By LEAH WEATHERSBY

Those who don't follow the local shopping scene may wonder what that giant crane is doing, looming over the skyline of the Laurelhurst and Ravenna-Bryant neighborhoods as it has since early January.

It is a harbinger, friends. Crate & Barrel is coming to the University Village shopping center.

And it's bringing an entourage.

Along with a Crate & Barrel store (which carries a variety of moderate to upscale housewares), the new 70,000-square-foot, two-story development will hold an enlarged Storables store, a day spa called Malama and the center's third Starbucks cafe.

Also joining the fray will be the Land of Nod, a children's home furnishings catalog retailer (of which Crate & Barrel is a majority owner), which is opening one of its first stores right here in North Seattle. The new development will increase the amount of retail space at University Village by about 20 percent. Although the retailers will not open until next spring, some of the 800 new parking spaces that accompany the development are expected to be ready for the holiday shopping season.

While attracting a big name retailer like Crate & Barrel might seem like a coup, Susie Plummer, vice president and general manager for University Village, said the decision had little to do with salesmanship on the part of the mall's management, and much more to do with the retail chain's own market research.

A company like Crate & Barrel, she said, which does a lot of business through catalogs and the Internet, can simply take a look and customers' zip codes and see where in Seattle their patrons live. Then they can locate a new store accordingly.

It seems that at least some of University Village's tenants see the neighborhood as a key to their success. Carol Bromel, owner of longtime tenant Mrs. Cooks and co-president of the University Village Merchant's Association, said neighbors help keep businesses like her's successful. She believes the presence of locally owned retail shops, in addition to the big chain outlets, are a big part of the outdoor mall's appeal.

"One of the problems the other malls suffer from is that they're cookie cutters," Bromel said. "The general feeling is that (University Village) is a unique place to be."

Of course, not all neighbors of the mall look at the current expansion (the biggest the University Village has undertaken since its mid-1990s facelift) as positive.

Jeannie Hale, president of the Laurelhurst Community Club, said her group, along with the Ravenna-Bryant Community Association, had grave concerns about the project's impact on surrounding areas, especially with regards to traffic.

In the end, the neighborhood accepted a $65,000 settlement from University Village to be used for traffic mitigation, rather than contest the mall's expansion project.

In the future, neighbors say, a getting a master plan for University Village will be a key to neighborhood planning and easing traffic congestion.

For the time being, University Village will also lessen traffic impacts by adding extra turn-lanes to the exits on the west and east side of the mall, as well as a left-hand turn-lane to Union Bay Avenue NE, turning on to NE 45th Street.

Despite concerns from neighbors and the sour economy, University Village appears to be riding high. Pottery Barn is adding its own kids' furnishings outlet, Pottery Barn Kids, set to open this fall.

Plummer also said the mall is currently talking with another potential retail tenant, whom she declined to identify at this time.