Seattle’s tallest plyscraper is slated to rise in the heart of the city, with developers pushing a mass‑timber tower they say can climb at a pace few anywhere in the world can match.
Last week, Building Reimagined — a partnership between architecture firm Clark/Barnes and contractor BNBuilders — unveiled plans for a 21‑storey, 340‑unit residential tower at 301 Pike Street, with the consortium working with property owner Art Wahl, who controls the site.
Wood Central understands that the decision on whether to proceed is expected to happen within the next 120 days. “I’m 99 per cent convinced that the city wants [the tower project] to happen,” Wahl told the Seattle-based Business Journal late last week.
The proposal includes 340 apartments averaging 73 square metres (790 sq ft), two levels of above‑grade parking, additional subterranean parking, and 740 to 930 square metres of ground‑floor retail (8,000–10,000 sq ft). But the project’s defining feature — and the key to its accelerated building timeline — is the decision to build the tower using mass timber.
By shifting to engineered wood, the development team says it can dramatically compress the construction schedule: “We’re going to be able to erect each story every two weeks,” said W. Scott Clark, principal at Clark/Barnes. “It’s fast, it’s quiet, it’s manageable within a dense urban environment.”
If delivered at that pace, the tower would rise faster than many steel or concrete high‑rises — placing Seattle alongside global tall‑timber leaders such as Milwaukee, Vancouver, and most recently, the Atlassian Central Tower in Sydney, Australia.
Construction costs are estimated between US $160 million and US $180 million.
While the design and delivery team is in place, Building Reimagined still needs a general partner or co‑developer to secure financing. “We’re as shovel‑ready as you could get without fully permitted plans,” said Jason Limp, president of BNBuilders. “The only thing that’s going to stop this from getting done is a lack of dollars.”
The Pike Street tower is one of several mass‑timber projects the partnership is advancing across the Puget Sound region, including a proposed 16‑storey, 140‑unit tower in the historic A.E. Doyle Building near Pike Place Market, the Business Journal reported. If approved, the Pike Street project would stand as Seattle’s tallest timber tower and a flagship example of how tall timber can rapidly transform underused urban sites.
