November 19, 2018

Holland, Weber Thompson show final design for 44-story tower

Renderings by Weber Thompson [enlarge]

Cornish College will have a gallery and performing arts hall in the podium.

[enlarge]

The tower at 2019 Boren will have 393 units, and underground parking for 369 vehicles.

Holland Partner Group is ready to show its final design for a residential high rise at 2019 Boren Ave., a site it owns in the Denny Triangle.

Weber Thompson is the architect.

The second and likely final design review will be at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 20 at City Hall, 600 Fifth Ave., Room L2-80.

The 44-story tower will have 393 units, and seven levels of underground parking, accessed from the alley to the west, for 369 vehicles. About 200 bike stalls are required.

The tower will include 47,675 square feet of offices in the podium for tenants likely to include Cornish College (one of the sellers). About 7,150 square feet of ground-floor arts space, also for Cornish, will be divided into a gallery space and a 180-seat performing arts hall.

In July, Holland paid $24.4 million to Cornish, Bellwether Housing and Recovery Cafe for three parking lots that total 21,600 square feet. The site is on the northeast corner of the block, where Lenora Street meets Denny Way, and immediately north of Cornish's historic Raisbeck Performance Hall (formerly Norway Hall).

Weber Thompson has pushed the podium 15 feet north from the property line to create what it calls a landscaped “gasket” between the old and new structures. Then the tower is pushed about 45 feet north atop the four-story podium.

There are also ground-floor setbacks to create more public amenity space along the sidewalks.

For tenants, there will be indoor amenity space and terraces on the fifth floor, with a pool on the larger south terrace. The rooftop, on the 44th floor, will have a large indoor amenity area and deck with about 4,500 square feet. There will be two mechanical levels above.

Unit sizes aren't specified, but those on the top six floors would be quite large. Floors 42 and 43 would have only four penthouse units each.

Total project size, including the parking, is around 643,000 square feet. The Mandatory Housing Affordability fee will end up around $4 million.

Japanese financial partner NASH is also listed on the plans. NASH and Holland previously partnered on Westlake Steps, which they sold last year for $324 million. No other team members are listed, and Holland didn't respond to DJC queries. The project has applied for phased permitting.

Separately on the same block, on the southwest corner at 1000 Virginia St., Holland and Weber Thompson are planning a 46-story tower with 435 units. Cornish has said that anticipated land sale will close next year.

The 2019 Boren tower is further along in the review process. The 1000 Virginia tower had its first review in September, after which the board recommended it move toward a master use permit. A second review is possible, but hasn't been scheduled.

Nearby, at 111 Terry Ave. N., Holland recently completed the 41-story Kiara, with 461 apartments, about 16,000 square feet of retail and about 359 underground parking spaces. Weber Thompson was the architect and, as with most of its projects, Holland built it. NASH was also a financial partner. (That project previously used the address of 970 Denny Way.)