Northlake Commons

Seattle keeps proving mass timber works at real scale. Northlake Commons, a 275,000-square-foot mixed-use building on the north side of Lake Union, is among the largest mass-timber lab-ready projects in the country and has earned LEED Platinum certification. It’s on track to finish in fall 2026.

Project Scope

The five-story building sets 158,000 square feet of mass-timber office and lab-ready space on a concrete podium that holds structured parking and a lumber warehouse for Dunn Lumber, one of the project’s partners. Cross-laminated timber columns, beams, and panels form the structure above the podium. The program mixes life-science and office floors with restaurants and more than 64,500 square feet of multi-level outdoor space along the Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop. Weber Thompson is architect and landscape architect, Swinerton is the general contractor, and Timberlab fabricated the mass-timber system. The developers are Hess Callahan Grey Group, Spear Street Capital, and the Dunn Lumber family.

Why It Matters

Lab-ready space usually means heavy concrete and steel to carry vibration-sensitive equipment, so a mass-timber building that meets those demands challenges an old assumption. The exposed wood also cuts embodied carbon sharply versus a conventional frame, the payoff that has mass timber gaining across LEED v5 projects. On a working waterfront that still runs a lumberyard, Northlake Commons stitches life-science demand into an industrial edge of the city without erasing it.

Project Team & Details