Jan. 8 ribbon-cutting will celebrate two new buildings
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 26, 2003 Contacts: Jill Carnell, Public Relations, (253) 692-4536
Jan. 8 ribbon-cutting will celebrate two new buildings
The University of Washington, Tacoma will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly remodeled Cherry Parkes and Mattress Factory buildings at 1 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 8.
Gov. Gary Locke, UW President Lee Huntsman and others are expected to attend the event, hosted by Chancellor Vicky Carwein, to celebrate UWT’s newest buildings. When open, the two buildings will add almost 140,000 square feet of much-needed classroom, lab and office space to the rapidly growing UW Tacoma campus.
The Cherry Parkes building, located on Pacific Avenue south of the Walsh Gardner building, will contain retail space and a broadcast studio on the first floor, with the UWT Nursing Program, general classrooms and office space on the upper floors. In addition, the building will have several specialized computer labs for the Institute of Technology, including an embedded computing systems and robotics lab and an informatics and artificial intelligence lab.
The Mattress Factory building, at the corner of Commerce and 21st streets, will be home to a new student-funded student center with offices for student government and a student lounge, and will house career services, counseling, the Office of Student Life and a coffee shop. The building will also contain the campus Media Services and Facilities offices, classrooms, offices and conference rooms.
This is the first time since UWT opened that students have had their own student center on campus.
Each of the new buildings are readapted historic warehouses within the Union Station warehouse district, built to serve the terminus of the transcontinental railroad more than a century ago. Cherry Parkes, named after the company that designed the cast iron decorative elements on the façade, is a combination of three warehouse and manufacturing buildings constructed in 1890 and 1904. The Mattress Factory is a combination of two buildings constructed in 1908 and 1912.
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