Seattle’s new mixed-use complex merges new construction with a repurposed 1921 funeral home

Located along the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle, Fremont Crossing provides the city with a new home for creative tech businesses, retail, and dining options. The new mixed-use complex merges new construction inspired by the maritime heritage of the ship canal, with the renovated and repurposed 1921 Bleitz Funeral Home.

A new four-story, 41,000-sf mixed-use office building will partially wrap around the back of the 7,800-sf redeveloped funeral home and create a courtyard space between the two buildings. The new building will feature floor-to-ceiling windows and a glazed prow, nicknamed “the treehouse,” that will be enclosed in floor-to-ceiling glass and reach from the new building to the old building on the north side of the properties.

Courtesy SkB Architects.

“It’s important that the historic Bleitz Funeral Home maintain its identity,” says Shannon Gaffney, Co-Founder of SkB Architects and Co-Designer for the project, in a release. “We want to showcase the simple elegance of the design, so we’ll be stripping away post-1921 additions that have eroded the building’s historic integrity. When complete, it will look very similar to how it looked originally.”

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Retail and dining options will occupy the ground level spaces with creative and technology companies occupying the rest of the space. No specific tenants have been determined yet. The complex is expected to break ground at the end of 2018 with a completion date in early 2020.

Courtesy SkB Architects.