back to article Watch out Wizard, Bezos wants the Emerald City for himself

Amazon has agreed to lease two more buildings in the South Lake Union neighbourhood of Seattle, in a deal leaving the company occupying a quarter of the city's best office space. The Seattle Times spoke to real estate expert, Kip Spencer, who acknowledged the situation has placed many local eggs in the one big Amazon basket. …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Nice picture accompanying the story!

    That is all.

    1. David Austin

      Re: Nice picture accompanying the story!

      Agreed. Very cool. Do El Reg give sources for all these header images they use? Just noticed on this one it doesn't appear to be attributed...

  2. MondoMan
    Unhappy

    Rents ARE high and rapidly rising in Seattle

    especially in the Ballard neighborhood where all the Amazons are settling.

    Companies are expanding in Seattle because of the local cloud tech expertise, not because of mythical cheap housing.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: Rents ARE high and rapidly rising in Seattle

      So we can expect in Seattle what's being experienced in San Francisco with assorted news stories on the so-called "gentrification"? Or maybe moreso? I have friends and associates there (Seattle) who have been bemoaning this for sometime now.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Rents ARE high and rapidly rising in Seattle

      Seattle has not been genuinely cheap for decades. It is relatively cheap compared to Silicon Valley and San Francisco, but just about anywhere can say that.

    3. Klek
      Mushroom

      Re: Rents ARE high and rapidly rising in Seattle

      Ahem. The article means *commercial* rents, not residential. You git.

      Yes, it's true that residential rents are rising also, and we can blame the likes of Amazon & Farcebook for paying their brogrammers too much and inflating rents. Something ought be done, but I don't know what. :(

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. Peter Durkee

    Not quite accurate

    Calling this area the city's best office space is misleading, and gives the impression that Amazon is just swallowing existing premium office space. The South Lake Union area is north of downtown Seattle and was, until recently, considered a light industrial area dotted with warehouses and car dealerships. The reason it became available was that much of it was bought up by Paul Allen some years ago with the idea of making it into a big park. That plan ran into resistance though, so they fell back to the next plan, which was to turn it into a biotech hub. That worked out better and there are some biotech companies in the area now, but it didn't fill it up as much as hoped. This is when Amazon stepped in and started building, having outgrown their previous headquarters in the very cool old Pac Med building south of downtown. The point is, at this point, if this area is indeed part of the "city's best office space," it's all the doing of Amazon with much help from Paul Allen.

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