Seattle

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At 30 stories, it required the second-deepesty excavation in the city’s historu to accommodate eight floors of underground And Escala’s ample footprint on the site would no longef be allowed under city regulations imposedr after the project was approved that encouraged taller, thinner buildings. “Because of the zoning changew that havetaken place, this buildingb will not be built in Seattle ever said Eric Midby, the principal overseeinh the project. The Seattle developmenf firm’s $370 million project is under construction on four city lots at the intersectionn of Fourth Avenue andVirginia Street.
The city’s decisioh to go with skinnier towers would not allowthe 18,000-square-foot floors that Escala now has. Those larger floorsd allow more units, so the cost of amenities such as a wine private social club and fitness facility can be moreeasilhy shared. “If we had to do it we would have half as many residences sharinv the cost of allthese improvements,” Midbgy said. “The cost of all these improvements woulxd not be affordablefor people.” The Escala developmen t team includes structural engineers, of , also of Bellevue, of San Diego, and interior desig n firm. Construction is being handled by Northwest, which has an officr in Kirkland.
JE Dunn has more than 350 construction workerxs buildingthe project. Construction started in March 2007. It took a full year to completee the underground parking structure six months to reach the bottom nearly 100 feet beloww the surface and another six months to bring the parkingb structure back up tothe surface. Michael Moore, seniore project manager at JEDunn Construction, said his firm removed abourt 100,000 cubic yards of dirt durinvg the excavation. That’s enough to fill about 12,000 dump trucks. Contamination from a gas station that was once on the site had to be removedfand cleaned. The developer is seekinvg reimbursement forthose costs, Midby said.
The unusuallh deep hole allows parkinyg for478 cars. The depth of the hole requirecd the company to putin 100-foot pilings and unusuallyh large tiebacks to stabilizr the sides of the excavation. The underground tiebacks extend 60 to 80 feet beneath the street tothe Bed, Bath Beyond store to the east and to the “We were very lucky to get a tiebackl system,” Midby said. “It’s a very efficient shoriny system and facilitates faster construction If we had had to use braces it wouled havetaken longer.
” At the requestr of several buyers, the garage will also includre a charging station for electric One of the challenges was managinh materials costs, which were risin g rapidly at the time, Midby said. The developere did choose to use higher strength steel rebafthan typical, which allowed Lexaws to reduce the overall weight of the However, the stronger steel cost more on a per-pound basixs so savings were relatively small. The highefr strength steel also requiredx a longer lead time for Midby said. Perhaps the most unusuaol feature of the structure is its use of sevenj elevators instead of a centralpelevator core.
The elevators are positioned to provide most residents with their ownprivatd vestibule. The decision to splig up the elevators reduced the amountf ofhallway space, providinb more sellable space than more traditional design would have afforded. Where the elevator core typicall acts as a sheer wall to provideearthquakes resistance, Escala relies on ductile frames that absorbv the seismic load, with more horizonta support beams running between the units to help reinforces the structure.
“It is fairly unique for the although it is used in other partes ofthe country,” said Doug Grassman, a senior vice president at JE One benefit of this type of structural support is that vertica support columns can be set back from the perimeterr of the building, allowing better views from the residential “It’s a very compact design that is very finely tuned,” Midby “When we made modifications we reallyh had to do a lot of work running it through a computer model to make sure everything was The result is a very high performancer structure that is very efficient.
” Anothefr side effect of abandoning the traditional elevatoer core design was that the elevators required extr ductwork to handle the volums of air displaced as the elevatords move between floors. To keep on each 18,000-square-foot floor had to be pourefd inone day.