June 23, 2003

$14.5M addition for Seattle's Bush School

Courtesy Miller/Hull Partnership

The Bush School, a private K-12 school in the Madison Valley neighborhood of Seattle, is planning a $14.5 million expansion, which could start construction in June of 2004.

Designed by the Miller/Hull Partnership, the 95,000-square-foot building will include a gymnasium, a K-5 classroom building, multipurpose room, new locker and weight rooms, playfield and playground, all above a 125-car underground parking garage.

Currently, the students’ playfield is an asphalt area that is converted to parking during large school events.

Miller/Hull Project Manager Steve Southerland said part of an existing structure will be demolished to accommodate the new construction.

Andrew Sproule, Bush’s director of communication, said there are no plans to increase the size of the 550-student school, but street parking issues have become a big concern.

"We are committed to staying in the space we are in, but because of the amount of students, we need a lot of pick-up and drop-off space," he said. "Rather than build a parking structure, which wouldn’t be part of the Madison Valley at all, we needed to find a way to keep the feel of the school while accommodating neighbors' concerns."

The project will be built by GLY Construction. It will have an entry-court for the Lower School and brick facades linking the building to the existing upper campus. The structure’s foundation will be built using geopiers, which are compacted granular fill columns.

"We don’t take away from the natural beauty of the area and we are able to accomplish a lot with little ugliness involved," Sproule said. "They’re building the buildings without air conditioning and they are environmentally friendly, on top of reducing the congestion in our area. We’re accommodating neighbors and students in a much better way."

The school was established in 1924, and the buildings, constructed not long after, were designed to be temporary.

"In order to best teach students in the way we say we are going to, we need flexible learning space and (to) be able to meet individual class's needs," Sproule said. "Right now they’re very standard classrooms, but the teaching is more interactive, more experiential. These spaces will optimize the teacher’s ability to educate the students."

Other team members include: Dana Warren of the Warren Co., owner's representative; Swenson Say Faget, structural engineer; Coughlin Porter Lundeen, civil engineer; Weisman Design Group, landscape architect; Keen Engineering, mechanical; Sparling, electrical engineer; Zipper Zeman Associates, geotechnical engineer; Robinson Co., cost modeling; Wetherholt and Associates, waterproofing; SSA Acoustics, acoustics; Heffron Transportation, transportation planning.