The conventional answer is “anywhere he wants” and that may really be the case for Amazon. To get perspective, the following are some statistics to help one get a grasp of the magnitude of Amazon’s impact:
- $32.2 Billion in employee compensation.
- $25.3 Billion in increase in personal income by NON Amazon employees via Amazon Investments.
- $4.5 Billion in capital improvements, buildings and infrastructure.
- $135 Million in donations in time and cash to homeless and hunger non profits.
- $79 Million to regional transportation (by employee benefits)
- $15 Million to education
Now add in 244,000 indirect jobs, 11.5 Million square feet of space and 47 buildings….. One starts to understand the impact on Seattle commercial real estate which includes Bellevue. The newly announced office building of 43 stories in Bellevue has 16,000 square feet of meeting rooms and 14,000 square feet of retail space to go with 121,000 square feet of office amenities and 1,175 parking spaces to compliment the 885,000 square feet of office space for a total of over one million square feet. The company projects 4,500 employees in Bellevue by 2022 and could grow to 25,000 based upon current projections. It is wise to keep in mind that Google and Amazon combined attracted 88.5% of all online shoppers!
The professionals at Seattle Commercial Real Estate look at the implications of this expansion and the length of the positive real estate cycle and say, in our own small way, it is Amazing. Remember, Amazon is only a part of our economy. From 2008 to 2018 when we had 699 startups locally, last year we had 2,269 and a huge number of those are in the tech industry which is spreading from its historical roots in the San Francisco Bay Area.
