A rendering of SUMA (Image: Olson Kundig)
The planing for SUMA has been busy this summer. Early paperwork for land use and construction permits around the planned Seattle University Museum of Art has been a summer project for architects and planners around the project. The Seattle University Hill Implementation Advisory Committee, a body required by the city for oversight of major institutional planning, will meet Wednesday night on the project.
Seattle University Hill Implementation Advisory Committee (IAC) Meeting #18: Agenda Date: Wednesday, July 30, 2025 Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM In-person location: Seattle University Advancement and Alumni Building Stuart T. Rolfe Community Room 824 12th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122 Virtual Option: Webex Link Dial-in and Passcode: 206-207-1700 / 248 233 75775
You can learn more about the session and sign up for public comment here (PDF).
Wednesday agenda calls for a 35-minute session on the project’s permit timeline, a discussion around regulations related to amending the school’s Major Institution Master Plan and the “IAC’s Role in the Process.”
A 70-minute Q&A, public comment, and “committee deliberation” will follow.
CHS reported here in April as the Seattle U IAC stepped into the fray as Seattle U artists and members of the larger Seattle theater community raised concerns about the school’s plans to demolish its Lee Center for the Arts to make way for a new art museum on 12th Ave.
IACs are groups of city-appointed citizen volunteers who monitor the development of Seattle’s major institutions – universities, colleges, and hospitals. The institutions are granted special zoning rules but must adhere to agreements made with their surrounding communities.
How much sway the group has to influence this type of multimillion dollar project remains to be seen.
In early 2024, Seattle U announced a major donation from property developer Dick Hedreen, including his family’s 200-piece, $300 million collection of paintings, pottery, photography, etchings, and sculptures, would culminate in the new SUMA. When the university announced that the plans meant the Lee Center would have to go, students and faculty pushed back, saying that the building was a “critical space for students and community members” and that planned replacements were inadequate.
The museum would add to the university’s growth along 12th Ave. In 2021, the Jim and Janet Sinegal Center for Science and Innovation, a five-story, 111,000-square-foot science and tech building designed as the school’s new main entrance, opened, rising above 12th Ave. By 2028, the school had planned to complete a 10-year plan of development expanding its boundaries by 2.4 acres with 2 million square feet added to the campus.
The new museum is being designed by Tom Kundig of Seattle’s Olson Kundig and Sellen Construction will serve as the contractor. Two years of construction are planned with a grand opening slated for fall of 2028.
This summer, early permit paperwork has been filed for the project described as “a new art museum on the Seattle University campus, inclusive of the art collection gifted by Dick Hedreen, rotating art collections, and supplemental program such as café and academic functions.”
The project is described as having four levels and encompassing more than 44,000 square feet.
Paperwork for a demolition permit for the existing Lee Center and parking lot has also been filed. “Additional Info Requested,” the city’s records say about the record.
In the meantime, the school seems to be making room for another possible artful Hedreen donation. A construction permit filing for the campus describes a project to “install new art sculpture, Tulip, on The Green at Piggott Building, Seattle University, per plan.”
That work might fit a theme in Seattle where not all of Hedreen’s art holdings have been appreciated by the city.
The Tom Otterness sculpture “The Miser” was displayed outside Hedreen’s Grand Hyatt Hotel and called the “worst statue in Seattle” before it was replaced in 2015. We’re checking with school officials to find out if the new “Tulip on the Green” is one of the similarly reviled sculptures that was disappeared from 3rd Ave outside the Wells Fargo Center sometime during the pandemic.
UPDATE 8/4/2025: SU says the tulip isn’t part of the Hedreen donation. “The donation for the sculpture is from a private organization that owns it and not Dick Hedreen (and not part of, or connected to, the $300M art collection he donated to SU),” a spokesperson said, adding more about the sculpture and donation will be announced when it is installed.
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Tulip “art”
This sucks. The Lee Center is beautiful, quite new (by local venue standards anyway), and actually provides learning opportunities. The Cornish facilities they’re claiming will “make up ” for the loss are woefully inadequate–not to mention MILES away, which will tear most integration of community-centric events and performing arts away from the school AND the neighborhood. This museum is a vanity project for wealthy people, and as far as I can tell, NO ONE asked for it beyond said wealthy people. Sucks sucks sucks.
Choose your battles. The city—everyone, not just the wealthy—is getting a new art museum. How can that be anything but awesome? The Lee Center is a handsome building, but it has to go for us to have this very nice thing.
It is completely ridiculous to tear down a relatively new campus building that’s actively being used and loved by the student body (I know, I went to the design review and student after student was getting up and telling everyone how demolishing this building would mean that many many future students would simply not be able to take theater since there’d no longer be a theater building on campus).
Art museums are cool, I’m not arguing that. Their argument at the design review for putting it in that location was to create a “nicer entrance” to SCCC. It’s clearly a bunch of people who care more about the appearance of the campus to donors than the actual student body.
There are plenty of other places they could put this art museum, it’s completely ridiculous.
Because the idea that it has to be one nice thing or another is in itself very dumb. They were originally planning to put it in the space where the parking lot is, but opted to put it where the Lee is to preserve views of the chapel. Prioritizing aesthetics over student education is stupid and short-sighted, but sadly not surprising in the slightest.
Is there a link to the Kundig renderings? I’d love to see more! I’m super excited about this project; it’s a great development for the Hill.
It is really frustrating that they are so determined to demolish the Lee Center to make way for the art museum when there is an enormous, hideous surface parking lot fit for redevelopment. The Lee Center is so crucial to many students and would be a huge shame to see it go. I wish they would consider other options to preserve the Lee Center (which acts as a beautiful entrance to the university) and get rid of the surface parking lot (which is honestly an eye sore).