Hotel of the Week: Populus Seattle Sustainably Revives a Pioneer Square Landmark
Following its buzzworthy debut in Denver, the hospitality brand’s second carbon-positive property anchors RailSpur with biophilic interiors by Curioso, a hearth-driven restaurant, and more than 300 works by local artists
Pioneer Square has long been a locus of transformation. Once a tidal marshland and later the heart of Seattle’s lumber boom, the downtown neighborhood blossomed into a creative community in the 1950s and ‘60s, when an influx of artists converted disused warehouses into studios and the nation’s first art walk took place. That legacy continues with the recent opening of Populus Seattle, a stylish carbon positive hotel that reinterprets hospitality through adaptive reuse, biophilic interiors, and a culinary program shaped by the bounty of the Pacific Northwest.
Developed by Urban Villages and managed by Aparium Hotel Group, the 120-room stay arrives as the brand’s second property following the 2024 debut of Populus Denver, a Studio Gang–designed tower whose rippling façade evokes the eye-shaped scars left when Colorado’s native aspen trees shed their branches. In Seattle, the narrative shifts from new construction to careful restoration, rooting the hotel in an early-20th-century factory that once manufactured plumbing parts. The Miller Hull Partnership, Curioso, and Site Workshop all joined forces to reimagine the dormant building, revealing its industrial character while adapting it for contemporary use. “When you repurpose something, it’s the best possible thing you could do for the planet,” Jon Buerge, president of Urban Villages, told Galerie on a recent tour. “The greenest building you could possibly build is one you don’t actually have to build at all.”
Populus Seattle is the latest development at RailSpur, an ambitious carbon positive microdistrict that links three contiguous historic structures through activated alleyways. (Its name references the train tracks that once threaded between the buildings.) Alongside the hotel, the complex includes an outpost of Sonder Suites and three soon-to-open restaurants from chef Renee Erickson’s Sea Creatures hospitality group: a brewery, a pizzeria, and a European-inspired dining room.
Guests arrive through a vestibule cosseted with native plants, where a ghost forest of imposing logs stands like sentinels of the site’s marshy origins. This reverence for place flows through Curioso’s atmospheric interiors, defined by reclaimed beams, original decking, and botanical motifs that coalesce into a mindful dance between city and forest. A sweeping pale wood staircase blanketed with flora guides guests upward to the mezzanine, where Salt Harvest, the signature restaurant, sits in a glass-clad solarium modeled after the district’s historic loading bays.
Guest rooms, meanwhile, range from artful kings with tall windows and exposed masonry to the rooftop Summit Suite, which offers a soaking tub, private terrace, and kitchenette. Interiors balance the rough-hewn texture of timeworn walls and timber joists with the polish of contemporary fixtures, bespoke furnishings, and Aesop toiletries. Generous windows pull daylight deep into the rooms, where it glances across stone and wood before opening onto views of Pioneer Square’s rooftops and the downtown beyond.
The hotel’s robust art program reinforces its neighborhood roots. More than 300 original works were commissioned on-site through local art production house ARTXIV, transforming corridors and guest rooms into a vivid gallery celebrating the Pacific Northwest’s landscapes and cultural heritage. “We looked deep into the archive of this land,” says Dominic Nieri, director of ARTXIV. “Historically, Pioneer Square was a creative district. We wanted to continue that legacy.” Rather than sourcing existing pieces, the curatorial team invited 35 local artists to create works on-site, with each painting made available for purchase to ensure the hotel’s collection continually evolves.
This curatorial spirit also spills into the hotel’s food and beverage program, led by Executive Chef Conny Andersson and Chef de Cuisine Jonathan De Paz. At Salt Harvest’s hearth-driven dining room, local seafood, meats, and produce are prepared with finesse over open fire. The menu leans into the region’s abundance: albacore with Hood Canal razor clams, Dungeness crab Louis with quail egg and pea tendrils, and Pacific Northwest halibut paired with pork belly and grilled lettuce. From the hearth, dishes like La Belle duck frites and Kurobuta pork chop with grilled stone fruit carry the elemental imprint of flame.
“Seattle is a chef’s dream,” says Andersson, a Swedish-born chef who spent decades shaping menus for properties under the Four Seasons and Six Senses umbrellas. “The Pacific Northwest has an unbelievable bounty. We’re focusing on letting those ingredients shine—pure, unpretentious, and deeply tied to place.” Guests can dine among native greenery in the solarium, inside two private dining rooms, or at a nine-seat chef’s counter facing the live-fire kitchen. On the same level, the Café at Salt Harvest serves coffee from area mainstay Monorail Espresso by morning and transforms into a cocktail lounge after-hours. Firn, the first rooftop bar in Pioneer Square, offers botanical-infused cocktails served against sweeping views.
Much like its predecessor in Denver, a rigorous sustainability strategy is integrated into every layer to ensure the hotel is carbon positive, meaning it will sequester more carbon in biomass and soil than it emits over its life cycle. Food waste is processed on-site through BioGreen360 biodigesters, transforming scraps into compost that returns to local farms. The building uses 100 percent renewable electricity and follows a strict Life Cycle Assessment to reduce and offset embodied and operational carbon. The brand’s One Night, One Tree program, established with the National Forest Foundation, plants one regional tree for every night a guest stays at the hotel.
“Our goal was really simple,” Buerge says. “We want to leave the planet in a better state than we found it and make nature the centerpiece of the experience. Climate change, at its most basic level, is humans distancing themselves from the outdoors. The best way to protect the environment is to experience nature.”