Amazon is reportedly dropping another office in South Lake Union as the company continues to trim its physical footprint.
The Seattle-based tech giant will let its lease lapse in the 81,000-square-foot office building at 428 Westlake Ave. N., in the heart of Amazon's South Lake Union campus, according to a July report from brokerage Cushman & Wakefield.
Amazon signed the lease in 2016 amid its rapid growth, snapping up midsize office buildings in South Lake Union and office towers in the Denny Triangle to house its swelling workforce. The lease runs through 2027 and had two five-year renewal options, according to King County records.
Amazon did not confirm whether it was leaving the space, but a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company regularly evaluates its corporate office space to ensure we're best serving our business, employees, and customers.”
Since the pandemic, Amazon has steadily shed office space in Seattle as its broader workforce changed. One of the largest shifts locally is the company's growth in Bellevue, where it increased its head count from 11,000 in 2023 to roughly 14,300 employees in 2024, according to the latest available city data.
Amazon's workforce in Seattle has dipped below 50,000 recently, down from its peak of roughly 60,000 in 2020. It's also no longer the largest employer in the city, losing that distinction this year to the University of Washington.
Similar to other companies with enormous office footprints, Amazon has been rethinking its space needs since the pandemic. The company has enacted two major waves of layoffs in recent years, affecting more than 7,200 local employees since 2022, according to state regulatory filings.
Amazon's expansion in Bellevue hit some speed bumps in 2022, and the company paused construction on several towers.
If Amazon leaves the building at 428 Westlake Ave. N., it will be one of the smaller offices Amazon has vacated in Seattle. In 2020, the company left a 180,000-square foot office building at 2201 Westlake Ave., one of the earliest offices it leased in the area.
In 2023, the company confirmed it was vacating several office towers in the Denny Triangle neighborhood, including the West8 at 2001 8th Ave., leaving behind three-quarters of the 539,000-square-foot tower. Kilroy Realty had bought the tower less than two years before Amazon announced it was leaving.
So far, most of Amazon's departures in Seattle fit a pattern. As leases come up, the company has dropped office buildings that are either smaller than office towers or are shared with other tenants.
There are some outliers. In 2023, Amazon vacated a Denny Triangle office tower, but it renewed another lease in the neighborhood and expanded to occupy the entire tower.
Amazon's lease expirations are adding to the glut of office space in Seattle's downtown neighborhoods, which collectively are 35% empty, according to a Cushman & Wakefield's report. Bellevue's downtown, which is much smaller, is about 25% empty.
Seattle's leasing activity is picking up. General Motors recently announced it was expanding into West8, the tower Amazon vacated. Cloud computing company Databricks scooped up several floors in the building. Apple and Anthropic are also expanding in South Lake Union, with the former taking space given up by Meta.
But the tenants coming in are not gobbling up the amount of space needed to offset the vacancies created by Amazon departures and downsizing companies such as Docusign and global law firm Perkins Coie.
This story has been updated with Amazon's statement.
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