Northwest African American Museum
Architect: DKA
Engineer: Coughlin Porter Lundeen
Owner: Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle
ABC members: Adept Mechanical Services, Custom Sprinkler, Heiberg Inc., Propel Insurance
As part of the historic restoration of the Colman School in Seattle's Central Area, Rafn Co. completed an interior renovation for the 18,000-square-foot Northwest African American Museum. Beyond the main exhibition spaces of the museum, the team built a large multiuse community space, a cafe, a bookstore and artist studios. The ground-floor museum sits below two residential floors containing 36 new affordable housing units.
Vacant for 25 years, the building needed significant renovation, and its status as a designated city landmark meant that the project team had to take special care to preserve and protect as many of the building's original features as possible. Because the museum had only a 10-foot clearance in which to install mechanical components, the team had to rethink traditional methods, which usually require a 16-foot space.
Work was divided into two phases to accommodate budget constraints and to allow access to the museum for fundraising events -- especially important since the limited budget had been determined before the scope of the project had been finalized.
The project owner, the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, wanted to include as much minority participation on the project as possible. The Urban League enlisted one of Seattle's premier African American architects as the team leader, and aimed to have 40 percent of the subcontracted dollars and 40 percent of workforce jobs fulfilled by minorities. Several local residents were hired to work on the project, and an on-the-job training program turned former laborers into masons during the course of construction.
There were no injuries during the 4,094 hours worked on the project.