Spring District/Bel-Red Development News and Photos

Leo Cullum cartoon in the New Yorker, "Happy penguin looking at upside-down globe; Antarctica is on top" (April 20, 1992).

apardoe said:

Dote will be in Block 20. And why do people make maps where North isn't up? (Or south, for those on the other hemisphere.)

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I sorta get it if the grid is aligned a certain way that doesn't perfectly match cardinal directions, but it's pretty weird when the grid is aligned with the compass to begin with.

A couple shots from the top of Block 16. Blocks 5 (shot over the 5th floor of 20) and 13.

Spring Coffee in the GIX building has been open a couple years now, although “open” maybe deserves scare quotes because their hours have been too unreliable to even bother driving by.
The Urbanist lifted the map from the SD’s official marketing site, so they’re to blame for the wonky orientation!

Alexandria's mixed-use complex west of the Spring District is in for design review. Three life science office buildings and 2 multi family buildings. Gensler is the architect.

EnataiMan said:

Are "life sciences" buildings unique and different in some way from vanilla office buildings?

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I understand "life sciences" to be the cellular biology-oriented biotech. You'd need a lot lab space for various reasons: straight up chemistry, tissue growth, DNA analysis, whatever.

This was a pretty hot business in Eastlake by SLU (near the Hutch and Novo Nordisk), then the center of activity moved up to Bothell. I wonder if this signals another geographic shift.

That Alexandria complex is in this little triangle of land?

Lab buildings need a variety of characteristics. Some of them:

One is plenty of above-ceiling space for large mechanical systems including direct venting for specific rooms or equipment pieces in some cases. All the more because systems tend to be replaced or added to more often. At the extreme end (like Fred Hutch) you can actually walk around the mechanical stuff via interstitial levels between the floors.

Another is limiting vibration via stiffer structures and/or isolation. A lot of stuff is vibration sensitive, like microscopes.

Security is often a bigger issue due to the value of what's inside.

Freight elevators tend to get more use and are a bigger focus.

Specialized spaces can do all sorts of things. Clean rooms, vivariums, bio-safety rated facilities, chemical storage, etc., production facilities, all have their own needs.

apardoe said:

That Alexandria complex is in this little triangle of land?

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Yup. That "little" triangle is over 8 acres.

Another big master planned development coming for Spring District. The article notes that the Wright family is involved, along with a couple of other parties. They're proposing 10 buildings in a mix of office/lab in about 240k SF, and mixed use residential with about 930 units. I included a screen grab of the giant block, for additional context.

The institutions will always be the core of the ecosystem -- the UW, Fred Hutch, mid-majors like Seattle Children's Research / Allen / Benaroya / PATH, and even Gates as a big funding source. They spin off companies, and many people spend half the day professing (or being students) and the other half trying to build out their new inventions. The commercial players also intertwine in various useful ways, so SLU and Bothell will always attract.

A new node will have to fight that, but being on rail will be useful, and the current centers have less and less room to grow. This seems like a fine spot, with the primary attraction possibly being computing expertise -- big data plays an increasing role in life science these days.

I'm thinking of GIX as a major sponsor and Gates and Nathan Myhrvold (Intellectual Ventures, Microsoft) as the main sponsors. But also, every hospital in the area has a satellite near Overlake. Proximity to both Microsoft and downtown Bellevue as well as rail to downtown Seattle and the real UW are also key.