Just days after Amazon eliminated a major expansion in New York City it looks like the Eastside is going to benefit.
According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, Amazon put down non-refundable earnest money to buy Bellevue Corporate Plaza on 108th Ave NE.
The 10-story building is about two blocks from the Expedia Building which already houses more than 2,000 Amazon employees, with plans to take over the rest of the building when Expedia moves its corporate headquarters to Seattle.
Bellevue Corporate Plaza is also right next to the Bellevue Transit Center and close to the Bellevue light rail station under construction.
KIRO-7 spoke to Matthew Gardner, the Chief Economist for Windermere Real Estate. Gardner says if Amazon buys Bellevue Corporate Plaza and carries through with other lease plans, it will have about 8,000 employees in Bellevue.
Gardner says Bellevue is attractive to Amazon for many reasons, the proximity to Seattle, availability of housing, future access to light rail and no discussion of a head-tax.
“What’s interesting with Bellevue is its proximity, but also it is, one can argue, somewhat more business friendly at least than we’ve seen relative to Seattle. The Seattle head tax, I think when Amazon actually, essentially down-tooled a lot of their new development, that was a very significant shot across the bow for city hall, ” said Gardner Monday.
“Amazon is a company that doesn’t like to take partial buildings anymore. They can occupy somewhere, it’s going to be the whole thing so that will take their exposure in Bellevue, should they proceed with the acquisition, up to a little more than 1.3 million square feet. That could account for 8-9,000 Amazon employees in downtown Bellevue.”
This post originally appeared on KIRO 7.
