Located in the Denny Triangle area, Touchstone and Mortenson brought to life the hill7 mixed-use project, including an 11-story office building and a 14-story hotel over shared underground parking. The design of hill7 is elegant and contemporary with a touch of whimsy. The colonnade along Boren Avenue provides a much-needed respite for pedestrians in this corridor, where the sidewalks are typically narrow next to the busy avenue. Inside, the reflective soffit/ceiling stretches from the colonnade to the lobbies, providing a unique connection between the two that bounces light, movement, and color, keeping the space alive. The colorful and comfortable lobby seating and retail uses open to the lobby provide building users a coffee shop feel and a casual place to work or socialize. A white modular ceiling in the office elevator lobby is a creative representation of the seven hills of Seattle for which the project is named.
hill7 office has approximately 300,000 SF of class-A rentable office space. This mid-rise concrete structure features ultra-efficient floor plates of over 28,000 SF each, ground floor retail, divisible meeting space with state-of-the-art AV and teleconferencing equipment, secured bike storage, generous locker rooms with showers, and an outdoor deck. The Hilton Garden Inn has 222 rooms, including six (6) suites. The downtown select service hotel has a cocktail lounge in addition to the restaurant, conference space, executive board room, exercise room, pool, and spa. The hotel and office share three levels of below-grade parking, with 352 stalls, electric vehicle charging stations, and preferred parking spaces for low-emitting/high-efficiency vehicles.
Touchstone has been developing urban infill projects since the early 80s, but until hill7, it had yet to put them together in this way. By entitling and constructing this office as part of the mixed-use project, the developer optimized the office size by floor plate and overall rentable area. Office users benefit from the hotel as an amenity to service traveling associates, while the hotel benefits from additional nighttime parking spaces. The location provides easy freeway access and plentiful amenities in the surrounding neighborhoods of Capitol Hill, South Lake Union, and the downtown shopping district.
In addition, the overall project exceeded the Seattle Energy Code and earned enough points for LEED Gold while achieving 54% vision glass for the office space. The first of its kind in Seattle, a blue roof was used to eliminate the need for on-site detention of roof drainage while also providing a unique and interesting aesthetic for neighboring towers that look down on hill7.
