April 13, 2015

Starbucks roastery wins award for reuse from Historic Seattle

Photo courtesy of Starbucks [enlarge]

Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room offers “a real-life Willy Wonka experience.”

Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room on Capitol Hill was named the best adaptive reuse project by Historic Seattle.

It is one of eight projects, people and publications that will be honored in the group's seventh annual Preservation Awards event on May 12 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N.

Starbucks worked with Graham Baba Architects to design the roastery, which occupies a former auto-row building at 1124 Pike St. that was last home to Utrecht Art Supplies.

Starbucks restored the facade as well as wood in the decorative ceiling. Flooring is the original terrazzo and concrete.

The roastery allows Starbucks to double the amount of small batch coffee — called Reserve — that it can produce. The company calls the space “a real-life Willy Wonka experience with coffee as the heart and soul, where customers will see coffee being moved through the roasting process right before their eyes.”

The other winners are:

Photo by Eugenia Woo [enlarge]

The East Wing of Volunteer Park Conservatory was restored.

• Beth Chave Historic Preservation Award for Exemplary Stewardship: Trinity Parish Episcopal Church

• Preserving Historic Landscapes: Dunn Gardens

• Preserving Neighborhood Character: Anhalt Apartment Building

• Transporting through History: Seattle Department of Transportation interurban shelter restorations in Queen Anne and Rainier Valley

• Community Advocacy: The Friends of the Conservatory, Volunteer Park

• Architectural Heritage Publication: “Shaping Seattle Architecture: A Historical Guide to the Architects,” Second Edition

• Living Landmark: Peggy Corley

Tickets are $85, or $75 for members. Order them at www.historicseattle.org or by calling (206) 622-6952.