You may have seen the land use notices that have gone up around Washington Hall, announcing an application to convert the building from a private club and offices to community center space. The 101 year old building was purchased by Historic Seattle back in June for $1.5 million.

I spoke to Andrew Phillips, the architect on the project, who told me that renovations will come in two phases. The first is minor – only enough to fix things up enough so that Historic Seattle can start to use the building. It will include interior projects like upgrading toilets and getting mechanical systems in working order, plus some minor exterior work to patch up the leaky roof.

The major renovation won’t take place for several years, once the private fundraising market is in better shape to support a multi-million dollar project. That will provide enough funding to perform seismic upgrades on the structure, which hasn’t seen any major structural work since it was built in 1908.

Phillips says that the minor work should be complete in relatively short order, and that Historic Seattle hopes to start using the building some time in September.

We’re still curious how the foundation intends to use the building, but were unable to reach anyone at the foundation to fill in those details. We’ll update you with another story once we find out.