Lease Crutcher Lewis

Specialty: Sustainable building

Management: Bill Lewis, CEO; Bryce Taylor, director of business development

Founded: 1886 (as Lease & Leigland)

Headquarters: Seattle

2007 revenues: $439 million (Seattle/Tacoma); $533.8 million (company total)

2008 projected revenues: $420 million (Seattle/Tacoma); $600 million (company total)

Current projects: Four Seasons Hotel & Residences in downtown Seattle; Touchstone's West 8th office tower in the Denny triangle; the Tacoma Environmental Services building on the Foss Waterway; 6th and Lenora apartment towers in Seattle for Pine Street Group

Image courtesy of Lease Crutcher Lewis Lease Crutcher Lewis is building the Four Seasons Hotel & Residences in downtown Seattle.

The firm's biggest challenge right now is something it has no control over -- transportation.

When will construction on the Alaskan Way Viaduct begin? What about the Mercer corridor?

Lease Crutcher Lewis has a lot of work in downtown Seattle and South Lake Union.

Traffic worries

Bryce Taylor, the company's director of business development, is worried about what will happen when traffic on the viaduct and on Mercer Street is redirected for road construction.

"It will impact deliveries and logistics for a lot of the ongoing construction work," Taylor said. "The sooner we're able to plan for them, the better off the city will be."

But the city and the state have yet to come up with a final plan for the viaduct. Until they do their planning, Lease Crutcher Lewis can't do its planning.

A similar situation applies to Mercer Street, which is slated for a major expansion and two-way traffic.

Taylor

Amazon project

Lease Crutcher Lewis has just begun the first phase of a new campus for Amazon located next to Mercer Street. Earlier this month, the mayor's office announced a plan to fund that Mercer Street expansion, which will soon be reviewed by the City Council.

If the Mercer project does begin soon, it will have a huge impact on the Amazon campus construction, Taylor said.

"It's going to be critical for us to have the appropriate resources to deal with that," he said. "We have a 24-month schedule to complete all three buildings."