New 640-space parking garage, potential medical office building part of Harborview’s long-term campus expansion

King County submitted preliminary design plans for a new six-level, 640-space parking garage next to Harborview Medical Center.

The parking garage, named Ninth and Alder, will replace the soon-to-be-demolished parking garage that will be the site of a new inpatient tower, county spokesperson Tim Pfarr told The Puget Sound Business Journal.

In addition to plans for a six-level garage at 755 Alder Street, officials noted that there could eventually be a new seven-story medical office building atop the Ninth and Alder garage, although that section of the project does not yet have funding, according to Pfarr.

Demolition of existing Harborview garage made parking an ‘immediate need’

A $1.74 billion bond package was approved by voters in 2020 to fund a long-term expansion of Harborview’s medical campus and its services. The primary use for that funding will be the new inpatient tower replacing the View Park garage at 301 Eighth Avenue, which is scheduled to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2032.

Pfarr noted that demolishing the View Park garage created an “immediate need” for more parking to maintain access to the Harborview Medical Center campus, according to The Puget Sound Business Journal.

King County plans to begin the Ninth and Alder project in January. A public meeting has been scheduled for Sept. 23 at 5 p.m.

“We are working closely with the city of Seattle to ensure the city issues permits as quickly as possible to meet this timeline,” Pfarr told The Puget Sound Business Journal.

The Ninth and Alder garage is slated to have 640 parking spaces across six levels, both above and below grade. The project will not be funded by the bond package but through the county hospital property tax and a $5 million grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce.

Initial designs were also submitted for the 226,000-square-foot medical office building that would be built on top of the garage. There is currently no timeline for that project, Pfarr said.

In 2024, King County purchased the Ninth and Alder site for $52 million from Kaiser Permanente, a $15.7 million increase over Kaiser’s 2021 purchase price. Kaiser had announced plans in 2020 to build a 250,000-square-foot medical facility but scrapped those plans and ultimately sold the site.

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