It all comes packaged in a mass timber design meant to celebrate the Pacific Northwest while serving as a canvas for the community’s colorful culture to shine.

“You take an institution like the Latino Network, a strong organization that didn’t have a building, and they are getting all kinds of accolades not only for design but also community focus,” says Randy McGee, project lead for ZGF. “A lot of nonprofits don’t get that. They usually have to compromise. Now they have this gorgeous building.”

The building’s mural-adorned main hall serves as a lobby with a view into the multipurpose rooms.
Photo by Dan Cronin

Getting to that place, though, wasn’t always smooth. A project that started in 2019 was first met with budget restraints due to rising costs during the pandemic, requiring a new cost structure and the downsizing of the space that forced a more flexible interior programming. Built by Colas Construction, the entryway doors open to a main hall, which is connected to the network’s primary services by a mixed-use lounge. Multipurpose rooms feature open floorplates, mobile furniture and retractable room dividers. There is also 5,300 sq ft upstairs to accommodate 160 staff members as well as an onsite preschool serving approximately 20 families with classrooms and designated indoor-outdoor play areas.

“The front entry is welcoming,” McGee says. “It has a residential modern scale to it and harkens to some of the original Northwest regional style homes that were done with wood and were very inviting with lots of glass.”

Located near other community buildings that were purposefully closed off to the public for protection, La Plaza Esperanza offers an inviting main door with a porch stretching the entire front of the structure to invite gathering.

With so many different program elements, the scale of the structure was a challenge, McGee says. “That is why the building is shaped the way it is in an angular form with the backside popped up,” he says, adding that one end has tall volume spaces and then the children’s play area scales down. “The building has a scale that changes naturally from one end to the other.”

The mass timber, though, is the key component of it all. And it almost didn’t happen. McGee says the network really felt connected to the environment of the Pacific Northwest, and the warmth of wood resonated, both to honor the locale but also as a neutral backdrop for colorful cultural expressions of artwork.

As the contractor started bidding the project, having never built a mass timber project before but wanting to learn, the team didn’t have the contacts in the industry, and pricing was coming in too high. McGee, with a wealth of experience in mass timber, helped put his contacts in touch with Colas, and ultimately, Colas partnered with Carpentry Plus, a local company specializing in mass timber, to optimize the structure and meet the budgetary requirements. The final bid ended up being less expensive than other materials, and all the wood came from tribal forests, a connection that resonated with the Latino Network.

The multipurpose rooms are designed with open floorplates, mobile furniture and retractable room dividers to support a broad range of activities.
Photo by Dan Cronin

“Building a community of people who had worked together is important,” McGee says. “They went out of their way because they saw how important this was and came in at a price that was competitive with any building material. There really is a way [to do mass timber] if there is a community of people willing to put the effort in.”

McGee says that because of the connection Colas Construction now has with Carpentry Plus, not only did the minority contractor get to learn how to build with mass timber, but it is now doing more such work. “It is a win-win,” he says.

The mass timber is a part of the structure from design to implementation. Timber is featured in the horizontal plane as well as the vertical, which is not typical. Mass timber became the sheer walls, McGee says, and all the interior finishes are part of the structure, which created efficiency. Even the sloped mass timber roof—with a waterproof membrane installed at the factory—remains exposed.

“Cross-laminated timber is the protagonist of this design,” says Ernestina Fuenmayor, project manager with Salazar Architect, a partner on the project with ZGF.