Costco Wholesale Corporation first opened their headquarters in the mid 90’s in Issaquah, WA, an eastern suburb of Seattle bordered by the Sammamish Plateau and the “Issaquah Alps”. The “Issaquah Alps”, aptly named for the surrounding popular ridges that Seattle hikers frequent, provide beautiful views from the glass exterior of the new Costco Corporate Headquarters Expansion project. This campus expansion will allow the retailer giant to unite employees from several satellite offices nearby to one global headquarters.
This project is one of the first high rise construction projects within the City of Issaquah. Spanning 625,000 square feet, this project is comprised of two 9 story Class A Office buildings with an elevated skybridge that crosses a public roadway to provide access to an adjacent parking structure. Below ground, an additional single level sub-grade parking structure is being completed. Prime Electric’s scope is core & shell and tenant improvement (TI) with 111,000+ man hours planned for the initial build. Some notable features include site lighting to support an expansive exterior plaza, auto court, and creekside terrace; extensive kitchen and food service; large event auditorium; multiple exterior building terraces and glass enclosed walkways.
In addition to the electrical work, our Low Voltage team, Prime Technologies, was brought in to handle the low voltage scope across the project. Beyond the standard security cabling for CCTV and access control doors, fire alarm system, and AV infrastructure, Prime Technologies created a unique sound masking system. This system mitigates and suppresses sound in an open office environment using white noise. PRIME put in over 5,000 emitters, making it the largest sound masking system on the west coast.
Orchestrating the 35+ members of the PRIME field team is no easy feat when work on both the TI and core & shell is happening concurrently. Jake O’Dell, electrician at PRIME, has been instrumental in standardizing the BIM process. He’s the go-to person for managing the detailed drawings from the BIM team, coordinating with the prefab department to produce each component exactly to spec. Relaying this information to the installation crews with his nearly two decades of knowledge in the field is key to making the drawings become reality, as efficiently as possible.
Prime Electric has had a unique role in this expansion, working directly with Jackson Dean Construction and Costco’s management team. At the weekly project meetings, PRIME and other stakeholders team up to find ways to innovate lighting, power, and low voltage scopes to craft the project to Costco’s exact requirements. Collaboration is one of PRIME’s core values, reflected in building these key relationships. The understanding established in the continued communication and sharing of ideas allows PRIME to create the best possible final product for the clients.
Watch our latest video on the Costco Headquarters Expansion.
