Womer & Associates, the Spokane-based, Native American-owned architectural and engineering firm, says it has been recognized for a tribal project it designed recently, and has landed another design project from the same West Side tribe.

It received a 2016 Excellence in Concrete Construction: Architectural Concrete runner-up award from the Washington Aggregates & Concrete Association for its work on a $17.8 million administration center for the Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians, in Arlington, Wash., just north of Seattle.

Womer provided all of the architectural and engineering services for the 57,000-square-foot, two-story structure, which firm members say includes a number of design features that hold geographical and historical significance for tribal members.

Gaffney Construction, of Everett, Wash., was the general contractor on the project.

Partly as a result of how pleased the tribe was with that project, it also has retained Womer to design a 40,000-square-foot behavioral health center that it plans to develop in Arlington, Womer representatives say.

“It’s provided a springboard for a lot of other good things for Womer,” says Tony Janson, who was the project architect and worked on it closely with Womer’s Darcy Morden, professional engineer and project manager. 

Womer earlier was involved in a community center project and a few convenience store-gas station projects for the tribe. However, Janson says the administration center project provided a symbolic homecoming of sorts for the tribe. Its members separated from the Tulalip Tribe, and until moving into the new building, its administrative offices had been located in an undersized, nondescript building with no windows in Marysville, Wash.

The Stillaguamish Tribe is composed of descendants of the 1855 Stoluck-wa-mish River Tribe, whose members lived along the Stillaguamish River and camped along its tributaries, according to its website. 

“All of our projects are Native American projects. The idea of working with a Native American tribe is they’re each different,” Janson says, adding that Womer therefore spends a fair bit of time with its tribal clients just “finding out who they really are.”

Separately, work was completed recently on another tribal project on which Womer & Associates provided design services, involving the construction of a 14,000-square-foot, $3.8 million building for the Osoyoos Indian Band, just north of the Canadian border near Oroville, Wash.

Womer & Associates moved to downtown Spokane about three years ago as part of an effort to raise its visibility and merged with Creighton Engineering Inc., which specializes in fire-protection design services. It leases about 8,000 square feet of office space on the sixth floor of Old City Hall, at 221 N. Wall, and it says the absorption of Creighton boosted it to 34 employees.