Constructed in 1935, the Laurelhurst Community Center was a well-loved gem in the Seattle Parks system. Situated in the midst of a 13 acre park, the building retained its historic charm but had long outlived its usefulness as a community center.

The building is sited at the crest of the hill, with a single-story brick façade facing the entry driveway loop, and a two-story façade on the west side of the building as the land slopes away. The building is well integrated into the surrounding landscape, with the scale kept low by a series of asymmetrical gable roofs on the north and south sides of the main roof volume. The building was designated a landmark structure by the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board in January 2005, including the exterior of the structure and a 10-foot zone around its perimeter. It was directed that any addition made to the building preserve as much of the building façade as possible, and be designed to be clearly of the modern day rather than historicist in character.

Originally intended to serve as a field house for the park's playfields, the building lacked the amenities required by current-day recreational programming, including a lobby, rooms with flexible uses, circulation space, and disabled access. The original 5142 square feet contained only a large social room, offices, a kitchen, a pottery room, and mechanical rooms.

Goals for expansion of the building were to increase its usable square footage for as wide a variety of recreational uses as possible, to improve circulation in the building and provide a logical entrance sequence, to allow surveillance of the facility from the reception area, and to design the addition with sensitivity to the existing building and the surrounding park. One specific constraint on the siting was the preservation of two large deodar cedar trees to the northwest and southwest of the building, which are considered unique in the Seattle Parks system for their size and historic significance.