"The space belongs to the community." Leslie Jackson Chihuly, chair of the Benaroya Hall Music Center board, said this to The Seattle Times in September. She was explaining why the $20 million Amplify renovation spent its budget on lobbies, a café, seating and wayfinding, and none on the concert halls.
For most Seattle residents, Benaroya Hall has been a building you enter about twenty minutes before a downbeat and leave right after the applause. The renovation is meant to change that. Third Avenue now has a café open at 7 a.m., a room for community events where the box office used to be, and more than 480 new seats in the lobbies. The goal is to bring people downtown into the building on a Tuesday morning, whether or not anything is on the program that night.
A daytime room that went quiet
People who have lived here a long time may remember that the Boeing Company Gallery once kept daytime hours. The Seattle Times reports that it had them before the COVID-19 pandemic, and getting them back was one of the project's stated aims. Chihuly described the goal as keeping Benaroya Hall "both a symphony hall and civic building" and drawing visitors "throughout the day, regardless of performance schedule."
The work was paid for mostly by foundations and individual donors, including Leslie and Dale Chihuly, the Gates Foundation, the Norcliffe Foundation and the Friday Foundation. It was designed by the Seattle firm Mithun, with Sellen Construction as general contractor, and covers about 42,500 square feet of public space. It was done in phases. Exterior work started in summer 2025, interior work in spring 2026, and the hall stayed open through the early stages, according to Mithun's project announcement. The public closure lasted six weeks, from mid-July through the end of August 2026, between the end of one season and the start of the next.
Every change points toward lingering
The individual changes are easy to list. Taken together, they are what make a weekday visit possible.
The box office is gone from the gallery's north end. It is now the Delta Air Lines Foundation Community Space, which hosts classes, conversations, small performances and gatherings, along with rotating exhibitions by local artists. It also gives sensory-sensitive guests a separate, quieter room to watch performances. Ticketing moved to a concierge-style welcome desk near the grand lobby, where staff also answer general questions. The desk has service counters at more than one height.
The gallery is now a café. The Boeing Company Gallery is home to the Leslie & Dale Chihuly Welcome Hub and Marianna's Café. Mithun's plans call for a larger café than before, with seating. Mithun's lead designer, Elizabeth Gordon, told the Times her team took cues from the "geometry of music." That meant rectilinear, rhythmic elements in the gallery, curved lines suggesting melodic phrasing in the main lobby, and warm woods close in color to classical instruments.
The lobby has seats. In the Samuel & Althea Stroum Grand Lobby, the two bars became one central bar, and more than 480 seats were added across the main and promenade levels. Mithun's announcement adds new carpet, new lighting and softer seating in the lobby. Gordon said the aim was "offering people places to linger." Before designing, her team attended performances and filmed time lapses of people coming in and leaving to see how they actually moved through the building.
The street side now invites people in. The Third Avenue facade has new high-definition marquees, eye-level LED displays, brighter entry canopies and fewer, consolidated entrances. The first phase of construction, in summer 2025, replaced unused doors along Third Avenue with windows to prepare for fixed seating beside them.
A mural you could never fully see now has its own wall. Robert Rauschenberg's Echo moved to the Bill Gates Sr. Recital Hall Lobby. The Symphony says it is now visible in its entirety for the first time. On its own, that is a reason to walk in on a quiet afternoon.
What a weekday visit looks like
Marianna's Café is the main draw on non-concert days. Chef Ethan Stowell built the menu with Sodexo Live!, the hall's new hospitality partner. The current menu has a grilled cheese made with Beecher's Flagship and Gruyère, focaccia pizzas in mortadella, margherita and mushroom, and breakfast sandwiches.
