Rising 300 feet above Seattle’s historic First Hill neighborhood, Graystone is a premier residential condominium tower offering high-density, luxury housing just steps from downtown and major transit routes. The building’s architecture bridges the neighborhood's past and future: masonry-clad podium levels seamlessly complement the surrounding historic structures, while the tower above features floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows, giving the project a clean, contemporary edge.
Residents and guests are welcomed into a vibrant community hub featuring diverse gathering zones, collaborative workspaces, a fitness center, and a dedicated dog park and wash station.Â
At the crown of the tower, two rooftop decks provide unparalleled indoor-outdoor dining and entertainment, showcasing the stunning, panoramic views that make urban living in the Puget Sound region so highly sought after.
At street level, the tower is anchored by a generously landscaped, 9,000-square-foot public park that rises above busy Eighth Avenue. Featuring terraced seating, lush plantings, curated artwork, and a large waterfall feature, this urban refuge not only enhances community life but also naturally mitigates a steep slope, contributing significantly to the project’s LEED Silver certification.
Extreme Slope Mitigation: The civil and structural teams collaborated early to preserve the existing east-side elevation while establishing critical grades for the alley, loading dock, and public plaza. Resolving these seismic and sloping site concerns early allowed the high-rise design to proceed without delay.
Managing Unbalanced Site Conditions: To address the significant grade disparity, where the basement wall on the high alley side was much taller than the opposite side, the structural team introduced a unidirectional joint between the wall and the slab. This innovative solution enabled the wall to resist heavy, unbalanced soil loads without transferring torsional forces to the rest of the building.
Strategic Structural Layouts: By shifting columns to align with varying unit layouts across the tower’s height, the team maintained thin slabs to maximize ceiling heights for residents. Carrying this strategic column grid down through the garage significantly limited the need for costly transfer beams.
Accelerated Peer Review: Because the tower exceeded standard code height limits, it required a complex nonlinear analysis and rigorous peer review. While this process typically spans 18 months or more, the team executed an ambitious, intentional strategy to satisfy all requirements and achieve every permit milestone in just 12 months.
Complex Right-of-Way Negotiations: Major civil coordination with city officials successfully transformed a steep, undeveloped alleyway into a fully usable roadway, balancing tree removal and extreme grade modifications.
Site Protection: Construction documents were meticulously detailed to ensure that development around the neighboring 20-foot rockery wall, which was unengineered and owned by a third party, would not cause any exposure or structural compromise.
Optimized Rooftop Amenities: The structural design features an efficient, three-story mechanical penthouse stacked tightly over the building’s slender core, maximizing the usable rooftop amenity space for residents.
