Hawassa, a lakeside city in southern Ethiopia found at the heart of the East African Rift system,rnhas been frequented with a series of minor to strong earthquakes reaching up to a magnitude of 7.rnA recent minor earthquake caused structural distresses in the city that tempts one to hypothesizernthat this may be principally attributed to the young lacustrine deposit typical of the city. Primaryrndata from refraction and resistivity tests and secondary data from available geotechnical reportsrnwere collected from different locations of the city so as to model respective soil profiles. Due tornlack of measured strong ground motion records in the area, input motions were selected fromrnPEER database using relevant filtering criteria and scaled according to the local seismic hazard.rnThe selected ground motions are used in a one-dimensional ground response analysis software,rnDEEPSOIL, and responses at the surface and at various depths are obtained. A typicalrngeotechnical profile across the city consists of a thick silty sand soil with a thin horizon ofrnwelded-tuff at a shallow depth. The results obtained from the study show that ground motions arerngreatly influenced by local site soils across the selected locations, with amplifications muchrnexceeding the prediction of design spectra specified by current codes. This led to the proposal ofrna design spectrum that fitted the analysis outputs from 56 cases.