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

Space Needle economics

[DRJlaw]

Meanwhile, the Space Needle's owners have complained that all the towers being thrown up by Amazon and developers hoping to house its workers are crowding out views of the aging tourist attraction.

Did those owners pay the other property owners to surrender their air rights so that the Space Needle could have unobstructed views, or are they merely trying to seize a right to prevent others from building structures that are equally high? I.e., a real estate version of pulling the ladder up behind you.

Interestingly...

[bluegutang]

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

According to the Seattle DOT Traffic Report (2015), Seattle added nearly 100,000 people in the decade from 2004-2014, while average daily car traffic in the city fell by some 60,000 trips over the same period. The travel demand created by population and job growth is being absorbed by the transit system

source

Re: Interestingly...

[cusco]

You live in Bellevue and drive downtown? You're a moron. From the Eastgate Park & Ride it's 25 minutes on the bus, and they run every 8 minutes at peak hours.

Megacorps

[JanneM]

One one hand, revitalizing city centers is not necessarily a bad thing. On the other, this starts to smell a little of Shadowrun-style megacorporations (or of industrial-era company towns).

Live and work your entire life within the protective confines of your employer. Go to the company school, work at the company office, live in company housing paid for with a company-bank supplied mortgage, dine at your choice of company restaurants, vacation at the company resort, get a company funeral...

Good While It Lasts

[cmholm]

There was a time when Seattle seemed to be headed towards a Boeing economic mono-culture of sorts, and when company employment cratered in 1970, the whole region felt it. At such point as something awful happens to Amazon - say, shareholders demanding a reasonable profit - it could get a bit dark in the CBD.