Miller Hull

By Tim Newcomb

The 1914 timber-built Ship Supply Building at Fishermen’s Terminal in Seattle had plenty of history. That history also sent the structure sagging and tilting on the waterfront fill, leaving it a precarious site, one not an obvious choice for rehabilitation as a Living Building Challenge (LBC) project.

The Port of Seattle worked with the Miller Hull Partnership and Forma Construction to restore what is now known as the Maritime Innovation Center, reusing the historic timber beams to create a building envelope that mimics the original. The project also replaced the pilings below the section that sagged into Salmon Bay, creating a seismically reliable concrete and rebar slab that houses the structure. The team then installed a bevy of LBC-ready components, such as a complete gray water and black water reuse system.

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“We are in seismic design category D, the most difficult other than being right on a fault,” says Mike Jobes, principal at the Miller Hull Partnerships and design lead on the Maritime Innovation Center. “It is a major liquefaction zone. It is all fill. It wasn’t just repair the piles, it was replacing them.” That required lifting the structure, moving it and then taking on the piers and soil before moving the building back onto the new supports.

Read the full story at ENR West