Photo courtesy AGC of Washington The Compass Center for the homeless moved into an attached addition and its original space was converted to low-income rental units.

Its headquarters ravaged by the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, The Compass Center underwent the largest capital campaign in its history in order to repair and rebuild its historic Pioneer Square structure.

Turner Construction was hired to rebuild the five-story building and construct an adjacent five-story building with a level of below-grade parking.

Site logistics were challenging, coupled with an earthquake-damaged unreinforced masonry structure. The earthquake caused piles in one corner of the building to fail, pulling the face of a six-story unreinforced masonry wall out of plum by several inches. Turner constructed six-story exterior shoring towers, drilled 45-foot piles in an existing basement, selectively removed/installed large portions of the exterior masonry walls and surgically installed grade beams under the existing building.

A tower crane could not be used on the project because the Alaskan Way Viaduct is only 18 feet from the west edge of the building. Instead, a 300-ton mobile crane was used to hoist fully assembled steel brace frames over two buildings to land in place at the addition. Four floors of the addition building were erected in less than eight hours.

A decorative wood staircase, doors, wainscoting and other original features were salvaged, blending architectural features of the past with energy efficiency and life-saving improvements of today.

Turner worked with the owner to sequence the last month of the construction schedule to accommodate project donors painting murals, installing hand-made furniture and providing site tours.

There were no loss-time accidents on the job.