Buildings coming down, new City Hall going up

Buildings are coming down in order to move another step closer to Shoreline’s new City Hall, council members learned during the July 7 City Council meeting.

“We think we’ve put together a very respectable, proud building that at the same time we can all look each other in the eyes and say we’ve spent our dollars wisely,” PJ Santos, an architect with Opus Northwest, told the council.

The four-story, approximately 67,000-square-foot building on the corner of Midvale Avenue North and North 175th Street won’t be ready until August 2009, according to project manager Jesus Sanchez, but demolition of the buildings began Monday as the AKC Auto Repair building was reduced to piles of separated materials.

The organized piles are on purpose, according to Sanchez, who said old materials could be part of the new building.

“We would like to use materials that are recycled back into the new facility,” he said.

The use of recycled materials is also part of building a sustainable city hall and achieving what Nancy Henderson, with ArchEcology, said will likely be a silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating.

“Achieving a LEED certification building is not an easy thing to do,” Henderson said. “Only about 30 percent of buildings certified get to silver. It’s something that you should be very proud of.”

The L-shaped city hall building will include low wattage light fixtures, sun-shading devices to limit solar heat gain, high efficiency glass and solar photo-voltaics among other sustainability features according to Henderson.

Plans also include rain gardens to help manage storm water, bioswales to clean runoff and an accessible green roof located over the council chambers.

“The idea is it’s an educational feature that people can get up close to and touch,” Henderson said, describing the green roof.

The council chambers will consist of about 3,000 square feet, according to Eric Nothdurft with LMN Architects.

“Our intent was to make this room as multifunctional as possible,” Nothdurft told councilmembers.

Twenty-foot ceilings will help bring natural light into the room and a series of glass doors can be opened leading to a plaza behind the chambers.

City departments were assigned to the different floors based on which receive the most foot traffic, according to city manager Bob Olander.

“We went through a fairly long process of where to locate people,” he said. “Based on who had the most need for public contact, it was the Planning Development Service and the city clerk, that’s why they’re the first two departments on the first floor.”

Community Services and Public Works will be located on the second floor and the city manager’s office, the city attorney’s office, Human Resources, Parks and Recreation and the Finance Department will be on the fourth floor. Nearly 10,000 square feet of leasable space and a public outdoor space will make up the third story, according to Nothdurft.

Although demolition is already underway, the city will officially kick off the process with a groundbreaking ceremony at 4 p.m., Tuesday, July 22, at the site of the future building. Parking is available at the Shoreline Historical Museum at 749 N. 175th St. and shuttle service will begin at 3:30 p.m.

“You will probably see the building go vertical very quickly,” Sanchez said at the meeting. “You may see a roof as early as December or January.”

During construction, staff will continue to work in the existing City Hall offices. When the building is complete and staff has moved into the building, the rest of the Highland Plaza Building will be demolished to make way for a two-story parking structure.

Residents can visit the project page at www.cityofshoreline.com for more details about the project and to sign up to receive regular construction e-mail updates starting in August.

For more information about the city hall project, contact Sanchez at 206-801-2421. For information about the July 22 groundbreaking ceremony, contact the Shoreline Customer Response Team at 206-801-2700.