NYT on Amazon move to SLU
Today the New York Times has an article on Amazon’s move to South Lake Union, Amazon Consolidates in Growing Area of Seattle:
If Amazon exercises all of its options, it may spend as much as $1.5 billion under a 16-year agreement to lease 11 buildings in South Lake Union, a lakefront neighborhood a little more than a mile north of downtown.
The article is not just about Amazon but takes a look at Seattle office space and South Lake Union in general:
Seattle’s mayor, Greg Nickels, who came to power in 2002 in the midst of a recession and promoted the redevelopment of South Lake Union as a jobs engine, bats away the complaints. To him, the city’s spending is producing great results. Already, he says, South Lake Union has created 7,000 jobs; 2.4 million square feet of office, laboratory, retail and hotel space; and 1,850 rentals and condos over the last four years.
The Seattle Times also has an article today on office rents, Office rents soar as new owners raise rates sharply:
Landlords were asking an average $38.51 per square foot for Class A, or premium, office space in downtown Seattle during the fourth quarter, up 30 percent from a year earlier, according to the report by commercial real-estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield.
The Seattle Times also had an article on the downtown Bellevue condo scene, Bellevue condo tower opens this weekend:
“Washington Square is seeking to be different,” said Wasatch CEO Dell Loy Hansen. “We want to be the counterculture to the big-box names.”
I’m really curious as to how a big condo tower can be counterculture. Sounds like an oxymoron.
