SEATTLE — This is the heart of “Amageddon.”
It starts at the aptly named Day 1 skyscraper on Seventh Avenue, runs down Westlake Avenue for some 10 blocks deep into the heart of South Lake Union, a former warehouse district on the downtown fringe.
Amazon calls this home — 8.1 million square feet of space spread over more than 30 buildings in a stretch of real estate that runs more than a mile. It’s roughly equivalent to the distance from Point State Park to PPG Paints Arena.
Some 40,000 strong, employees crowded sidewalks, coffee shops and restaurants on a recent sunny Monday, competing for space with the cranes and construction that seem to be everywhere. You know the employees by their blue lanyards — and their dogs.
At Amazon, employees can bring their canine companions to work. About 4,000 arrive with their owners each day, walking the same halls and climbing the same stairs. It might be the only corporate headquarters in America where dog walks outnumber cigarette breaks.
The e-commerce giant is erecting another office building across the street from its Day 1 center. It confirmed two weeks ago that it will lease another 722,000 square feet in another office tower, the second tallest in the Northwest, to be built in the heart of downtown, with enough space for another 3,500 employees.
**2016 data | Source: Amazon | Graphic: James Hilston/Post-Gazette
It’s a dominating footprint for an online retailer that got its start in the garage of founder and CEO Jeff Bezos in 1994.
In Pittsburgh, the space Amazon occupies at its headquarters would be the equivalent of four U.S. Steel Towers. The company generates the kind of economic vitality that any city would covet. Seattle’s unemployment is one of the lowest in the country. The Downtown Seattle Association estimates there is $5 billion in construction activity in the city in offices, hotels and apartments — much driven by Amazon.
Amazon's footprint in and around Seattle
Each pin represents an Amazon location.
But Amazon’s rapid growth in Seattle has spawned almost as many critics as it has employees.
It has been blamed for skyrocketing housing prices, for an alarming increase in the homeless population, for traffic jams that stretch for hours, and even for ruining the city’s dating scene. The company probably would be faulted for bad coffee, too, but that’s hard to find in this caffeine-fueled birthplace of Starbucks.
While Amazon and its boosters tout the company’s expansion in Seattle as an economic success story, some locals have their own terms for it — “Amageddon” or “Amazocalypse.” Some believe its largely young and affluent workforce, many from different cities and countries, has messed with Seattle’s soul.
“Seattle was a great place to live before Amazon. If you can afford it, it’s a great place to live now. That’s the caveat — if you can afford it,” said Knute Berger, a Seattle native and historian who is a columnist for Crosscut.com and editor at large for Seattle Magazine.
Mr. Berger wrote a commentary for Crosscut titled “Bidder beware,” warning the countless cities, including Pittsburgh, competing for a shot at Amazon’s second headquarters and its promise of 50,000 jobs that they may end up with more than they bargained for.
“That sounds crazy because of the success of the company. But Amazon has come with costs, too, for the community. Not everyone is a winner in the Amazon economy,” he said.
“The taxpayers have been asked to essentially subsidize a lot of the growth that Amazon is bringing. We redeveloped a part of town. We re-prioritized billions of dollars to improve a roadway because of the growth that Amazon would bring. There were a lot of people who felt that money could be spent in other neighborhoods that needed improvements but Amazon went to the head of the line.”
With its rapid growth, from about 5,200 employees in 2010, when it moved into downtown Seattle, to 40,000 today, perhaps the biggest impact has been on housing and rental prices.
Median housing prices in the city have skyrocketed 84.6 percent to $690,200 over the last seven years, according to Seattle-based Zillow. Prices in the broader metro area have jumped 55 percent to $453,100.
Rents over roughly the same period have soared 47.2 percent in the city to $2,573 and 40.2 percent in the metro area to $2,176.
On the plus side, the growth of Amazon and other tech companies have generated higher tax revenues, stimulated investment, and increased diversity in a city that once was mostly white, said Jeff Shulman, an associate professor in marketing at the University of Washington.
