Amazon’s second likelihood: Bellevue provides tech large a possibility to reshape its regional legacy
BELLEVUE, Wash. — Amazon is poised to remodel a serious swath of this metropolis, a lot as the corporate reshaped Seattle through the previous 15 years. However the tech large’s strategy in Bellevue couldn’t be extra completely different.
Earlier than the corporate opened its first workplace right here, Amazon representatives met with Metropolis Council members to ask how the corporate might assist. Amazon helps quite a few causes and teams in Bellevue. It additionally works with enterprise and group leaders on key points and a shared imaginative and prescient for town.
“They’ve been an excellent group accomplice for Bellevue,” stated Bellevue Mayor Lynne Robinson. “They knew they have been going to be coming in and making an affect, and so they puzzled how they may give again.”
This was not the Amazon that Greg Nickels skilled within the early days of his tenure as Seattle’s mayor. After successful the election in late 2001, he remembers reaching out to native CEOs, together with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, to see how his administration might assist, or at the very least not damage, their efforts to create jobs.
“His workplace was the one one which didn’t reply in any manner, form or type,” Nickels recalled in a latest interview.
Nickels factors out, in Amazon’s protection, that the corporate was at a really completely different level in its historical past again then, targeted on constructing what would grow to be a world empire. However he remembers considering it was somewhat odd.
Six years later, Amazon introduced plans to maneuver from Seattle’s Beacon Hill to the South Lake Union neighborhood, sparking a interval of unprecedented development for the corporate and big change for town. Within the information launch asserting the plan, Nickels referred to as Amazon “a kind of nice Seattle success tales.”
However neither Bezos nor any of the corporate’s prime executives participated within the groundbreaking of Amazon’s Seattle headquarters with Nickels and then-Gov. Chris Gregoire.
And from that early indifference, Amazon’s relationship with its hometown finally developed into battle, as a brand new guard on the Seattle Metropolis Council challenged the corporate over the affect of its development on town.
Now, as Amazon seems to be to the opposite facet of Lake Washington for its future development within the area, it’s clear that the corporate’s strategy has matured. Bellevue’s new period is Amazon’s clear slate — and the mixture might lastly full this suburban metropolis’s transformation into the area’s second main city core.
“Bellevue is a really business-friendly atmosphere. It’s an ideal place to do enterprise,” stated Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice chairman of public coverage. On the similar time, Huseman acknowledged, Amazon “is a a lot completely different firm now than after we first launched in Seattle and moved to the South Lake Union neighborhood.”
However will a spirit of cooperation end in a greater end result for the group? Transportation and housing can be two key checks. The speedy development of Amazon and different tech corporations in Seattle clogged downtown streets and contributed to hovering residence costs that made housing unaffordable for a lot of longtime residents.
Amazon expects to in the end have as many as 25,000 employees in its Bellevue workplaces — on par with the scale of its second headquarters, or HQ2, at the moment below growth in Arlington, Va.
“With that many shifting in, we’re looking at it from many alternative angles from an financial growth perspective, and what it brings to the area … but additionally how we handle a few of that development by means of our infrastructure, transportation methods and housing,” stated Bellevue Metropolis Supervisor Brad Miyake.
The adjustments are huge, and so they’re coming quick.
Bellevue, revisited
Twenty years in the past, as Nickels was working for mayor, I used to be studying the business actual property beat as a reporter within the Seattle space. Strolling round downtown Bellevue — previous modest workplace towers, low-slung business buildings and huge floor parking heaps — its big-city ambitions appeared on the time like a giant fantasy.
With 5 million sq. ft of workplace house again then, downtown Bellevue was overshadowed by downtown Seattle, which had greater than 30 million sq. ft of workplace house. The dot-com bust had doused the regional economic system. The information in Bellevue was about corporations giving up house, and builders halting tasks.
Twenty years later, the story has modified dramatically.
The overall quantity of house leased, deliberate and below building only for Amazon in Bellevue now exceeds 6.6 million sq. ft. That’s 1.6 million sq. ft greater than all of the workplace house in downtown Bellevue in 2001.
One of many individuals who confirmed me round Bellevue again then was business actual property dealer Oscar Oliveira. We met up on a latest weekday morning to reprise the tour, joined this time by his Broderick Group colleague Eric Haehl, who grew up in Bellevue.
