July 23, 2019

Giant mural is the latest addition to Kuma's Belltown tower design

Renderings by Kengo Kuma & Associates/Ankrom Moisan [enlarge]

The mural would adorn the protruding Terminal Sales Annex, a landmarked building that will be folded into the tower.

[enlarge]

The 42-story hotel-condo tower would also house about 12,000 square feet of co-work space on the second through fourth floors.

In late 2016, Pacific Eagle Holdings paid $18 million for the landmarked Terminal Sales Annex and two small tear-down buildings on the corner at 1931 Second Ave. in Belltown.

As the DJC first reported late last year, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma was then hired to design a new hotel-condominium tower. Ankrom Moisan is the local architect of record. The project, called 2nd and Virginia, has its second design guidance meeting at 7 p.m. tonight at City Hall, 600 Fourth Ave., Room L280.

The numbers are essentially unchanged from January's first design meeting. The 42-story tower incorporates the Terminal Sales Annex into its base. The tower's bottom five floors would include 6,700 square feet of restaurant and/or retail space, plus co-work space and hotel amenities and offices. The next 10 floors (six through 15) would have 240 hotel rooms. And the top 26 floors would have 200 condos.

Five levels of underground parking would have about 175 stalls, to be accessed from the alley to the west. Future residents and hotel guests may be able to use the nearby 42-stall garage at 2014 Second, which Pacific bought for $7.5 million this month.

The co-work space and hotel aren't labeled yet, though they seem likely to carry the Eaton House/Eaton Workshop brand, which is run by Katherine Lo, the daughter of Hong Kong tycoon Lo Ka Shui. Forbes estimates the family is worth around $5 billion.

The co-work space would occupy only portions of floors two through four, looking to have around 12,000 square feet. The fifth floor is all amenity space.

The new tower floors would align with those of the century-old Terminal Sales Annex, which nominally has four stories but includes a mezzanine level and daylight basement.

As for the overall tower design, its footprint and floor plates have been slightly reduce in bulk. The stair-stepping and tower setbacks have been refined. Separate lobby entrances, for residents and guests, have been finessed where the tower meets the sidewalk. A possible port cochere on Virginia has been eliminated. Also, “the tower facade is designed to be more reflective towards at the top, blending into the sky.”

Entirely new, and part of the plan to also enliven the alley, is a mural on the otherwise blank walls of the protruding Terminal Sales Annex. Two panels are planned for Second and a third panel for the alley. Ankrom Moisan says the final choice of a mural artist hasn't been decided.

Residents would enter on Virginia. Hotel guests would enter the new tower on Second, where a restaurant and cafe are also now indicated — with sidewalk seating, too. Co-work office renters would enter through the historic facade.

A sixth-floor deck on top of the Terminal Sales Annex would project out about 15 feet from the tower facade. It's apparently for hotel guests and residents — like the terraces on the building's south side, on the fifth and sixth floors. Those would also help separate the tower from the Viktoria apartments. A west-facing roof deck is also planned on the 42nd floor.

Project size above grade is listed at 487,100 square feet. Berger Partnership is the landscape architect.

(Editor's note: The story has been corrected to remove the name of an artist identified for the mural. The artist is still to be determined.)