Plans were approved in a January 11th Seattle city design meeting for a new six-story medical office building in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood. Surrounded by existing medical and clinical offices, Nashville-based HealthCare Realty and Seattle architect CollinsWoerman are working together to incorporate their structure with the one immediately adjacent with a connected lobby level. The building intends to meet Green Factor requirements and will also receive a LEED Silver rating.
The site, located at 515 Minor Ave., is immersed in a medical office park hub that includes Swedish Medical facilities. The building will be attached to the existing 3-story medical facility immediately next door. The 137,000-square-foot building will have almost 1,500-square-feet of retail space on the southeast corner, an easily accessible location from public transit, which is along Jefferson St.
The entrance to the facility, which faces Minor Ave., will have a 100 percent weather protected drive-thru for drop off and pick up, which will be lined with tall pillars, lighting, benches and a small garden. A lobby will be centrally located with space for medical tenants on either side. There will also be below-grade parking available, and the parking garage will attach to the existing building.
To help break up the space, a structural element will be featured in the mid-city block. Though James Walker of CollinsWoerman said the alley is less of a gathering place and more of an accessibility outlet.
Plans also include a storage bike room, dedicated to employees of the building. After concerns from the Seattle Design Review Board on privacy and usage of the bike room Walker said they could create a sort of graphic film on the windows to serve as a screen for privacy. Walker said the room would likely be a secure entry card-access door, so it wouldn’t be open to the public but offered to incorporate bike racks in the drive-thru area for visitors.
To achieve the Green Factor requirements, the majority of the roof will be vegetated. There will be two garden patios with 40 percent of the planting bio-retaining. The remaining vegetation will be conventional. The roof will provide 10,000-square-feet of extensive green roof and will have a lower level garden of about 1,300-square-feet that runs across the new and existing building.
CollinsWoerman has also worked on several other medical office buildings in the Puget Sound region including a 575,000-square-foot Swedish Medical Center in Issaquah, a nearly 64,000-square-foot First Hill Medical Center in Seattle, a Group Health Cooperative in Puyallup and a Virginia Mason Ambulatory Surgery Center in Seattle.
