesses want to congregate,” said Steve Johnson, director, Seattle Office of Economic Development. “It’s important to invest in open space and parks, transportation infrastructure, a lively arts scene and development that provides a mix of retail and housing.”

Infrastructure projects are on the rise, especially downtown, where about 65,000 residents live, an increase of 10 percent since 2010. The largest project involves replacing the 60-year-old, double-deck Alaskan Way Viaduct roadway with a two-mile tunnel, opening 26 city blocks for development along the harbor. In summer 2013, the world’s largest tunnel-boring machine, a 7,000-ton behemoth known as Bertha, began the underground work but broke down about halfway through. Construction will resume this year with a completion date scheduled for summer 2017, at a cost of $2 billion.

Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail opened the convenient line between Seattle-Tacoma Airport and downtown in 2009, and an extension to the Capitol Hill and University districts will open in 2016. Planned light rail stations will spur even more commercial and residential development.

Ethan Phelps-Goodman, a software engineer and Seattle resident, created an innovative website and app called “Seattle in Progress,” an interactive street map where users click on development projects under construction and receive details and renderings. It provides a great resource for investors and residents or anyone who wants a look at Seattle’s city-wide revitalization.

SCENIC DRIVES

An easy 47-mile drive (about one hour) northeast of downtown gets you to Wallace Falls State Park. Take Route 520 across Lake Washington, then I-405 North to Exit 23/Route 522 to Route 2 East toward Gold Bar. At the state park ($10 entrance fee) you can hike to a 265-foot waterfall or just admire the scenery of the North Cascade mountains. Stop at Zeke’s Drive-In in Gold Bar for the popular roadside burgers and thick milkshakes.

The drive to rural Vashon Island includes a 20-minute car ferry from Fauntleroy Ferry Terminal (about eight miles south of downtown) and another 10 miles’ drive along Vashon Island Highway. View small vegetable and horse farms and hilly and forested scenery; stop at eclectic art galleries, cafés, a farmers market and the lovely Point Robinson Lighthouse. Cottages and B&Bs are available for overnight visits. Ferries run every 20–40 minutes, costing $18 roundtrip for vehicle and driver, $5.20 for each adult passenger.