OLYMPIC DRIVE
GIG HARBOR, WASHINGTON
GROSS SQUARE FOOTAGE: 145,548 SQ. FT
SITE AREA: 4.8 ACRES (209,427 SQ. FT.)
In response to Olympic Square’s unique location, we found that a mixed use of professional office, small neighborhood retail and town houses would be an economic success. Olympic Square is located west of the Olympic Drive interchange of Highway 16 and around a blind corner of Olympic Drive. The projects grade is one story above Olympic Drive, not ideal for retail, Okay for office and great for residential. We planned a neighborhood where people could live, shop and work. Olympic Square is the first of its kind in Gig Harbor, the Olympic Drive/ Point Fosdick activity center, where residents and workers can walk to grocery stores, banks, restaurants, taverns and coffee shops. The Professional Office Building was completed in the project’s first phase during 2004. In the second phase, the main retail buildings were completed in 2006 and the town houses were just completed in 2008.
The project has wide tree lined pedestrian walks on both sides of the main street where shops and restaurants can place merchandise or set up tables and chairs. The office building’s three and one half story tower anchors the main street. Between the two retail buildings we placed a well defined plaza and stair hill climb to Olympic Drive. Between the small town house retail spaces residents can walk under a stone and timber trellis through a semi-private garden court to entry their townhouse. Pedestrian walks link the Olympic Square neighborhood with retail stores to the west and north. Town house residents have a private two-car tandem garages which frees surface parking for guests, retail and office use. The mix of office, retail and residential allows a minimum of parking. Each use has a different peak parking need, which helps to reduce the need for excess parking.
The original character was in response to an owner / tenant request for a “Northwest Cascade” style. We researched many Cascade Mountain resorts and camps and found patterns that we implemented in the aesthetics of the architecture. The community of Gig Harbor has strong desire to keep the character of commercial buildings to be “small town” with building materials that are “hand placed” and mass that is broken up to smaller vertical and horizontal sections. We successfully achieved this with steeper pitched roofs, wide overhangs, bracket details, trellis, ledge stone, stucco, vertical / horizontal siding and vertically oriented windows.
Olympic Square’s success was based on maximizing the site with proper mix and placement of uses, controlling construction cost through tight design build process. The town houses ‘hard costs’ was under $100 per gross square foot. The office buildings hard cost was under $200 per gross square foot including tenant improvements and the retail was somewhere in between.
The architectural character and careful placement of use on the site makes this dense urban mixed use project an excellent example of future sustainable small town living.