With the economic expansion of the Northwest and the nation, ZGF continues to grow a national practice with projects in several market sectors. The past year has brought a firm-wide increase in staff of about 10 percent. The 10-year-old Seattle office currently employs 105 people, also representing about a 10 percent increase over 1998. ZGF was founded in Portland over 50 years ago.

"We expect a modest slowdown in growth in the upcoming year as the number of built projects, particularly in the private corporate and commercial sectors, begins to catch up with the demand," said associate partner Brad Hinthorne. "We expect continued activity in the health care, research and high technology sectors."

The interiors group and planning/urban design group continue to broaden the scale of their respective practices in the Seattle area, and the firm is developing more strategic alliances with clients for efficient delivery of services. There are continuing trends toward partnering of design, construction and development teams and alternative project delivery methods such as construction manager/general contractor, particularly in the public sector, according to Hinthorne.

Projects completed in 1999 include the renovation and expansion of the historic Pacific Medical Center for Amazon.com and Wright Runstad & Co.; Haggard Hall at Western Washington University; two World Trade Center office buildings for the Port of Seattle and Wright Runstad & Co.

Now under construction are Millennium Tower for Martin Smith Real Estate Services; the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; St. Patrick Ambulatory Services Building in Missoula; renovation of the downtown YMCA; Safeco's new campus in Redmond; Sellen Construction's corporate headquarters in Seattle; the Columbia Bank Tower in Tacoma; and Lowry Wyatt Hall, a new academic building at the University of Puget Sound. Nest, year, construction will begin on Microsoft St. Andrews; Fourth and Madison, a high-rise office building in downtown Seattle for Hines Development; a major expansion of Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage and a multi-modal facility for the city of Everett.

In the Seattle office, some of the significant commissions underway include a new Plant Biosciences building for the College of Agriculture and Home Economics at Washington State University; two stations in the University District for Sound Transit and a renovation and addition at Overlake Hospital in Bellevue.

Other major projects nationwide include the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.; a replacement research facility for the University of Texas; M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston; replacement of The Children's Hospital Los Angeles in Los Angeles, Calif.; The Assembly Building in Salt Lake City; and the Center for Nanofabrication and Molecular Self-Assembly at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.