But in addition to skyrocketing housing prices, the expansion has clogged schools, aided in gentrifying the city’s historically African-American central district, and altered the character of other neighborhoods, he said.
“Some of the people I’ve talked to are seeing their neighborhoods change, their businesses change. It can be a little unsettling to them,” said Mr. Shulman, whose Seattle Growth podcasts chronicle the changes people have experienced as a result of the tech boom and redevelopment.
Some leave Seattle altogether. Some can’t afford to stay because of higher rents. Others “look fondly at what they used to have and don’t like the change.”
“It’s a dizzying pace of change,” he said.
‘The right thing to do’
Mike McGinn, who served as Seattle mayor from 2010 to 2014, remembers when times weren’t as bustling in Seattle, when cranes didn’t cram the skyline, and when construction trade unemployment hovered around 30 percent during the recession.
Then the call came. It was from a real estate developer who had just entered into an option agreement with Amazon to expand in the city’s core.
“Awesome,” Mr. McGinn replied.
At the time, it seemed like a godsend — particularly since most other major employers in the region, from Microsoft to Boeing, were located in the suburbs.
“From my perspective as an environmentalist and a mayor, this is good. We want our jobs in our core areas, which can be well-served by transit and services. That was the right thing to do,” he said.
Mr. McGinn has no regrets.
“I think the challenge is how do we respond to having jobs. Because the alternative — I know what it was like to be mayor when we had high unemployment. That is not a good alternative,” he said.
Mike McQuaid, a fourth-generation Seattleite employed for three years by Amazon about a decade ago, said the company “has opened up our doors to the world.”
A former president of the South Lake Union Community Council who’s still active with the organization, Mr. McQuaid said some people hold a warped, romanticized view of what the neighborhood was before Amazon.
Back then, about the only draws were a U.S. Naval Reserve, a Denny’s restaurant, an athletic supply store and “plenty of illicit reasons,” said Mr. McQuaid, who owns a public affairs consulting firm.
“It was a remnant of the laundry industry that served the maritime trades in and around Lake Union, which was a working lake. When that industry went into decline, this really was an afterthought of Seattle,” he said.
Of the 33 buildings on its campus, Amazon owns half and leases the rest. One is named Rufus after the first dog to come to work at Amazon. Another is called Wainwright, a tribute to the online retailer’s first customer.
The 36-story Day 1 headquarters, opened last year, is a model of sustainability, from its fourth-floor outdoor plaza with plants and a grill for barbecuing to its small dog park outside the front doors, even down to its Jetsons-looking phone booths — yes, phone booths — for smartphone users who want a little privacy.
Next to it, the sci-fi-looking Spheres are under construction. The glass domes, to open next year, will be filled with green walls, lush vegetation from around the world, and a waterfall, providing Amazon employees with a place to relax.
Between people and dogs, South Lake Union brims with activity. Apartment buildings, a Whole Foods grocery, restaurants, coffee shops, a furniture store and other retailers feed the crowd. Even Microsoft, whose headquarters is in Redmond about 16 miles from Seattle, has opened an office in the neighborhood, as have other tech companies drawn by Amazon.
The old warehouse and laundry district has given way to a multicultural neighborhood where Mr. McQuaid mused that he can walk several blocks and hear four different languages.
“It’s really helped make this what I call — I’ll preface it with a careful perhaps — perhaps this is the most significant urban revitalization in America today,” he said.
“It’s really put Seattle on the global map in a way we haven’t seen since Boeing ramped up during the war years and since the world’s fair came to Seattle in 1962. And there are some challenges with that. But they are not bad challenges to have.”
Shelters and job training
Amazon has its own scorecard for measuring its impact on Seattle.
The company states it has invested $3.7 billion in buildings and infrastructure, paid $43 million into the city’s public transportation system through worker transportation benefits, created an additional 53,000 jobs as a result of direct investments, and helped to spur another $38 billion in investment in the local economy.
