Bellevue slated to get its own edition of Monopoly

Bellevue has been chosen to get its own, officially licensed, edition of Monopoly. What's on the board? That's up to locals.

"Little things that personalize and customize the game, I want to know those things that make Bellevue unique," said Aaron Green with Top Trumps, the game company licensed to many city editions of Monopoly. "Where you go to get ice cream, where you go to get a nice steak dinner, what park you have your kid’s birthday at. All those things, and the memories people have, are why these editions sell so well. Everyone knows the game, everyone knowns Monopoly. They’ve played it their whole lives. But when you see things, and say, ‘Oh yeah, we went to that park, we saw a show at that theater,’ that’s what we really want.”

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The Bellevue edition is expected to hit store shelves in spring 2025. But before the game is printed, designers want to know what locals would like to see included on the board. The original Monopoly, published in 1935, had locations based on Atlantic City, New Jersey. But the game will need an Eastside makeover to be up to Bellevue standards.

“The game is going to be completely customized," Green said. "The only thing we don’t change are the tokens. We’ve found that people love the nostalgia of the original pieces ... After that, the whole board is changed. The center image montage, the box lid, the community chest and chance cards will have custom copies particular to Bellevue. We even redesign the money, which could be a city skyline or mountain ranges. We want the game to be as personalized as possible."

Instead of Boardwalk, perhaps Bellevue Square? Instead of Marvin Gardens, it could be the Bellevue Botanical Gardens. You could opt to replace Pennsylvania Avenue with the food court at Crossroads Mall. Maybe T-Mobile or MOD Pizza's headquarters could stand in for St. James Place. The South Bellevue Station could be the local version of the B. & O. Railroad.

Ultimately, such ideas will be sourced from locals, or even Bellevue fans. People can email their ideas to bellevue@toptrumps.com through Oct. 31, 2024.

The board has 22 squares, so just as with the real Bellevue, real estate on the board will be highly competitive. Green said that locals and visitors should hopefully be able to relate to the squares "for generations to come." The company is therefore aiming for the most popular and recognizable corners of the city, but it is also reserving some squares for local businesses. That means a local company can sponsor a square (Climate Pledge Place?). When it comes down to dollars and cents, it's such sponsorships that get the game published.

“If you’re a business owner, if you have a small bakery that’s been there a long, long time and you have a great customer base, let me know about it," Green said. "If you’re a nonprofit that does a lot of great work in the community … let me know about it. We love recognizing nonprofits that do good work. We’ve had the Boys and Girls Club on different editions, and YMCA chapters. Our Sacramento edition has a nonprofit that helps women in domestic violence situations, so we also want to make sure we get a good message out. We all know it’s a game about capitalism and squashing your opponent, but at the end of the day it’s a game and we can have fun with it … it’s a fun game to commemorate where you live.”

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Local features will not be chosen via a vote. Rather, common themes and locales that work well with the game are more likely to make it.

Top Trumps is more known as a family card game based out of the UK, but the company also manufactures other tabletop games. Hasbro, which owns Monopoly, licensed the game to Top Trumps to create regional editions. It has already crafted 38 city or regional versions, such as Cape Cod, Kansas City, Brooklyn, Tucson, and Scotland. The closest city in the Northwest to have its own official Monopoly game under this license is Boise.

Green said that when developing ideas for Monopoly cities, they opted to bypass Seattle this time for a few reasons, including the fact Seattle is a larger city. (There is a "Seattle-opoly" out there, but that game is not officially licensed.)

"There are just too many different, diverse neighborhoods … it would be too hard to do one (Seattle) edition, too many good things would get left off," Green said. "There are only 22 property squares on the board. Someone is gonna get left out that is worthy to be on the board.”

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This report previously stated that Bellevue is the first Washington city to get its own officially licensed edition of Monopoly. Seattle previously got its own edition in the 1990s, however, which was licensed under Parker Brothers, prior to Hasbro taking over ownership of the board game. Also, while they aren't city editions, there are collectors editions of Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Mariners Monopoly. A "Seattle-opoly" was also previously published, but that was not officially licensed by Hasbro or any other Monopoly owner.