Tower of Power

Can Stadium Place and its 25-story presence bring business back to Pioneer Square?

Joe Follansbee | February 2012 | FROM THE PRINT EDITION

On one of the last warm summer days of 2011, a construction crew put up the black steel tower of a pile driver on the south side of King Street, just west of Seattle’s Amtrak station. Within days, reciprocating whams! bounced off the brick and sandstone walls of Pioneer Square, as if the workers were announcing a turnaround for the beleaguered neighborhood.

That’s how some residents and business owners interpreted the noise, seeing it as a resounding first step toward new respect for a part of town whose reputation, deservedly or not, skewed more toward handguns than nail guns.

The pile driving kicked off a long-anticipated, $250 million project officially called Stadium Place but more popularly known as the “North Lot development” because of its location in the parking lot just north of CenturyLink Field. The brochures and fact sheets produced by the local developers, Daniels Real Estate—an affiliate of Nitze-Stagen & Co.—and R.D. Merrill Company, and drawing from the management bullpen for projects such as Starbucks Center, Union Station and Merrill Place, have all the buzzwords and catchphrases Seattleites expect. The project improves “density” with more than 915,000 square feet of residential and commercial space in the “vibrant” Pioneer Square district, including 18,600 square feet of retail and commercial space on the ground floor, with some already set aside for a restaurant and a health club. It takes “green design to a new level,” pointing to a plan to generate electricity from wastewater and wind, as well as to grow vegetables in an on-site “urban farm” for use in the restaurant. And it’s the “largest transit-oriented development on the West Coast,” referring to the project’s proximity to light rail, traditional rail, bus lines, the junction of Interstate routes 5 and 90, and all of these modes’ connections to Sea-Tac Airport. There’s even a nod to cars: Motorists will have 110 new parking spaces.

The first phase of the project, including a 25-story tower, is expected to be finished by September, with the last phase completed in late 2013 if market conditions are right. The contractor is JTM Construction. The architectural firm is Zimmer Gunsul Frasca.

But the fact that gets Pioneer Square boosters really excited is the 738 new housing units to be brought to the neighborhood—512 apartments in the first phase and 226 apartments or condos in the second phase, almost doubling the total number of apartments or condos currently available there, according