The 80-year-old Ballard Building on the corner of 22nd Avenue Northwest and Northwest Market Street is getting a colorful and, according to some, much needed facelift.

Crews will be painting the six-story building, which is home to the Ballard Athletic Club, Lombardi's Italian Restaurant and many other businesses, over the next few weeks and should be done by the end of September, said building owner Lowen Clausen.

Clausen said the building badly needed a point job, and most other projects in the neighborhood are currently on hiatus.

"It's a good time to do things to brighten up the area," he said.

"Brighten" is an apt word for the design of the Ballard Building's repainting.

Linda Cohen, principal at lsc design studio and a Ballard Building tenant, helped design the new color scheme, basing it on a street of variously colored buildings in Copenhagen.

Brian Heidsiek, principal at SandBox Industrial Design and another tenant of the Ballard Building, helped with the design as well.

He said he would have gone for a more sedate aesthetic for the building, but Clausen wanted something brighter, which turned out looking very cool.

Designs show splashes of color accenting the front and sides of the building, but the biggest change will be on the back.

Clausen described the back of the Ballard Building as a piece of monolithic gray that needed to be broken up.

Cohen has broken up the large gray wall by painting it with stripes of color to echo the smaller buildings on the Copenhagen street, which Clausen said he has visited many times.

Both Clausen and Cohen said the design meshes the old Scandinavian flavor of Ballard with the more modern designs that can be seen springing up around the neighborhood.

It's going to be a change for one of Ballard's oldest buildings, but Clausen said he thinks the neighborhood will react well to it.

"I've talked to a lot of people who have volunteered their input," he said. "And, so far it's been very positive."

The terra cotta features on the Ballard Building won't be changed, Clausen said, and Cohen said the repainting will leave the building intact as the cornerstone of the downtown Ballard hub.

The 1923 building was designed by William R. Grant and constructed by the Fraternal Order of the Eagles. The Bagdad Theater, then the largest movie house in Seattle's north end, occupied the lower level for three decades, according to the Ballard Historical Society.

Lafferty's Drug Store occupied the street level for many years and the third floor housed Ballard's community hospital, now Swedish Medical Center, from 1928 to 1954.

Editor's Note: The Ballard News-Tribune is a Ballard Building tenant.