Gates Foundation breaks ground on new headquarters

SEATTLE — Across the street from the Space Needle and Paul Allen's tribute to Jimi Hendrix and rock music, Allen's old friend Bill Gates is building his headquarters for charitable giving, something sure to become another Seattle tourist attraction.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation broke ground Tuesday on its new $500 million headquarters, which the world's largest charitable foundation hopes to occupy in late 2010.

The foundation's campus is a crosswalk away from the Seattle Center, and the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, Allen's collection of rock memorabilia and space-age literature and artifacts. Both are monuments to the astonishing wealth garnered by Gates and Allen, the co-founders of Microsoft Corp.

The campus, which covers a city block, will be big enough to house 1,200 employees plus large meetings and events. Gates and his wife also will have their own interactive museum, a 15,000 square-foot center telling the story of the foundation's work. In all, the headquarters buildings will encompass some 900,000 square feet.

The Gates Foundation, started by Gates and his wife in 2000, has come a long way from a nondescript and unlabeled building in a semi-industrial area just north of downtown Seattle to the new complex near Seattle's busiest tourist draws.

"It's a big change for us, but it's a natural evolution as the Gates Foundation has grown and we're also growing into our voice and our place in the world," said foundation spokeswoman Heidi Sinclair.

She said putting on a more public face will help multiply the generosity of Bill and Melinda Gates by drawing more attention to the issues they care about and the work of the organizations they support.

The Gates Foundation is using its $37.3 billion endowment to fight diseases like AIDS and malaria, start a green revolution in Africa, improve American high schools and provide Internet access at libraries throughout the world.

Sinclair said the two intersecting, light-filled, V-shaped buildings with a private, landscaped courtyard symbolize the organization's connection to Seattle and its efforts to reach out to the people around the world.

"When I look at the building I think they're like boomerangs that you throw out and they come back," she said.

The nearly transparent structure — including glass interior walls and fixtures — is supposed to elicit confidence in the foundation's mission, by making the enterprise inside clear to the outside world, as well as connect the people who work at the foundation, said Steve McConnell, design partner at NBBJ, the Seattle-based architects for the project.

"It will be dramatically different than being on 20 floors in a high rise," said McConnell, whose firm also designed the Staples Center in Los Angeles and Seattle's Safeco Field.

The third building on the foundation campus is a public parking garage, which was completed earlier in July. The new garage, with a 1.5-acre landscaped roof, was part of the deal when the foundation bought the 12-acre site formerly used as a Seattle Center parking lot for $50.5 million.

Sustainability is another theme. Cisterns will collect rainwater for the landscaping and the designers are working toward a gold certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design project of the Green Building Council.

The foundation, which now has about 543 employees, currently rents office space in four separate buildings — soon to be five — said Martha Choe, foundation chief administrative officer.

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On the Net:

Gates Foundation: http://www.gatesfoundation.org