Jones & Jones

Specialty: Landscape architecture and architecture

Principals: Ilze Jones, Grant Jones, Johnpaul Jones, Keith Larson, Mario Campos

Year founded: 1969

2003 revenues: $4.65 million

Projected 2004 revenues: N/A

Largest current project: Hanford Reach National Monument Heritage and Visitor Center

Jones & Jones is working on a Japanese memorial on Bainbridge Island and the Seattle Chinese Garden project, but its biggest job this year is in the Tri-Cities: the $24 million Hanford Reach National Monument Heritage and Visitor Center.

“We call it the Reach,” said architect and senior associate Bruce Arnold. A gateway and gathering place for the Columbia Basin, the 80,000-square-foot design includes a 220-seat theater, exhibition gallery, view mezzanines and classroom areas. Arnold said coordinating a civic project has been rewarding but getting the government groups and community organizations to work together takes some work.

“The Tri-Cities love each other,” he said, “but they also compete. They’re separate corporate entities.” The 120-acre site where the Yakima and Columbia rivers meet is the last open piece of ground along the Columbia River that remains pristine, he said. The area supports waterfowl and spawning chinook salmon, but it’s also valued for archaeological sites.

Designated a monument area under the Clinton administration, Arnold said funding to build it could be affected by this year’s election.

Budgets that appeared real when the project got started could turn into “wispy gray fogs out on the horizon.” That’s unsettling, he said, but it’s also reality and all firms working on public projects deal with changing scenarios and roll with changes as they may come.

The Reach combines architecture and landscape architecture with a cultural component, and is an example of the kinds of projects that the Seattle-based firm likes to take. “If there’s nature and culture on a project, we want to work on it,” said Arnold.

In Bellevue, Jones & Jones is designing an environmental education center at Mercer Slough where outdoor courtyards overlook wetlands. Children and adults can join programs with an environmental slant, and sloping green roofs help the center blend with its surroundings.