(WSB photos by Tracy Record)
After a shutdown now in its sixth year, Hiawatha Community Center is on track to reopen early next year. We got a look inside during an informal tour earlier this week with two community advocates and Seattle Parks project leader Morteza Behrooz. From the exterior, you can only see a bit of what’s been done during what began as a strengthening and stabilization project and expanded to, among other things, make Hiawatha the city’s first fully electric community center; part of its energy-efficiency upgrades includes new windows – see some of those above. The accessibility includes this new stairway, with railing, on the north side:
Other accessibility features include railings elsewhere as well as restroom work. So let’s go inside. On the east side of the building, here’s the gym:
A big part of the strengthening/stabilization work involves braces and beams – the masonry no longer has to hold up the building without reinforcement:
Going further into the building, we got a look at the lobby and programming areas:
The new windows are in evidence everywhere, letting in lots of light:
In non-public areas below, like equipment and laundry spaces, new piping and wiring is in view:
Upstairs, we peeked into the room with the stage:
At the rear of this room is the kitchen space, where appliances will be moved into place in the next week or so:
Optimus Construction is the general contractor for the project. One manager we saw briefly remarked that the building had posed a lot of challenges – “threw everything at us” – not originally in the plans and expectations; for example, once old windows were removed, they discovered larger cavities, rot, other issues. The project’s price tag has tripled over the years and is now $6.5 million, Behrooz said. Work began early last year, four years after the center closed; what had been a pandemic closure was extended because the project was considered imminent – but ultimately wasn’t.
P.S. The work isn’t all construction – Behrooz said Parks programming staff is busy discussing and planning what programs can be reintroduced and when. Day care will return, for example, but it might not re-start immediately after the center reopens.
One more note: The Hiawatha play area project is under different management, so he didn’t have an update on that, but we’ll be pursuing a separate update.
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