Historic Seattle’s Annual Preservation Celebration is coming up on September 25, 2025. We’ll celebrate the projects and people that help amplify our mission. Today, we feature Don Davies and Joan Crooks for Hubbard’s Corner, the 2025 Council Award recipient.
Congratulations to Don Davies and Joan Crooks!
During the quiet days of the pandemic, Don Davies and Joan Crooks—like many of us—took long walks through their neighborhood. On one such walk, they noticed a “For Sale” sign on a two-story brick building at the corner of Woodlawn Avenue NE and 72nd Avenue NE in Green Lake. They paused. The building was familiar.
Next door stood Rosita’s Mexican Grill, a place where Don and Joan had met regularly while dating. It remains a cherished spot for Davies-Crooks family dinners. And the building for sale? Years earlier, Joan and her wedding party had their hair styled at a salon that once occupied the space.
As they stood before it, Don asked, “Do you want to buy it”? As a veteran structural engineer, he thought it could be fun to fix up the old building.
In 2021, they purchased the building and named it Hubbard’s Corner, as a nod to Hubbard’s Drug Store likely the first successful business in the space. Old photos show the drug store occupying the corner from the 1910s to 1930s.
From the outset, Don and Joan envisioned a restoration rooted in purpose. Joan is the past CEO of Washington Conservation Action, serving in that role for over 25 years. Don is a veteran structural engineer and an industry champion for promoting sustainable design and low-carbon construction.
They would use the project to tell a story focused on reducing the carbon footprint of the building. It would show that it’s not much harder or more expensive to build with the low-embodied-carbon materials available today. The goal? To convince others to do the same. To walk, not just talk.
They developed a pecking order for all materials. They prioritized reuse of existing materials, sourced salvaged components from Seattle’s architectural salvage yards, and selected new materials only when necessary—each vetted for low embodied carbon and backed by supplier data.
In the end, the project did more than fix up an old building. The project provided valuable data and material sets that form the foundation for their new consulting firm, Davies-Crooks Associates, “a mission driven consulting and adaptive re-use development practice focusing on lowering our climate impacts on the planet.”
Hubbard’s Corner stands as a testament to what’s possible when personal history meets professional purpose. The Green Lake neighborhood, Seattle and, dare we say the planet, are better for Don and Joan’s decision to fix up that old building.
Congratulations to Don Davies, Joan Crooks, and the entire Hubbard’s Corner project team.
Upward Architecture; Bright Street Construction; Swenson Say Fagét; SÄZÄN Group; Bush, Roed & Hitchings, Pioneer Masonry; Puget Sound Solar; Columbia Fire; Boise Cascade; Metals Fabrication; Hempitecture; MacDonald Miller & Thomas Bell Electric; Terracon, C-Crete Technologies, Sublime Systems, and Prometheus Materials
Photos courtesy of Don Davies and Joan Crooks