Nestled among office buildings owned by Amazon, Facebook and Google, Apple has unveiled its latest acquisition in the Emerald City. With the recent removal of construction fencing, a new sign bearing a bright blue Apple logo has been revealed outside 333 Dexter Ave in South Lake Union.
The addition comes after Apple announced plans for a Seattle expansion back in 2019. The company’s goal at that time was to add up to 2,000 employees here, turning its Seattle office into an engineering hub of sorts.
It’s important to note that this is not Apple’s first foray into Seattle. The California-based tech company already had about 500 employees working out of a different office building downtown. Their new office is part of an expansion that will take course over the next 5 years or so.
The office building at 333 Dexter is built on the old KING 5 broadcast headquarters, and is comprised of two 12-story office towers that total around 630,000 square feet. If Apple plans to utilize the space according to traditional office floorplans (rather than a socially-distanced layout or other approach) it could house anywhere from 3,000 to 4,500 workers.
With such a large space at its disposal, it’s unclear how many workers Apple plans to hire in the city, or when they could be expected to start work. The addition of this office space was part of a low-key announcement on Apple’s part that it would be building a large, second campus in Austin, with smaller satellite offices in Seattle, Culver City, CA and San Diego.
In regards to what Apple plans to use its new office space for, reports indicate that the company is actively recruiting for engineers to work on iCloud in Seattle. Between Amazon, Google and Microsoft, the city is teeming with capable cloud computing specialists, it’s just a matter of seeing if Apple can do enough to woo them away from the other tech giants in the city.
This article was originally posted on GeekWire by Kurt Schlosser.
