Amazon has inked a lease for another new office building in Seattle, the latest sign that the online retail giant has no intention of slowing its growth despite building out a huge new campus north of downtown.
This time around, Amazon has taken Tilt49, a 306,000-square-foot office building under construction at 1812 Boren Ave. in the Denny Triangle neighborhood, just a few blocks from the new campus. The site is also only a block from another recently-leased Amazon building, Midtown 21.
An Amazon spokesman confirmed the lease for the entire office building and said employees will move in early 2018. The $85 million Tilt49 office building is being developed by Touchstone, designed by ZGF Architects and built by Mortenson. Approximately two years ago, Amazon leased another Touchstone project, Troy Block.
This story has been updated to clarify the project team working on Tilt49 and the name of the Troy Block project.
An adjoining 390-unit apartment project, that was originally part of the Touchstone project and later sold off, is set to open this year, giving employees working out of the new building a close option for housing.
Amazon’s rapid expansion in its hometown comes amid unprecedented of growth for the company worldwide. Amazon last month reported that it has surpassed 341,000 employees globally, an increase of 110,000 in just the past year, not including temporary or seasonal staff. The company employs 40,000 people in Washington state, including about 25,000 people at its Seattle headquarters.
Amazon is filling out a puzzle of Seattle real estate with its latest moves. Amazon played a key role in the development of the South Lake Union neighborhood, and now it is doing the same for the Denny Triangle, a neighborhood in between South Lake Union and downtown, and one of the last places in town with an ample supply of land for developing high rises.
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Just last month, Amazon filed for permits to build a 17-story office building at 2205 7th Ave., the site of a former Days Inn hotel. The project would represent Amazon’s fifth block of space in the neighborhood. In 2015 it completed its first building in the neighborhood, the 36-story Doppler Tower.
That was followed by the recently opened Day One tower, and another building across the street that is under construction now. On another full-block site, formerly home to the Hurricane Cafe, Amazon plans to build a 23-story building and an 8-story building in the future.
By 2022, Amazon has said it could occupy 12 million square feet across 40 buildings in Seattle, up from 8.5 million square feet as of the middle of last year. According to a new report from the Downtown Seattle Association, Amazon is well on its way to that 12 million square feet number.
DSA reports that Amazon in 2016 added 1.7 million square feet in downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. With another 3 million square feet under construction, Amazon will have a footprint of 10 million square feet in and around downtown by 2019, according to the report. That figure leaves out the big new Bellevue office Amazon is setting up.
Amazon — and its fellow tech giants — are juicing Seattle’s construction industry, according to the DSA report. In downtown, nearly 12 million square feet of office space is expected to be built between now and the end of 2019. That number is equivalent to the amount of office space built in and around downtown over the last 12 years combined.
All these office workers need somewhere to live as well. More than 14,000 units have been built in downtown and surrounding neighborhoods since 2010, increasing the housing stock by about 32 percent. Another 18,000 units are expected to be completed between now and the end of 2019, according to the report.
