The booming residential market in the Puget Sound is driving the demand for housing throughout the region. The City of Seattle isn’t exempt and with limited developable space zones for residential areas, the focus has shifted to multi-family housing. Developers and designers have embraced this movement and have created mixed-use buildings with retail space on the ground level and condominiums or apartments above.
An example of this trend took place in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, a once sleepy corner of Seattle that is experiencing considerable growth. Security Properties wanted to develop a mixed-use complex abutting a new park in downtown Ballard and selected Bumgardner Architects to design the project.
The result was On The Park Apartments, a beautiful 8-story, 268-unit building with a 10,000 square foot patio and a 5,700 square foot private club. Anchoring the complex on the ground floor is a 45,000 square foot Quality Food Center (QFC) with an outdoor café. Bumgardner Architects designed the project with steel and concrete but desired the look of brick for the veneer. They also wanted a color more contemporary than the traditional red brick, so they selected Pewter brick with a smooth texture from Mutual Materials to get a gray hue that blends the structure more seamlessly into the neighborhood.
Mutual Materials has always been great to work with, providing excellent technical assistance and material samples. The Ballard project had one area, for instance, where a full size brick did not work. Mutual Materials suggested a thin brick (glued on) as a solution. When it was all completed, you could not tell that it was thin brick, because it looked so convincing a match to the standard brick in the project. –
– Guy Peckham, Principal, Bumgardner Architects
Absher Construction was the general contractor, spearheading the project and the mason contractor was R&D Masonry.
If you are interested in learning how Mutual Materials brick and its wide variety of color options can meet your project’s needs from both a structural and visual standpoint, call us today at 1-888-688-8250 to speak with an architectural sales representative.
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