Here is how the hall's own dining page lays out the week:
| Space | When it's open |
|---|---|
| Marianna's Café | Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. |
| Marianna's happy hour | Thursday and Friday, 4 to 6 p.m. |
| Marianna's Café on show days | Reopens two hours before the event |
| Muse, in the Norcliffe Founders Room | Two hours before select performances; reservations encouraged |
| Lobby bars and Jane's Overlook Lounge | 90 minutes before events |
The Times lists Boeing Company Gallery hours as 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Wednesday and 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday and Friday. That fits the café's late-week happy hour. Hours for a new hospitality operation can change, so the dining page is the place to check before a planned visit.
On concert nights, the same rooms turn into pre-show dining. Muse serves a prix-fixe menu that has included Dungeness crab and avocado salad, black cod, and butternut squash ravioli. The café also offers grab-and-go food, and guests can pre-order drinks for arrival or intermission. Jane's Overlook Lounge has views down into the Boeing Company Gallery, and the central Elias & Karyl Alvord Lobby Bar anchors the grand lobby. The Overlook took over the promenade's old lanai space, and another promenade bar, renamed the West Bar, was upgraded and given more seating nearby.
October 18 is the open invitation
The hall reopened in September. Benaroya Hall's own account gives September 18 as the official reopening. Concertgoers first saw the finished spaces on September 19 at Opening Night, where Music Director Xian Zhang conducted Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite and Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3 with Yefim Bronfman. Tickets for that night started at $196.80.
The Benaroya Hall Open House on Sunday, October 18 is the first day built around the building's new purpose. It is free and runs all day, and the Symphony says every venue and public space will be in use. Doors are listed at 9 a.m. The program includes:
- Performances by Totem Star artists
- Chinese American Bear with a Seattle Symphony string quartet
- Singer-songwriter Nat Meek, presented by KEXP's Sounds of Survivance
- A Tiny Tots concert with Seattle Symphony musicians
- A Romantasy panel and book signing with authors Taylor LaRue, Tessonja Odette and Elizabeth Stephens, hosted by The High Fae Housewives Podcast with Beguiled Books
- An Arte Noir exhibition and opening reception with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra
- A National Geographic Live presentation by photographer Steve Winter
- A video game music panel with Dave Gross, Kazuma Jinnouchi, Wilbert Roget II, Nadia Wheaton and Danny Baranowsky
Ethan Stowell is scheduled for a chef demonstration and Q&A at 2 p.m. in the Norcliffe Founders Room. The finale at 4 p.m. is a free concert by the full Seattle Symphony with members of The Head and the Heart. A dance party in the Grand Lobby follows at 5 p.m.
The finale is the only part of the day that needs a ticket. Tickets are handed out in person at Benaroya Hall starting at 9 a.m. on October 18, two per person, while supplies last. Everything else is open without one. If you want to see the concert, get there in the morning.
The parking garage is under the hall, with the car entrance on Second Avenue. The hall's parking page lists event parking at $22 prepaid or $24 at the gate, but the page has no date, so confirm the rate before you go.
Reasons to come back before the year ends
Once you know the café opens at 7 and the lobby has seats, the holiday season looks different. A December concert can come with dinner at Muse, or with a weekday lunch at Marianna's on the way to Pike Place. The Symphony's 2026–2027 season announcement lists these dates:
- Holiday Pops with Megan Hilty, December 4 to 6
- Elf in Concert, December 9 and 12
- Handel's Messiah, December 17, 19 and 20
- A Festival of Lessons & Carols, December 21
- New Year's Eve Concert & Party with Jimmie Herrod and Storm Large, December 31
Season dates and casts were set in February and sometimes change. Opening Night itself had a soloist change after the season was announced. Check the Symphony's calendar before planning around a specific date.
The building that hosts Messiah in December is the same one serving breakfast sandwiches at 7 a.m. on a Monday. That second use is the one the Amplify campaign paid for.
I've worked for four decades alongside a Northwest residential architect, and I notice when a building is redesigned around how people actually move through it. Mithun filming the lobby crowds before drawing anything is that kind of care. If you're weighing a downtown condominium within walking distance of places like Benaroya Hall, or want to talk about how civic buildings like this affect daily life in a neighborhood, Mary Nelson would be glad to hear from you. Let's Connect.
