Back in 2019, I was amazed to learn just how many buildings in Seattle's downtown were Amazon offices. IIRC, it was dozens of buildings, some entirely owned by Amazon, some WeWork leases, etc. Downtown isn't very big, so that's a huge presence.

It was also fun to check out the company-city that is Redmond, not far away.

Seattle's a great city, and it's got great tech presence. I'm optimistic for its recovery.

▲

asveikau an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The neighborhoods they built that stuff in (mostly South Lake Union and Denny Triangle) used to be so sleepy in 2010 and earlier. It was a big transformation.

	▲	Schiendelman 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Earlier than that, they were actively dangerous. I spent a lot of my childhoold in Belltown, and it was not a safe place in the late 80s and early 90s. SLU and Denny Triangle are amazing now. Those are some of the few places with restaurants open into the evenings. Amazon, like them or not, does a great job prioritizing local businesses in the retail spaces in their buildings. They can't all survive, but they've had a good track record.

▲

rolph 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

owned by amazon ..

now where should data centers be constructed, rather than arable farmland?

▲

bartread 31 minutes ago | parent [-]

It’s an interesting thought. One wonders if a lot of the utility infrastructure they need would be more readily available and/or be less negatively impactful to build as well.

	▲	rolph 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		at face it seems like it would be "retooling" rather than ground up construction, with foundations for connection infra, it should go up fast, and easy if AMZ already owns it.

▲

pllbnk an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What's the point of the "recovery" in terms of stuffing people back to the offices when they can successfully perform their work from home?

▲

sublinear an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Wasn't the shared-workspace business model to take advantage of these vacancies?

Despite the graph shown in the article, I have to wonder if this is really a new problem.