September 1, 2022

Operator and name announced for boutique Pioneer Square hotel project

Rendering by Miller Hull [enlarge]

The ground-level restaurant will have an outside area spilling onto an alleyway adjacent to South King Street.

Urban Villages is set to start on the final building in its trio of Pioneer Square properties known as RailSpur this fall.

The final project is a 120-room boutique hotel at 100 S. King St. The hotel will have a ground level restaurant that spills out onto RailSpur's signature alleyways, a rooftop bar and restaurant with a wrap-around garden, a library-themed cocktail bar, coffee counter, gelato shop, meeting spaces and a fitness room. Miller Hull is the project architect.

Aparium Hotel Group recently announced that it will be partnering with Urban Villages to manage and operate the hotel, which will be the group's first in Seattle. It will be called Hotel Westland in honor of the name of the 1907 warehouse building, commonly known as the Westland Building, in which it is located.

Photo from Pioneer Square Preservation Board meeting document [enlarge]

The hotel is 67,000 square feet and six stories.

A member of Miller Hull's team said that the project has been designed in a way that restores and highlights the building's old-world charm with rooms that transport you to the past while having all the comfort and luxuries of the modern day. A major goal was to have tactile elements in the rooms, like areas of exposed original brick, so that guests can literally engage with the history of the building. Another major design theme is biophilia. The hotel is set to include the largest living wall in the city. The wall will be six stories tall and will bring nature into the building's interior for guests to enjoy. All the project's inward facing rooms will look out onto the wall. Renderings also show exposed mass timber framing at the project's rooftop bar and restaurant.

Curioso, a hospitality interior design firm located in Chicago, has also joined the team, and will oversee the interior design in close collaboration with Miller Hull. Hotel Westland is expected to open in early 2024 . The project team includes JTM Constuction as the general contractor and Coughlin Porter Lundeen as structural engineer.

The first RailSpur building, an office building at 419 Occidental, was completed in November 2021 . The second building, at 115 S. Jackson St., another hotel this time with 26 apartment-style units, is currently under construction and due to be completed this fall.