Regions West | Seattle/Portland
Amazon Plans Massive New HQ Complex in Seattle
Dec 27, 2007
By: Dees Stribling, Contributing Correspondent

Online book and merchandise purveyor Amazon.com has unveiled plans to move its headquarters to an as-yet undeveloped complex in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood. The company expects to begin moving into its new office space in mid-2010, with full occupancy in 2011.

The complex will be developed by Vulcan Real Estate and Schnitzer West, and leased to Amazon. Vulcan is the real estate arm of Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc., a private asset management company. Schnitzer West has developed about 2 million square feet of office, biotech and multi-family properties in the western United States. Vulcan and Schnitzer West are JV partners for the project's first phase, three buildings known as Interurban Exchange IV & V and Interurban Exchange II.  Vulcan will develop the remaining buildings comprising the new headquarters.

Amazon currently  occupies, in and around Downtown Seattle, about 640,000 square feet, including 190,000 square feet at the Pacific Medical Center on Beacon Hill. According to the company, the move will consolidate these operations and allow room for expansion.

Amazon's new headquarters will include as many as 11 new buildings on six blocks in South Lake Union, located along Terry and Boren avenues between Mercer and John streets, totaling up to 1.6 million square feet. The project will also be an example of transit-oriented development, an increasingly common real estate phenomenon, since it will be on the new Seattle Streetcar line, which will also connect riders to the bus tunnel
and light rail. The Amazon HQ buildings will strive for LEED gold or silver certification.

In recent years, the South Lake Union area has been the focus of an effort to promote the development of bioscience/biotech space, with strong support from the city of Seattle. Thus far, about 1.5 million square feet of such space is on line to open by the end of 2008,
according to the city. Other kinds of real estate have prospered there as well. Also by the end of next year, about 1,850 new residential units will have been built there.

 
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