AMAZON'S INVESTMENTS AND ECONOMIC IMPACT
*2010-16 data | Source: Amazon | Graphic: James Hilston/Post-Gazette
The number of Fortune 500 companies with engineering/research and development centers in Seattle has increased from seven in 2010, when Amazon moved into downtown, to 31 today.
FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES WITH ENGINEERING/R&D CENTERS IN SEATTLE
Source: Amazon | Graphic: James Hilston/Post-Gazette
By Amazon’s count, its properties house 24 restaurants or cafes and eight other services.
Among those who have benefited is Elise Vincentini, owner of Downtown Dog Lounge, a 15,000-square-foot day care, boarding, training and grooming business in the heart of Amazon’s campus.
Ms. Vincentini opened the location a year and a half ago after caring for the dogs of Amazon executives at her other store. For $47 a day, employees can board their dogs. She also provides training to help pets adjust to the office environment and sponsors events like Barktoberfest, which features a canine costume contest.
“It’s a solid business,” she said.
Amazon is donating 47,000 square feet in a new office complex now under construction adjacent to its Day 1 headquarters to Mary’s Place, a nonprofit emergency shelter provider for people in need.
The space will be enough to house more than 200 people in 65 rooms. It will replace space in an old motel owned by Amazon that Mary’s Place had been using as a shelter. That was demolished to make way for the complex, and the shelter temporarily occupies another building owned by the company.
Source: Amazon | Graphic: James Hilston/Post-Gazette
Amazon also has donated 25,000 square feet, enough for five restaurants, in its office complexes to FareStart, which provides food service job training to those struggling with homelessness, poverty, addiction or who have been in prison. It also has given $10 million to the University of Washington for a new computer science and engineering building.
To some, the gestures, while noteworthy, were an attempt by Amazon to counter criticism that it has not done enough to help solve some of the economic and social ills its rapid expansion helped to create.
“I think it’s a very common and decades-old ploy by corporations to do a little bit here, do a little bit there in the way of a philanthropy,” said Seattle council member Kshama Sawant, a socialist.
It’s not that Amazon is being blamed for rising homelessness, “it’s that they’re doing extremely well. What more can they do to help us solve that problem as part of the community?” Mr. Berger noted.
“I think people applaud [Amazon’s philanthropic efforts]. I think people are happy with that. I think the general sense is they should do more,” he said. “There’s certainly a perception that they’ve come very recently to this and people want to see what they’re going to do over the long term.”
Last summer, the council passed a city income tax targeting residents who make $250,000 or more. Critics claimed that it was aimed mainly at Amazon with its well-paid workforce and other tech companies.
Council member Lisa Herbold, a Pittsburgh native who sponsored the measure now being challenged in court, denies that.
“This is not aimed at any particular employee or any particular sector. It’s aimed at addressing the regressivity of our taxation system,” said Ms. Herbold, noting that Seattle relies heavily on property and sales levies to fund its operations.
A dicey dating scene
Just blocks from Amazon’s campus, by Interstate 5, stands El Corazon/Funhouse Seattle, a music venue and lounge. With David Bowie rocking through the speakers, the pinball machines and the Pabst sign on the wall, it could double for any number of shot-and-beer bars in Pittsburgh.
But El Corazon, formerly known as Off Ramp, is something of a shrine in the birthplace of grunge. It is where Nirvana and Pearl Jam first played concerts in Seattle — and it has been largely unaffected by the flood of techies into the city.
Few of them visit this hard rock, punk and metal outpost off Eastlake Avenue, according to bartender Salem Stafford.
“We’re the kind of business that’s a little intimidating to people who are a little square,” she said. “Usually, once they come in, they find it’s very welcoming and they have a lot of fun. But a lot of them are intimidated to even walk in the door.”
El Corazon hasn’t been influenced much by Amazon’s growth. Yet Ms. Stafford said the influx of so many people from so many places, while fabulous, can also be a little overwhelming.
