The Mother of all Fixer Uppers

The Steam plant on Fairview Ave on Lake Union used to generate power for Seattle City Light, providing auxilliary power when that from the hydro electric plant at the Cedar River wasn't enough, first from the small 'hydro house' on the right side, which used water from the Volunteer Park Reservoir, and then from the large Steam Plant which was built over pilings at the edge of the lake in 1914, and added to with more boilers, generators and smokstacks several times. When we moved here in 1969 it was still being used at high peak hours and receiving a fine from the EPA for every day it worked and generated pollution from the smokestacks along with electricity. It sure was a pretty building though with a huge CITY LIGHT sign on the top. It was decommisioned in 1987, deteriorated while it was being decided what to do with it (I remember "art studios"being mentioned!) and then purchased by ZymoGenetics, a biotech firm in 1993. Then the City Historical Landmark Board passed an ordinance requiring approval for any alteration of the buildings which were designated by the neighborhood as Historical Landmarks in 1987. ZymoGenetics spent $25 million to transform this and the adjacent"Hydro House"to suit their purposes, and restore it's original architectural character and features This included massive asbestos removal, replacing the 7 large smokestacks with smaller "fake" ones (which do ventilate the building..), restoring some brick and terra cotta panels, and causing the owner to deem it the";mother of all fixer uppers"! Now there's a public dock, a bit of a garden, a piece of art (not visable here) and the Hydro House has a deli and meeting rooms. It's a part of our Eastlake neighborhood. If interested, here's MORE.


The Steam plant (as we all still call it) is at the south end of my Fairview Street for my One Street Project . (see link..here.

So here's the Haiku :-)

Electricity.
Reborn as biotech research,
Beautiful buildings.