A Marriage of Arts and Finance

The $1 billion investment in new art that the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) will be unveiling this week was not just an act of charity. It was mainly due to Washington Mutual's need to expand its downtown headquarters.

Five years ago, the financial institution got to build its 42-floor, 1.3 million-square-foot office tower in a prime downtown Seattle location. By pairing the office building with the museum, WaMu received special city zoning changes to boost the size of its office tower. The museum is occupying only the first four floors, and temporary leasing back floors 5 through 12 to the bank.

That means that the architect had to design a space that would serve office workers first and later, art. To accomodate its 5,000 local employees, the bank is renting the additional eight floors of space from SAM for up to 25 years with no annual rent increases. The rent payments from the bank will cover the museum's mortgage of the additional space.

Sources: The Seattle Times, The Oregonian