I’ve spent plenty of time in Bellevue over the previous twenty years, however like many individuals, I haven’t been there as a lot through the previous two years, because of the pandemic. Sections of downtown regarded like a complete new metropolis. Nearly each time I requested a few building website, or a brand new constructing, the reply was the identical: “Amazon.”
It wasn’t that way back, again in 2017, that Amazon moved into its first constructing in downtown Bellevue, the 16-story, 354,000-square foot Centre 425 constructing at NE 4th Road and 106th Avenue NE.
4 years later, the whole now stands at 9 Amazon tasks occupied or within the works, a few of them with a number of buildings. As we checked out all the things deliberate for town, I couldn’t assist however marvel in any respect the exercise, and the unbelievable tempo of change.
“Isn’t it superb?” Oliveira agreed.
The central hub of Amazon’s Eastside presence can be a undertaking referred to as Bellevue 600, on a 3.5-acre website from a hundred and tenth Avenue NE to 108th Avenue NE, on the north facet of the Bellevue Transit Middle, kitty-corner from the longer term Hyperlink Mild Rail cease on the east facet of downtown.
Development has begun on a 43-story workplace tower on the Bellevue 600 website, slated for occupancy in 2024. Amazon has additionally submitted plans for a 31-story constructing on the western portion of the positioning, set to open the next 12 months.
Close by, at 555 108th Road, Vulcan Actual Property is constructing a 42-story, 1 million-square-foot constructing, the 555 Tower, which has been leased to Amazon and is slated for occupancy in early 2023.
The Bellevue 600 and 555 Towers are examples of builders benefiting from a rise in downtown peak limits accepted by Bellevue in 2017, which is able to in the end give town’s skyline extra of a “wedding ceremony cake” really feel, with taller towers towards the middle and shorter buildings towards the sting.
Fb — or Meta, because the social community’s guardian firm is now recognized — retains increasing its deliberate footprint within the Spring District east of downtown. Microsoft and Salesforce additionally stay main tenants within the metropolis.
“Future” online game maker Bungie is transforming and increasing its headquarters in Bellevue, on the former Bellevue Galleria. Valve, the corporate behind the dominant Steam PC sport platform, is headquartered on the Two Lincoln Tower downtown.
As in different downtown enterprise districts, questions stay about how the pandemic and the rise of distant work will affect workplaces in Bellevue long-term. Aside from all the development exercise, I used to be struck by how empty Bellevue’s sidewalks have been on our latest stroll round downtown, in the midst of a workday.
Metropolis leaders are additionally working to make downtown Bellevue extra of a residential hub, and so they acknowledge the necessity to set up extra of a nightlife to make downtown extra vibrant and busy after working hours.
Within the meantime, Amazon helps to make Bellevue extra of a middle of gravity that pulls further corporations, in a virtuous cycle. As many as 5 – 6 corporations are at the moment on the lookout for house within the vary of 100,000 to 150,000 sq. ft in Bellevue and the broader Eastside, Broderick Group’s Haehl stated.
“What we’re seeing when it comes to giant tenant exercise in downtown Bellevue is fairly unbelievable,” Haehl stated.
HQ1 is Puget Sound
However Amazon is rapidly changing into the most important participant on the town. The corporate’s development plans in Bellevue have led some to think about town because the “actual HQ2,” in the words of angel investor Charles Fitzgerald.
Amazon places a distinct spin on it, referring to Bellevue and Seattle collectively as its “Puget Sound headquarters.” Reinforcing this notion, Amazon buses can already be seen navigating the streets of Bellevue to shuttle staff backwards and forwards between the corporate’s buildings on both facet of Lake Washington..
“First of all, we don’t suppose of HQ1 being Seattle any longer. We actually consider it as Puget Sound,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stated on the GeekWire Summit in October. “We have now lots of people in Seattle, however we even have lots of people in Bellevue, and it’s the place most of our development will find yourself being.”
Entry to tech expertise is a key issue driving Amazon’s enlargement in Bellevue, stated Huseman, the corporate’s vice chairman of public coverage, describing the plans as a part of the corporate’s general development within the Seattle area.
