The Seattle Center 5th Ave N Garage will be open in time to serve visitors arriving by car for the Bite of Seattle food festival July 18-20, 2008.

The illustration above shows the south entry plaza at the corner of Fifth Avenue North and Harrison Street. The community can look forward to:

• A landscaped plaza with benches (center) that greets arriving and departing visitors
  
  
• A glass pavilion (behind the plaza) that houses elevators to underground parking
  
  
• Bainbridge Island Coffee Roasters (right, on north side of Harrison Street), inviting people to meet and linger
  
  
• Storefront-like windows (left, along Fifth Avenue North) that will allow passers-by a view into the foundation's future visitor center when it opens in 2011
  
  

Cars can enter the underground garage from both the south entrance off of Harrison Street (to the east of the coffee shop) and from the north entrance off of Republican Street.

Facts for those who like numbers

• Footprint of old parking Lot 2 to the east of Seattle Center: 12 acres
  
  
• Footprint of the new five-level, mostly underground garage: 2 acres
  
  
• Parking spaces in old parking lots: 1,200 (approximate)
  
  
• Parking spaces in new garage: 1,021
  
  
• Size of living roof on top of garage: 1.5 acres
  
  

Visitor highlights

"As soon as you drive into the garage," says Jill Crary, the center's redevelopment director, "the spirit of Seattle Center will welcome you. The natural light, the stained-glass art, the whole feeling of the south entry plaza—it all says you're here to have fun."

Three ways to discover what's special about the garage:

1. Savor the play of light. The light will visually orient visitors as it filters down—even to the lowest level of the garage—through the glass pavilion, elevator shafts, and rooftop skylights. With no interior walls underground, the light will illuminate the locations of the south and north elevators.
   
   
2. Allow time to enjoy the south entry. Take in Seattle artist Dick Weiss's art installation—a bracelet of stained glass around the glass pavilion. Read a display about the garage's sustainable living roof, grab a coffee or snack, and hang out in the plaza to wait for friends or rest your feet.
   
   
3. Keep an eye on the garage's living roof. Best vantage points include the Space Needle, upper floors of neighboring buildings, and higher streets and buildings on south Queen Anne and west Capitol Hill. (See a related story below for more about the living roof.)
   
   

A successful public-private partnership

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with Seattle Center and the City of Seattle to build the new public garage, which will be owned and operated by Seattle Center.

"This is a great partnership," says the foundation's community relations manager, Lisa Verhovek. "Being next to Seattle Center—the heart of the city—allows the foundation to be a more engaged local partner."

After the garage opens, the foundation breaks ground for its new campus north and east of the garage. Initially, the foundation will lease 300 garage parking spaces for employees on weekdays, the time when the center has least need for event parking.

The Seattle Center 5th Ave N Garage (foreground in the illustration above) has a 1.5-acre living roof—the largest of its kind in Seattle. With the top floor of the five-level garage at street level, the garage’s living roof will be widely visible from above. To allow for some visibility at street level, the roof is curved and dips slightly at the southeast corner, over the south entry plaza.

We encourage Queen Anne neighbors and office workers with a bird's-eye view to join in the fun of watching this sustainable habitat slowly grow and change.

Here are some frequently asked questions about the living roof:

Q.: Is a living roof the same as a green roof?

A.: This planted roof will have a subtle beauty. Many people hear green and expect a lawn or pea-patch-like garden. The garage architects and landscape designers call it a living roof to emphasize its function as a sustainable habitat.

Q.: What makes it a sustainable habitat?

A.: The roof plantings will provide a natural habitat for birds to feed on seeds and insects in the shallow soil. When mature, the plants will need no irrigation besides rainwater. Unlike an asphalt parking lot or a typical concrete garage roof, this living roof adds 1.5 acres of permeable surface to absorb, filter, and reduce water run-off into city street drains.

Q.: What kinds of plants will grow on the roof?

A.: The base plantings are varieties of sedum—hardy, drought-tolerant, low-growing plants that thrive in shallow soil. (The planting beds contain only 4 inches of soil mixed with 1-2 inches of pumice for drainage.) The sedum will gradually form a carpet of different textures and tones of green, turning red seasonally. Some will sprout small white flowers in the summer.

Q.: Why does the living roof look dead at first?

A.: This permanent living roof is not like a jam-packed display of summer annuals. It takes several growing seasons for perennial plantings to fill out. The brown you see is dirt between small, slow-growing, healthy plants. Once established, the roof will change with the seasons. In the spring, it will be greener, and in the fall it will transition to varying hues of red.

Q.: Will there be tours of the living roof?

A.: Sorry, to protect this shallow natural habitat, the roof will not be accessible to the public.

Interested in more details about upcoming construction work? You can stay up to speed by reading bulletins posted by Sellen Construction, the project's general contractor.

The bulletins help our future neighbors know what to expect and when to plan for changes around the project site, including street closures.