Amazon Gobbles Downtown Seattle, Builds Biospheres (bloomberg.com)

Amazon has grabbed more than 15% of Seattle's office space inventory, which a local book author is describing as "the Amazocalypse". And now Amazon is building three "gigantic spheres resembling melted-together Milk Duds in the shadow of their new 500-foot-tall office tower," according to Bloomberg: The 100-foot-tall orbs -- Amazon calls them Biospheres -- will host more than 300 plant species from around the world, creating what the company sees as the workplace of the future. Amazonians will be able to break from their daily labors to walk amid the greenery along suspension bridges and climb into meeting spaces resembling bird nests perched in mature trees... Many of the plants are endangered species, meaning that the spheres double as a conservation project.
Bloomberg talks about the desire of Amazon and other tech companies to stay -- and grow -- in the popular cities "where millennials prefer to live". While the owners of Seattle's Space Needle complain that all the new office towers are blocking views of their tourist attraction, the article also describes how Amazon leased the ground floors of its office buildings to "hand-picked bars, restaurants and coffee shops," transforming it from "a hodgepodge of car dealerships and second-hand stores."

Comments

Re:Interestingly...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Seattle actually has less traffic than it did a decade ago, despite its growth in employment and housing.

A funny thing happened between 2004 and 2014... The 2008 crash.

The Seattle area is booming, it's true... But the Great Recession hit this area hard, and in 2014 the area was still recovering. I doubt 2016 statistics would tell the same story.

I mostly take transit to and from work; but anecdotally I'd say Seattle freeway traffic is worse now than it's ever been. I can say for certain that northbound on I-5 used to be clear sailing as soon as you reached the convention center; but now, more often than not, it's stop and go from Mercer to 520 even at 10am.

Downtown traffic may be marginally less bad than ten years ago, but that has more to do with Seattle's aggressive push to eliminate downtown parking than the availability of transit.

But now that I can FINALLY take light rail to UW, it's a moot point in my case. Sounder train and light rail means my commute is no longer dependent on the roads!

Re:Amazon, you could do it for 1/10 the price

[cusco]

Amazon has thousands of employees on hundreds of teams that need to work together. Physical proximity makes that a frack of a lot easier to accomplish.

Besides, they've got piles of money, why not? The South Lake Union area where the main campus is located was a dump, full of warehouses, abandoned buildings, parking lots, hookers and crack dealers. Today that region is unrecognizable to someone who visited only five or six years ago, in a good way.

Re:Space Needle economics

[cusco]

We got to the Space Needle for dinner for our anniversary every summer, and we're of the opinion that the South Lake Union building boom has dramatically improved the view. That used to be a run-down neighborhood of warehouses, abandoned buildings, and parking lots, now it's actually something interesting and attractive to look at. Yeah, the view of the Space Needle is obstructed from some places in that area, but since the only people there much of the time before the new buildings were hookers and crack dealers I don't see it as much of an issue.