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Seattle Celebrates First Official Retrofitted URM Status Change

Seattle skyline at night.
Copyright Tim Durkan

We have officially recognized the first Unreinforced Masonry (URM) building to demonstrate compliance with the new seismic regulation in the City’s updated URM database. Congratulations to the Poll Building, 110 Union Street, and the teams of architects, engineers, and construction crews that completed life-saving earthquake upgrades to this character building.

Map of Seattle showing the location of a retrofitted unreinforced masonry building.
Map depicting “retrofitted” status of the Poll Building near Pike Place Market. This map was created using the updated Unreinforced Masonry database.

The engineering team for the Poll building conducted tests to confirm compliant strengths of previously completed retrofits, performed in the 1990s, and used the City’s Construction Pre-Submittal Conference path to ensure additional seismic upgrades would meet the City’s standards to be recognized as retrofitted. You can find the City’s standards on the URM Project Documents website. For those seeking to have their building recognized as retrofitted, the City has developed a URM Pre-Submittal Seismic Retrofit Questionnaire to complete before a Construction Pre-Submittal Conference. This questionnaire guides design teams and building owners in determining if their project meets the qualification criteria to use the Alternate Method, which is a reduced level of retrofit.

After completing the retrofit work on the Poll Building and receiving the certificate of occupancy, the building owner followed the Procedure to Apply for Retrofitted URM Status in the URM Database. The owner completed the Application Form for Retrofitted Status in the URM Database seeking compliance under the code for URM Retrofit Recognition, SEBC 304.5.1. The building owner submitted a seismic evaluation report, photographs of completed work, and the approved plan set to SDCI for review. We have created a new feature in the SDCI Land Use Analysis Request in the Seattle Services Portal to allow you to upload the application form and supporting documentation, ensuring documentation of URM retrofits remains with the structure in perpetuity. Step-by-step instructions are available here for submitting a Land Use Analysis Request.

The City reviewed the documentation for the Poll Building and confirmed the earthquake retrofit work complies with the new standards and is qualified for a status change in the City’s new URM Database Viewer. The database includes two new columns “Confirmed Retrofit” and “Compliance Method.” The Poll Building’s status now reads “Yes” under the “Confirmed Retrofit” column and “3c” under the “Compliance Method” column. 

Recently published additional modifications to the City’s URM database reflect:

SDCI’s recently completed research estimates that out of the 1,114 identified unreinforced masonry buildings:

  • 201 URM buildings with completed retrofits may qualify for a change in retrofitted status under 304.5.1 Item 3
  • 543 un-retrofitted URMs may qualify to use the Alternate Method (304.5.1 Item 2)
  • 69 URMs have received changes in their vulnerability classification, which is connected to future mandatory compliance timelines

For questions about URM retrofit status or information in the URM database, contact SCI_URM@Seattle.gov