Bellevue City Hall

Bellevue, WA

Bellevue City Hall

MKA designed structural and seismic upgrades, an exterior curtain wall, and rebuilt interiors and systems to convert a seven-story, 1980s-era telecommunications facility into a metropolitan city hall.  The building, which was completely gutted during the renovation, encompasses a downtown superblock situated on a challenging, sloping site with four building levels jutting into the hillside. A soaring, 360-ft-long public concourse connects city hall to a new, three-level, post-tensioned concrete garage accommodating 400 vehicles and supporting a landscaped plaza above.  Inside, a “floating,” nine-story-tall, precast-concrete stair structure provides an iconic identity for the building and sweeping view of Mount Rainier. As the project's civil engineer, MKA also introduced several site design solutions, including a stormwater detention tank buried beneath a grassy, landscaped expanse that provides an aesthetically pleasing way to meet the City’s new code requirements.  Other civil-related project elements involved regrading the hillside landscape, relocating existing water and sanitary systems, and modeling new eco-roof areas on the existing building.