As more of the exterior finishes get completed the form of the final building becomes visible. This is particularly noticeable at the project corners, as here at the corner of Queen Anne Avenue and Crockett Street.
The exterior materials have been selected and located to give the building a kind of visual language that explains what’s happening in the interior. The large, black facades have been “framed” by the light tan brick outlines that, along with the corner setback, emphasize the important visual character of the housing. This will be enhanced at the street level by a band of red brick (just starting to be visible – look behind the stop sign on the lower right) which will add as a ‘wrapper’, signaling where the retail shops, including Safeway, are located.
Just up Crockett Street, the scale of the housing along 1st Avenue North gets a different treatment.
Here, the housing above is white, with a strong base of dark brick that wraps the townhouse apartments that anchor the project along First Avenue. Although a little difficult to make out in this view, this is also where the housing levels have multiple set-backs to provide terraces that take advantage of the sunny, south-facing orientation.
The north-east corner of the project features Building A, which houses the leasing and management offices at grade level and creates a strong vertical statement above.
It’s still hard to make out the facade here because of the scaffolding and the fact that it’s proceeding in stages; but it’s clear that it will have distinctive top and bottom floors.
And finally, at Queen Anne Avenue and North Boston Street, the project steps back to provide a recessed corner wrapping around the existing street-level retail.
I suspect that these retail merchants are looking forward to the construction being succeeded by several hundred new resident/shoppers. The general plan is for the new Safeway store to open this fall, followed by the housing next spring.
We’ve gotten used to this view of the project, in which Building C, which runs mostly along Queen Anne Avenue, has been completely covered with scaffolding and mesh screening. This provides safe exterior working platforms for installing windows and finish materials as well as weather protection at the top from the rain. What has not been so apparent is that the sequence of activities varies quite a bit, based on schedule timing, sequencing of materials availability, and sub-contractor coordination. Here are a couple of examples.
On the north-east corner of the site, Building A, which contains the official entrance to the overall complex, moved ahead with windows before the scaffolding was in place. It was added after the windows to support the exterior materials installation.
Then the scaffolding was added in phases.
So, you may ask, how did the windows get installed without the aid of scaffolding? It turns out that there’s an inside-outside method as illustrated in steps below. Ahead of time, the windows are delivered by construction elevator to the proper floor and unit.
Then the Genie Lift takes over. It provides, in effect, a temporary scaffolding platform on a one-window-at-a-time basis where a two-part team handles the installation as described below:
As part of the installation, the lift operator checks the plumb and level (you can see the long yellow level in his hand in photo 3) and when things are aligned, screws the window flanges to the window opening. Similar sequences have been used at the southeast corner of the project as well. Below, you can see the basic building, with its protruding townhouse apartments at street level (full disclosure – in this photo I ‘removed’ the obnoxious power pole and most of the wiring to let the form show more clearly)
Here’s a close-up, looking at the corner.
I wondered whether the protrusion of the townhouses would make it difficult to install the scaffolding – apparently not.
Other types of wrapping have also been taking place at the same time.
Some of the security fencing has been wrapped with new marketing images that replace the art program. The one above shows the finished building; and it and the one below introduce the new official name for the project.
I thought initially that this was a branding effort to take advantage of the fact that many Queen Anne houses have gables (even though the project does not); but it turns out that the decision is more prosaic: Gables Residential is the primary investor in the project.
Let’s take a look at some of the other wrapping going on. The view below shows Building A on the left with its plywood sheathing just beginning to be covered with vapor barrier and Building C on the right with its end facade complete.
Short time later, the end of Building C has had some of its Hardiboard sheathing (pale yellow panels) installed on stripping over the vapor barrier.
I had originally thought that the panel color was the final look; but it’s not. The surface will be painted white as has been done already in other areas. At the southwest corner of the building, where a new plaza will eventually connect to the street, a different type of wrapping has occurred. In this case, there will eventually be large openings and expanses of glass, so the framework is steel, welded in place and wrapped with sheathing. It remains to be seen what the final finish will be.
Up on top of the building there’s also a new layer wrapping the roof to keep the rain out.
Special care has to be taken with the penetrations through this membrane to avoid leaks as well as to assure that the flashings at windows and walls are properly installed.
These wall panels show the final finish of most of the exterior wall paneling.
Inside the building, there’s lots of infrastructure installation going on, along with lots of drywall panels wrapping all the walls. This first view is notable for the number of heat pump tubing lines (white, on the right) that are traveling through the building to serve all the various units and spaces.
The bottom view is more about plumbing and wiring in preparation for bathrooms and kitchens, though the black drain pipes will travel down through the building and garage. Below, drywall covers the studs in preparation for fixtures.
Where the drywall meets the windows, it combines with the clean floor to ceiling glass windows to emphasize the views.
While we’re at it, I thought a few views of other interiors would be interesting. Not so much as ‘wrapping’ but more as fitting out, such as the equipment infrastructure serving some of Safeway’s needs.
And in Safeway store itself, some of the cooler equipment to support the floral shop.
Sometime in Fall 2024 you’ll get to see this part for yourselves.
As the shoring went up for the large platform that will cap off the Safeway store and provide the 5-acre base for the three housing buildings, the scale of the project increased dramatically because the Safeway store is twice as high as the other floors.
This accidental photographic juxtaposition of the 2-story high shoring against the Sweetbrier Apartments beyond, on the west side of Queen Anne Avenue, gives an approximate (but not literal) sense of the scale shift that lies ahead.
The other activity that reveals the change in scale is the erection of the formwork for the walls and supports that will hold the large base up and shape the Safeway and the other activities that will be included under it.
This view is from the SE corner of the site at N Crockett Street and First Avenue North. The formwork for the automobile ramp to the garage that comes in from the left above, slopes down towards the near corner in the photo and then arcs around and down to the north, parallel to First Avenue North, is now high enough to block the view of activities on the Safeway level.
Some of those activities, as well as the ones beyond to the north (right) can be seen here.
On the right side above, the other automobile ramp, the one serving the project from the Boston Street, is being formed up. And if you look in the lower right hand corner of the photo, you can just see the previously poured section of ramp emerging from below.
In the center of the photo, generally where the concrete placement boom is standing, will be some construction to keep an eye on. This will be the loading dock area for deliveries to the Safeway store. It’s taking an ingenious drive-in / back-in layout to allow this to happen.
Centered in the north end (section 5) construction is the core for the housing tower at the NE corner of the project (below). It backs up against the ramp; but the front faces Boston Street where the housing office and main resident entrance will be located.
In this view the formwork has been thoroughly braced in preparation for pouring the walls.
Near the alley from Boston Street, a large volume is being formed in the foreground to accommodate a Seattle City Light (SCL) Electrical Vault.
It will be served by giant electrical conduits from beneath the alley in the foreground.
Finally, swinging around to the alley itself, and looking east, you can see the SCL vault on the left, the tower core in the center (where the elevators will be), and the automobile ramp off to the right.
I happened to catch the actual pouring of part of the automobile ramp (where the workers are guiding the concrete from the placement boom) which gives a good sense of the ramp and walls curving up from below.
It’s hard to believe, but the concrete placement boom is suppling concrete that is being piped all the way from a delivery truck sitting a block away on Queen Anne Avenue.
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