Gates Foundation's new campus a center for local as well as world issues

It may be better known for its work around the world, but the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation highlighted local programs in celebrating the opening of its new Seattle headquarters Thursday.

"We have arms reaching out to every part of the world, but we have local roots here," said Martha Choe, a former City Council member who is the foundation's chief administrative officer.

The opening marked the culmination of a seven-year process to build the 900,000-square-foot campus on a 12-acre site across from the Seattle Center at a cost of $500 million.

The Gates Foundation hosted a reception for 1,000 community leaders Thursday evening and will hold a public open house from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. The land was formerly a site belonging to the Duwamish Tribe, and tribe chair Cecile Hansen led an invocation to begin Thursday's reception.

"I think it's as important as when the Space Needle went up," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, who was in the audience. "Seattle is continuing to make so much of an imprint on global issues."

The Gates Foundation expects to bring partners here from around the world for hundreds of meetings a year on the campus, including upcoming forums on homelessness, U.S. education and malaria.

More than 900 employees and 300 contractors now work in Seattle, with room for 300 more in the current two buildings as the organization grows.

Their work in Washington state is focused largely on families and children.

David Bley, director of the Pacific Northwest initiative, said that since 2006, the foundation has invested about $100 million in an effort to reduce family homelessness by half in the Seattle metropolitan area.

Bley looks out the window of his office and sees Seattle's homeless right across the street. "I take it personally," he said.

Increasingly, Bley said, he is also finding ways to bridge global and local projects and share lessons.

One example is a global health ambassadors program to educate local students about health issues around the world.

Bley also noted that the home of the Gates Foundation happens to be a place where "a large number of parents still choose not to vaccinate children."

The foundation, which invests heavily in new vaccines and works to boost vaccination rates around the world, will soon be partnering with local groups to do the same in Washington, he said.

The program, a collaboration with Group Health and local health officials, will focus on educating doctors. .The hope is that doctors will in turn be able to better explain the benefits of childhood vaccination to parents and help allay fears, he said.

Asked to describe how the foundation employees approach their work, which includes such disparate goals as trying to eliminate polio and making sure every U.S. student is prepared for college, Bley pointed to some common elements.

"Here in Seattle we're not fighting polio and we have clean water," he said. But the questions are similar. "How do you raise community awareness and build community will to take on problems that other people have chosen to neglect or have been defeated by?"

In Ethiopia or India or China, "it might be a health problem as opposed to an education problem, but you're still working with partners in the community," he said.

One effect of the newly opened offices could be increased traffic along Fifth Avenue North, where a Seattle Center parking garage doubles as employee parking.

To reduce the number of cars and the impact of the campus, foundation employees get free Orca cards for unlimited use on buses, trains, light rail, and the Seattle Street Car. They also have a strong financial incentive: All employees pay $9 a day to park in the garage, but they receive $3 a day when they take alternative transportation, such as a bus, bike or van pool.

The Seattle Center Monorail now opens earlier to help employees get to the area from the Westlake Transit Tunnel during the morning commute.

They are also encouraged to work outdoors and circulate around the light-filled office space.

Artwork from around the world adorns the buildings, much of it donated to the foundation by grantees. An African shirt that Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid activist and former president of South Africa, gave to Bill and Melinda Gates in 1999 hangs on the top floor.

A striking tapestry by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui drapes one wall near the grand atrium, which serves both as a casual bistro and the site of receptions.

The tapestry's "fabric" is made of metal tops from liquor bottles, hammered flat and woven together.

Anatsui works mainly in Nigeria, said Choe, the foundation's chief administrative officer. Village children helped hammer the bottle caps, and the artist repaid their labor by sending them to school, she said.

Kristi Heim: 206-464-2718 or kheim@seattletimes.com