Virtual Tour of the Fred Hutch Campus

Today Seth Thornton, the director of EH&S at Fred Hutch, walked us through the South Lake Union campus. Perhaps the perfect professional to talk to given the current need for air circulation expertise, Seth described how the campus operates non stop. With wet lab space being highly engineered, the need to have functioning building operations is paramount. Redundancy of major utilities are in every sphere of the campus. Particularly intriguing, Seth talked about how in certain spaces the air is replaced every 60 seconds. His foremost point was that this space never takes a day off. While office, multifamily, or industrial spaces may have equipment failures and resulting work is done in days, Fred Hutch has back up so that the building can stay online throughout any failures.

Mr. Thornton also spoke about the lease of the iconic smokestacks building abutting I-5. This building was granted historic preservation status in 1994, the result of this being that shifting any of the façade is incredibly difficult. In fact, Seth alluded to the fact that even specific window blinds are regulated! However, Seth noted that because the building was previously leased by a life science organization, most of the space was already in good condition. Retrofitting, then, didn’t require a full scrape of the inside.

I particularly enjoyed hearing how Fred Hutch’s long term strategy has come to fruition. Seeing South Lake Union when they first began purchasing parcels in the 80’s, to the explosion of highrises and tech campuses was thrilling. Fred Hutch made a bet, and it paid off big time with them having 1.6 million sq ft of prime life science space.

Thanks for taking the time to walk (zoom) us through the campus Seth!