North Seattle College Opportunity Center for Employment and Education

Seattle, WA

North Seattle College Opportunity Center for Employment and Education

The design for the college's Opportunity Center reimagined an existing classroom building with an addition and renovation resulting in this three-story administration building. MKA incorporated steel-braced and moment frames to the existing concrete frame, eliminating the need for structural upgrades to the existing concrete shear walls or diaphragms. The project, which was awarded LEED Gold, recycled at least half of its construction waste. MKA's civil site design for the new structure included improvements to the project's south parking lot, and assistance with the master plan for the project site. Solutions include storm water planters to detain runoff from the building, reducing site detention pipe sizes by more than 50 percent, and a 7,000-ft² green roof retrofit for the existing building. Additionally, a hybrid storm water planting strip/bioretention cell system was implemented that provides combined decentralized detention and water quality treatment within the south parking lot while maintaining the required parking stall quantity, as well as a natural drainage course to convey treated water from the south parking lot to the storm drainage system.