Federal Way man’s Lego legacy includes model of Space Needle

Published 5:30 am Sunday, April 26, 2026

With a garage full to the brim with Lego, Wayne Hussey’s mind is just as full of Lego-building ideas, such as his 14-foot Lego Space Needle model, now displayed inside the Space Needle.

Hussey, 71, is a Federal Way-area resident who was raised in West Seattle with his three brothers, his mother and his father, who both worked at Boeing.

Growing up, he enjoyed making models at home, such as model cars, trains and buildings, and he even won a few awards for his models. During his childhood, at a friend’s home, he played with Lego for the first time, but he didn’t see it again until college.

After graduating from West Seattle High School in 1972, he joined the military to pay for school. When he got out of the military, he saw his niece receive some Lego for Christmas, and that was a lightbulb moment for him. Hussey said that initially he was “in the closet,” so to speak, about building with Lego, with a literal closet where he kept all his Lego. He said that it was many years after that before he met other adults who shared the same interest.

Hussey said that after college, because of the way his brain works, he got into building circuit boards as an engineer and loved it. He said it was just like building models. In September 2001, after working on building circuit boards for around 25 years, he got laid off, and the number of jobs in that field diminished. Hussey said that at that point, he semi-retired and became more involved with Lego.

Since the mid-1970s, when he first got into Lego, he had been planning and drawing models he could make with the bricks. One such project was one of his early large Lego models, the Issaquah Ferry Boat.

Hussey created the design for the Issaquah Ferry in the late 1970s, but he did not have enough Lego pieces to build the model until many years later. He tried to get pieces by ordering them directly from Lego in the 1990s, but they turned him away and did not look very favorably on the idea of an adult building Lego.

Since then, Lego has changed its outlook, and many kits are now sold for adults. He said he partly believes Lego got into selling kits for adults because adults have money and can buy expensive kits.

Space Needle and more

In 2001, when he semi-retired, he began building the Issaquah Ferry Lego model, and in 2002, he finished it in time for the first BrickCon. The final product ended up being about 7 feet long, 2 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall.

In 2024, he redid the white brick on the Issaquah Ferry model because it had yellowed over about 25 years. In January 2025, that model was installed on the Issaquah Ferry, and it’s still there today.

Hussey said he’s always building Lego and coming up with ideas, but the big projects he’s done over the years include his Issaquah Ferry, an 11-foot totem pole with a 7-foot wingspan that sits inside Bricks and Minifigs in Federal Way, and an unhomed model of the Smith Tower in Seattle.

However, Hussey said his acme is the 14-foot-tall Lego Space Needle that now sits in the Space Needle gift shop in Seattle for visitors from around the globe to see.

“Now I can share the model all the time. What I like to do is, I like to build models, but I like to share them,” Hussey said. “I like to present them to people to enjoy, which is what made my Space Needle so nice.”

Hussey said his big projects are ones where people, instead of just taking pictures of them, take pictures with them, which is what differentiates them from other Lego creations.

“Count it toward artistic. If you talk to a person who calls himself an artist, they do it because that’s what gives them the personal feedback they want,” Hussey said. “And that’s what Lego does for me.”

Hussey said that his Lego-related hobbies include building and designing models, attempting to collect every Lego piece ever created, having a digital library of Lego pieces, and being part of the Lego community.

Every year, he and his wife attend BrickCon, an event showcasing Lego creations that started in 2002. He became the director of BrickCon in 2004 and then retired from that role in 2019.

Hussey said that BrickCon is not among the better-known Lego conventions, but it is the longest-running fan-managed convention.

Regarding his goal of having every Lego piece ever created, Hussey said he has about 8,000 Lego mini figures out of about 17,000 total mini figures, and about 70,000 Lego pieces out of the about 90,000 that were ever made. He said he keeps some Lego at his home, while a large amount is stored at BrickCon’s warehouse.

Another way Lego has impacted his life is by helping him connect with his wife. Hussey said that he has known his wife, Terrie Landers, since junior high. At a high school reunion in the late 1990s, she learned that he was big into Lego, so she had him come to her class to do Lego-related activities with her students, as she was a school teacher. She said that she was also getting into Lego at that time.

After he spoke with Landers’ class about Lego, he and Landers started dating and later got married. Hussey said Lego was a factor in them starting to date, but not the primary one. However, he said their shared interest in Lego showed how compatible they were.

Regarding whether Lego helped create his love story, Hussey said he “reluctantly” agreed. And when asked what Lego means to him, Hussey said he knows he can’t imagine his life without it.

“It just means everything. Everything I can think of for what gets my mind play. And I don’t mean in a like hands-on play, but I mean my mind has always been busy, and it lets me be busy without necessarily having to have my hands on it,” Hussey said. “I have a T-shirt that says ‘I may look like I’m listening to you, but in my head I’m building Lego.’ And that’s pretty much me.”