“It’s so much so fast with all of these different people with all of their own social norms that they’re kind of coming in and sticking to their own social norms instead of trying to figure out what the norms of the culture they’re coming into are,” she said.
“You can see it really prominently with traffic. It’s really dangerous because it’s very unpredictable. You don’t know how people are going to act. Kind of the same thing with foot traffic. Some people politely make way for people to pass them, and others kind of barrel right into you.”
The changing culture apparently has even had an impact on Seattle’s dating scene — not for the better, according to some.
Stephanie Moores, who leases apartments in the heart of South Lake Union, said there’s “definitely a different brand of guys in this area,” though she doesn’t blame Amazon for that.
“There are definitely a lot of guys around here that I wouldn’t characterize as datable,” she said.
The list of complaints sounds like something right out of “Dr. Phil” — the inability to maintain a conversation, a habit of not looking up from their cell phones, or only wanting to talk about themselves and their jobs.
Stephanie Rotondo, a Seattleite who lives in the area, said that many techies don’t have the social skills to go along with their wealth and status. She used high school references to make her point.
“It’s the AV-Club-president-turns-homecoming-king conundrum,” she said.
The changes go beyond the dating scene. Mr. Berger said Seattle seems to be shedding its “quirky casualness” and devil-may-care attitude.
For all the talk of Seattle losing its soul, Mr. McQuaid sees just the opposite in the waves of people who have flocked to the city to work for Amazon and others.
“They’re bringing soul to Seattle,” he said.
Advice to bidders: Be prepared
If there’s a lesson to be learned in Seattle, it’s that cities not only need a game plan for attracting Amazon but one to deal with the inevitable impacts it will bring.
That means planning for the impacts on housing, on traffic, on transit, and a host of other issues that come with such massive growth. It also means ensuring that residents and businesses are trained and equipped to take advantage of the jobs and investment Amazon will bring.
“If we don’t think about the people who are going to be left behind, we can’t stop them from being left behind,” said Mr. Shulman of the University of Washington.
He wondered what cities could handle the kind of growth Amazon is projecting in its request for proposals. Many cities, he suggested, “would be overwhelmed,” given the traffic, the housing and office space, and other amenities needed to accommodate such growth.
Mr. Shulman strongly advised against moving forward with the $1.1 billion plan to reduce the footprint of Pittsburgh International Airport until Amazon makes its decision.
“They fly talent in from everywhere in the world. They don’t want to do stopovers,” he said.
Amazon considers a nonstop flight to Seattle, which the Pittsburgh airport currently does not have, important. Last year, employees and guests visiting Seattle at the company’s request piled up 233,000 room nights.
Mr. McGinn, the former mayor, said political and civic leaders should use Amazon’s HQ2 proposal as a checklist for making their cities better for the businesses and residents who already are there.
“If you make it all about Amazon, there’s going to be one winner and a ton of losers,” he said. “I’d use the Amazon RFP really as an exercise in how do you make your city a great place for your homegrown businesses. You know you can make them better and you don’t know that you’re going to land Amazon.”
For council member Ms. Sawant, cities should use the opportunity to demand that the needs of working people are met — or not bid at all.
“When Amazon issued the RFP, it was like Jeff Bezos as a billionaire game show host telling entire cities what were the rules of the game,” she said. “From my standpoint as a socialist who is fighting for working people, the rules of the game, as defined by Amazon and the corporations like them, are a race to the bottom for cities.”
All of the perceived ills haven’t stopped Seattle from bidding for Amazon’s proposed second headquarters. Seemingly caught flat-footed by the announcement, the city will join more than 100 others in bidding for HQ2, with proposals due Thursday.
Amazon plans to announce the winner next year. While few ventured to guess about Pittsburgh’s chances, one who did was Matt McIlwain, managing director of the Madrona Venture Group, which has clients in the Steel City.
“I can see you winning it because Pittsburgh’s got chutzpah,” he said.
Mark Belko: mbelko@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1262.
First Published: October 16, 2017, 12:00 p.m.
