Amazon Takes Over Most Of The Macy’s Building In Seattle

Image courtesy of Selbe Lynn

What’s even more symbolic than Amazon building a warehouse on the site of what was once the world’s largest enclosed mall? In its hometown of Seattle, Amazon is gobbling up as much office space as it can, and now that includes the top six floors of the Macy’s building downtown.

The Seattle Times reports that the Macy’s store, which started out as a Bon Marché location, is still in business, but has cut back its footprint considerably. While the building is eight stories tall, only the first two are still retail space. Macy’s sold the top half of the building to Starwood Capital Group in 2015, and sold two more stories earlier this year.

Amazon is taking over 312,000 square feet of office space in those six stories, which is enough room for around 1,500 employees. The Times reports that Amazon has signed leases on 1.65 million square feet of office space in Seattle, including all of the office space in an entire skyscraper at Rainier Square, which is scheduled to open in 2020. Guess what that skyscraper is replacing? Yep, another dead mall.

The e-commerce giant takes up a total of eight million square feet in Seattle, and is currently on a search across North America for a second headquarters. (Let us guess: The nearest city to you is working on its bid right now.)

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