Rainier Square Tower

Rainier Square Tower is a tall building called a skyscraper in downtown Seattle, Washington. It is 850 feet tall and has 58 floors. This makes it the second-tallest building in the city. The tower is located between 4th and 5th Avenues, close to another famous building called the Rainier Tower.

People built the Rainier Square Tower in 2020, and it cost about $600 million. It is the tallest building built in Seattle since the Columbia Center was finished in 1985. The tower is used for offices and homes, which is called mixed-use.

History

The University of Washington wanted to update the Rainier Square shopping center in 2013. The mall opened in 1978 and was next to the Rainier Tower. In 2014, they chose Wright Runstad to help build a new tower. By 2015, they made the tower taller and added more homes. The city approved the plans in December 2015.

The old shopping center closed in 2017, and Amazon.com agreed to rent part of the new building. Construction started in 2018 and finished in September 2020. Some stores opened later, like PCC Community Markets in 2022. In 2024, Russell Investments decided to move their offices to the tower. Plans for a hotel changed to more office space instead.

Design

The tower, designed by NBBJ, has almost 200 fancy apartment units, office space, and shops. It also has parking for many cars underground. The tower looks wider at the bottom and gets thinner as you go up. Early plans had it getting thinner higher up, but they changed it to keep the view of the base of the nearby Rainier Tower.

The tower uses strong walls made with steel plates instead of some usual building parts. This helped build the floors faster. There is also a smaller building nearby that will open soon and will have space for shops and a special area on the roof.