As the first ground-up facility built specifically for a WNBA franchise, this $64-million project represents an unprecedented investment in elite women athletes. The state‐of‐the‐art professional basketball facility was built on a 50,000‐sq‐ft parcel in Seattle’s Interbay neighborhood. Features include two side‐by‐side basketball courts, locker rooms, a lounge and a nutrition center for the players, strength and conditioning training spaces as well as the franchise’s business offices.

Designed to achieve LEED Gold certification, the facility is all electric and hosts a rooftop photovoltaic array. The structure was built with tilt-up sandwich panels, which utilized eco-friendly, low-carbon concrete. But that also presented some challenges in the finishing and curing methods required for these mixes. Crews completed several mock-up pours, which allowed the construction team to place and finish the 80% slag mixes and practice the sandwich panel installation.

One of the keys to delivering low-carbon concrete was reducing the amount of cement. To do this, the team identified areas, including foundations and tilt-up walls, where concrete was specified with a 56-day cure cycle instead of a 28-day cure cycle. This allowed the team to further reduce the amount of cement in the project’s concrete mixes while achieving the required strength and exceeding goals for embodied carbon reductions. After 11 months, the project was completed within budget and on schedule in April 2024.