The Seattle Public Library board of trustees has selected Hoffman Construction Co. to be general contractor/construction manager (GC/CM) for the new $159 million Central Library. The board made its unanimous choice at its May 23 meeting.
Hoffman was recommended to the board by a team that reviewed detailed proposals and conducted interviews. Lease Crutcher Lewis, Turner Construction, and PCL Construction Services also competed for the job.
Hoffman Construction Co., founded in 1922, has a reputation for taking on challenging, one-of-a-kind projects, including a chapel on the side of a sheer cliff in Portland, Ore., a $500 million computer chip factory in a Middle Eastern desert, and a light-rail station 260 feet underground. Hoffman, which is building Paul Allen's Experience Music Project Museum in Seattle, has been GC/CM for the University of Washington, state of Washington, city of Seattle, and numerous counties and school districts. The company has built more than 25 public GC/CM projects.
Hoffman also has renovated the Multnomah County Central Library in Portland, Ore., and the Oregon State University Valley Library in Corvallis; built the William W. Knight Law Center at the University of Oregon and the Willamette University Hatfield Library in Salem, Ore.; and expanded Lewis & Clark's Watzek Library in Portland. It currently is in preconstruction on the Lewis & Clark Law School Library.
"The size, complexity, and quality expectations dictated by OMA/LMN's design for the new Seattle library are exactly in line with our experience and market focus," said Doug Winn, Hoffman's project director. "Our goal is to be a supportive, creative partner."
Alexandra Harris, the Library's capital program director, said the interview team was impressed with Hoffman's work on the Experience Music Project Museum.
"Hoffman's recent experience with a very complex building gave them a real comfort level with our much simpler building," Harris told board members, adding that Hoffman worked hard to understand the costs of the project and the Library's objectives. The firm also conducted an early constructability review to examine how to most efficiently build the new library.
Hoffman also stressed its commitment to working as part of a team. The GC/CM will work as part of a project team that includes the Library, the development manager, the architect, and the architect's consultants.
Team members who reviewed proposals and conducted interviews included: Alexandra Harris, Library capital program director; John Nesholm and Bob Zimmer, LMN Architects; Joshua Ramus, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA); Jon Nordby, Wright Runstad & Co.; John Battle, Microsoft; Steve Goldblatt and Doug Holen, both of the University of Washington. The team also included Steve Trainer, Barb Gregory and Craig Norsen of The Seneca Group, which is acting as the Library's development manager for the Central Library.
OMA, in a joint venture with LMN Architects, is designing the 355,000-square-foot library, scheduled to open on the existing library site at 1000 Fourth Ave. in 2003. OMA founder and 2000 Pritzker Prize recipient Rem Koolhaas recently presented his current design work to the public, drawing nearly 1,500 people to the event.
A model of the design work to date is on public display through the end of May at the Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave.
The new library is part of the $196.4 million "Libraries for All" bond measure that Seattle voters passed in 1998 to upgrade the Library's 109-year-old system. The plan calls for improving or replacing all 22 branch libraries and building three new branches. For more information, visit the Library's Web site at www.spl.org and select "Libraries for All.
(For more information, call Caroline Young Ullmann, communications assistant, 206-615-1627)
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Content modified: 12 July 2000
12/30/2005
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