Alaska Airlines Opens Office Addition in Metro Seattle

The Hub. Image courtesy of Balfour Beatty

Alaska Airlines has expanded its corporate campus near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport through a new six-story property in SeaTac, Wash.

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After acquiring the 7-acre site for the new development in January 2018, the airline company tapped Howard S. Wright, a Balfour Beatty company, to build the 128,000-square-foot corporate office. Construction on the project, named The Hub, began in July 2018 and lasted for two years. William Colby, senior project manager at Howard S. Wright, told Commercial Property Executive the company worked closely with the project team that included architecture firm NBBJ and development manager Seneca Group to get the building delivered early and under budget.

Located at 19235 International Blvd., the new corporate office for Alaska Airlines is across the street from the airline’s corporate headquarters and adjacent to its flight training center. The Hub will include the airline’s 24/7 operations facility, recruiting center, uniform fit center, company store, and also house the e-commerce and ITS employees. In total, the new building will accommodate 600 employees.

The Hub features an open office design with meeting rooms, multi-purpose conference spaces of various sizes, a two-story atrium and a staircase from the second to the sixth floor that also offers gathering spaces. Moreover, the building is on track to achieve a V4 Leed Silver certification, Colby told CPE.

Phased construction and new technology

Colby told CPE that the construction process of The Hub was spread throughout two phases. The first phase was dedicated to the corporate office building and three and a half stories of the parking garage, while the second phase involved completing the parking garage by adding an additional seven and a half stories, while Alaska Airlines occupied the lower levels of the garage, Colby told CPE.

In building Alaska Airlines’ latest corporate office building, Colby told CPE that Howard S. Wright employed new construction technologies throughout the project. The developer employed 3-D scanning for the pre-concrete pour photo documentation, so the project team could see where infrastructure, rebar and other elements within the slabs are positioned after they’re poured, according to Colby. He added that the project team also used a digital project dashboard and drone aerial progress photography.

Elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, Howard S. Wright is constructing a 35-story mixed-use development in downtown Portland that recently secured a $460 million construction loan.