ENR Northwest 2024 Best Projects
Best Sustainability: Whatcom Village
Photo by Tim Griffth
WHATCOM VILLAGE
Redmond, Wash.
EXCELLENCE IN SUSTAINABILITY
Submitted by: Skanska Balfour Beatty (SBB), a JV of Skanska and Howard S. Wright Construction Co., a Balfour Beatty Company
OWNER: Not Disclosed
LEAD DESIGN FIRM: LMN Architects
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Skanska Balfour Beatty (SBB), a Joint Venture Between Skanska and Howard S. Wright Construction Co., a Balfour Beatty Company
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: Coughlin Porter Lundeen
MEP ENGINEER: MacDonald-Miller Mechanical
CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: CBRE
DESIGN FIRM – CAFÉS: Graham Baba Architects
SUBCONTRACTORS: Apex Tower Crane Inc.; MacDonald Miller Facility Solutions LLC; Bayley Construction; Big Sky Insulations Inc.; Brundage-Bone Concrete Pumping Inc.
This four-building development within a larger east campus modernization project for a confidential client spans approximately 988,500 sq ft.
Primarily designed as office space, Whatcom Village also features a range of high-end amenities, including food hall areas with 32 unique dining venues, commercial kitchens in two buildings and a gastropub accessible to the public. Each building has its own outdoor terrace, multipurpose meeting rooms, centralized hubs, gathering spaces, conference rooms as well as bike storage and locker facilities. In each of the five-story buildings, stacked H- and C-shaped volumes interlock around a central multistory space connecting all levels via a feature stair.
Photo by Adam Hunter
Whatcom Village is on track to meet LEED Platinum, ILFI Zero Carbon and Salmon Safe certifications, underscoring its commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship. The project integrated minimum employee bike parking, green roof areas, rainwater harvesting and all-electric building operations. Crews tracked construction material and construction activity embodied carbon emissions as well as construction activity water usage. In addition, the team followed Forest Stewardship Council certified wood procurement and diverted at least 90% of construction waste from landfills.
Another key sustainability goal was eliminating natural gas from the new campus, requiring all commercial kitchen equipment in the two food halls to be electric. The carbon reduction mandate, driven by the owner’s carbon-neutral goals, presented several challenges and opportunities for innovation including a required increase in electrical design criteria and the construction of a temporary gas feed to the property. In a traditional kitchen, the electrical distribution system accommodates around 65 watts per sq ft of back-of-house kitchen space before national electrical code (NEC) diversity.
Photo by Adam Hunter
However, with an all-electric kitchen, the Whatcom food halls had to plan for an electrical load closer to 200 watts per sq ft before NEC code diversities. Each food hall building also required two services: one 3,000-ampere service for the four stories of office spaces and shell/core loads and a second 3,000-ampere service dedicated solely to the kitchen/food hall area on Level 1.
Photo by Matthew Millman
During construction, temporary heating was provided by gas heaters installed externally and fed through the building using lay-flat ducts. Once the permanent power and thermal energy center supplied chilled water to the buildings, the temporary gas line was demolished. Kitchen equipment manufacturers were engaged early in the design process to develop large-scale induction technologies. One significant innovation was a first-of-its-kind induction wok stove that provides quick temperature adjustment, high heat and a stable surface.
Upon completion in December 2023, Whatcom Village had achieved an embodied carbon footprint 61% below 2019 industry baselines.
