Grand Award Winner for Construction Excellence:
Charter Construction

Design Professional:
Paul Olson, Jones & Jones

The Paradise Employee Dormitory, which features a massive concrete foundation, oversized wood beams, wood siding and a copper-clad, steeply sloped roof, is a technically complex building with very ambitious aesthetic requirements.

The job site was located at an elevation of 5,770 feet adjacent to the Mount Rainier National Park Visitors’ Center. It is also 85 miles away from the nearest materials supplier, and last winter Paradise was buried under 944 inches of snow. A short building season - May to October - complicated matters, as did the single access road and tourist traffic.

"Building in those conditions was a spectacular feat that Charter Construction handled with goodwill and a good crew," noted John Dunn, on-site inspector for the National Park Service. The project also involved demolition of an existing dormitory and removal of asbestos tile and contaminated soil.