Another day, another Amazon office opening up in Seattle.
The tech giant has inked a lease for a new 12-story building just near the company’s headquarters in South Lake Union, a company spokesperson confirmed today. The building, called Urban Union and located on the corner of Fairview Ave. and Republican Ave., has 286,000 square feet of office space.
The Puget Sound Business Journal first reported the news Tuesday evening.
Here’s a virtual video tour of the building, courtesy of Schnitzer West, the Seattle-based building developer:
The new building adds to Amazon’s growing swath of office space in and around its existing South Lake Union headquarters. This past May, Amazon agreed to lease 817,000 square feet of office space at the so-called Troy Block, with one tower set to open this year and the other to follow in 2017.
Later in 2015, Amazon opened the first 36-story office building of a 3.3 million square-foot complex that will span three blocks bounded by Westlake Avenue, Blanchard Street and Sixth Avenue. The most distinctive feature of the complex are Amazon’s biodomes, which are under construction and will be completed as soon as next year.
The new campus on the edge of downtown Seattle is part of a broader push by Amazon to increase its footprint in its hometown — literally reshaping the city in the process. Whereas many other tech companies expand in the suburbs, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has pointed to the benefits of expanding in the city instead, although the associated growing pains have also created tension between Amazon, longtime Seattle residents and some city leaders.
As Amazon continues to post record-breaking revenue numbers each quarter, it has added thousands of employees to its rapidly expanding South Lake Union campus. Amazon could soon cover roughly 10 million square feet in the city, which is about 25 percent of the total premium office space in downtown Seattle and enough room for more than 50,000 employees.
Despite complaints from citizens who blame Amazon for new issues like bad traffic, rising housing costs, and income inequality, Mayor Ed Murray told GeekWire last month that he likes the fact that Amazon is hiring and growing in Seattle.
“I’ve been in this city as a young person, when one of our companies (Boeing) went bust and people moved out,” Murray explained. “Now people want to find parking and not have traffic problems? Live in a city where jobs leave. Having jobs is a good thing.”
