A Thesis, Built

“I grew up skateboarding in the alleyways of Pioneer Square. And when I went to architecture school, I did a thesis project on the alleyways of Pioneer Square and trying to get some of the action to move toward the alleys and away from the street sometimes.”

That is Mike Jobes, a principal at The Miller Hull Partnership, describing the design philosophy behind the Rail Spur development in conversation with Reframe host Jeff Nichols at the Vision Awards. Rail Spur is essentially that thesis built.

As Jobes puts it, it is three buildings facing onto a public north-south alley, with all the activity oriented inward. The Populus Seattle Hotel is one of the three. The alley they face onto is the extension of Nord Alley, crossed by an east-west passage to form a cruciform plan at the heart of the block. The entrances, the ground-floor activity, and the pedestrian program all face inward toward the passages rather than outward to the curb.

What stands out about the conversation is not that Jobes got to build the project his younger self had imagined, though that is its own kind of accomplishment. It is that the idea underneath it — designing toward the in-between spaces rather than away from them — is one most American cities have been getting wrong for decades. Pioneer Square happens to have the bones to do it differently, and Rail Spur shows what becomes possible when an architect actually does.