That explains one of many huge variations between Bellevue and the corporate’s second headquarters in Arlington: Bellevue didn’t want to supply tax breaks or different monetary carrots to land Amazon, metropolis officers say.
“The tasks in Arlington and Bellevue are utterly completely different,” Huseman stated. “Bellevue is a part of the natural development of our present presence, and our Puget Sound headquarters, whereas Arlington was a nationwide search the place we have been constructing a headquarters and constructing a presence from the bottom up.”
Financial incentives are “clearly an element as corporations look to broaden,” he stated, though the overriding consider any choice about new workplaces is entry to a robust pool of tech expertise.
Amazon’s work in Bellevue has “set a typical for group engagement and collaboration, and points engagement general,” stated Patrick Bannon, president of the Bellevue Downtown Affiliation, in a latest interview on the BDA workplace. “They’ve been simply doing all the things they’ll to sew themselves into the material of the group.”
Amazon is working with town and the BDA to make sure that the corporate’s tasks complement and combine with the bigger imaginative and prescient for downtown Bellevue. That features the deliberate “Grand Connection” pedestrian hall that may stretch from Meydenbauer Bay to the Eastrail hall, a regional path that may connect with future mild rail stations.
As one instance, they’ve labored collectively on plans to the intersections at a hundred and tenth Avenue NE to 108th Avenue NE, subsequent to gradual site visitors down and make the world extra pedestrian-friendly.
Robinson, the Bellevue mayor, stated Amazon has adopted by means of on its early guarantees to assist the group. Along with its main investments in inexpensive housing, Amazon helps teams together with Bellevue LifeSpring, KidsQuest Youngsters’s Museum, LifeWire and the Metropolis of Bellevue’s Human Providers Fund.
One other instance is the corporate’s $7.5 million contribution to finish two key segments of the Eastrail hall.
Amazon has additionally grow to be way more energetic in Seattle, collaborating and contributing to a wide selection of philanthropic and public tasks, addressing points reminiscent of starvation aid and homelessness. One latest instance was its $5 million donation to the Seattle Waterfront Park, on prime of a earlier $7 million contribution to help that undertaking.
However the firm’s relationship with town has been outlined in recent times by a sequence of conflicts with the Seattle Metropolis Council, as town sought to tax Amazon and different giant corporations to boost funds to assist town tackle the affect of speedy development. Amazon opposed the tax and spent closely to help a business-friendly slate of council candidates within the 2019 election, with out a lot success.
Metropolis Councilmember Kshama Sawant, certainly one of Amazon’s fiercest critics, seems on monitor to outlive a recall effort.
Addressing town’s relationship with Amazon, Seattle Mayor-elect Bruce Harrell has referred to as for a brand new period of “collaboration and forward-thinking relationships” with giant and small companies.
Huseman stated the corporate’s experiences in Bellevue and Arlington present the potential for a extra collaborative relationship. “We want to have that very same partnership and that very same relationship in Seattle,” he stated. “We’re going to do our half to do this, together with working with the brand new mayor.”
Politics apart, it is sensible for Amazon to develop elsewhere within the area, stated Nickels, who was Seattle’s mayor from 2002 by means of 2009. Amazon has primarily maxed out its footprint in Seattle, he stated, and for town, it’s smarter economically to depart room for a various array of corporations to develop in Seattle.
Nonetheless, Nickels stated he disagrees with the general tone and strategy towards Amazon from the Seattle Metropolis Council.
“The concept we must always attempt to punish Amazon is simply off-base.” Nickels stated. “We should always welcome corporations to our metropolis that present good jobs, that present residing wages and advantages that enable folks to efficiently dwell inside the metropolis and prosper.”
For the file, Nickels did find yourself assembly Jeff Bezos throughout his time period as mayor — as soon as. It was an opportunity encounter at Marjorie Restaurant in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. One other former Seattle mayor, Norm Rice, was additionally there, and he launched Nickels to Bezos. They exchanged pleasantries, however that was about it.
Nickels puzzled why Amazon didn’t have interaction with town on the time, however he didn’t harbor any resentment. “They have been constructing a enterprise, a world-class enterprise, breaking all types of limitations, and have been targeted elsewhere, which was tremendous,” he stated. “We wished them to achieve success.”
