In 2022, with many office workers still working from home full time due to the pandemic, King County decided to permanently shutter its downtown Administration Building, an unloved architectural specimen that it said needed expensive upgrades and was no longer necessary.
Next month, the Administration Building will unshutter — upgrades not done — and office workers will return, as the county searches for buildings to accommodate County Executive Girmay Zahilay's push to get county workers back in the office.
The reopening of the Administration Building, which sits next to the county courthouse, is part of a multimillion-dollar push to find space for thousands of employees who had been working remotely for years.
Zahilay, who is in his first year as county executive, announced in January that county workers would soon have to return to the office at least three days a week. He didn't set a strict deadline, but said the changes would happen by spring 2026. In January, only 9,000 of the county's 16,500 executive branch employees were working in person at least three days a week, Zahilay's office said. That number also included workers like bus drivers and jail guards who always work in person.
Now, more than half a year later and well past the loose deadline, the county is moving toward compliance with Zahilay's edict but has yet to reach the benchmark he set.
Zahilay's office says that 16,300 county workers are currently working in office at least two days a week. By next month, 12,800 employees, or a little over three-quarters of executive branch workers, will be in office at least three days a week.
We have made significant progress on implementation of our hybrid work policy, and there is still more work to do," Callie Craighead, a Zahilay spokesperson, wrote. "The County is delivering on the Executive’s vision for a long-term hybrid workplace that maintains flexibility while improving service delivery, collaboration, and innovation."
The changes have not been greeted kindly by all county employees. This spring, about 75 workers occupied the lobby of the Chinook Building, the county's primary office building, to protest the policy. They carried signs saying “If remote work works stop trying to fix it,” “Communities not cubicles” and “Desks don’t serve the community, WE DO!”
The Metropolitan King County Council this summer approved $5.4 million for return-to-office expenses spread across several buildings. Zahilay's office anticipates requesting $16.7 million more this fall — for rent, building improvements, IT upgrades — as part of the cost of bringing workers back to the office.
The three-days-a-week requirement has created a significant space crunch in county buildings. A consultant's report in 2025 found that requiring workers to be in office three days a week, and giving each worker their own desk, would require more than 2,500 more workspaces than were available. If workers shared desks, the county would still need an additional 1,150 workspaces, the consultant found.
Requiring workers to be in the office only two days a week, the consultant found, would mean a deficit of just 200 workspaces.
The city of Seattle announced in 2024 that its office workers must be in person at least three days a week. But an agreement struck late last year between the city and its largest union allows many to work just two days a week in person. Employees in the office of the King County prosecutor, who is separately elected, have been working in person at least three days a week for more than a year and a half, a spokesperson said.
Next month, workers from the county's public health department will move into the fifth floor of the Administration Building.
The building, an imposing block of concrete with diamond lattice work and hundreds of little hexagonal windows that opened in 1971, has been called both "the ugliest building in the world" and "a piece of public art. The county says it has been maintained over the years, as it's been unoccupied.
The county's sobering center — a safe place for up to 40 people at a time to recover from intoxication — moved into the Administration Building in July, as it awaits a move to a permanent home in Sodo, likely in 2027.
A memo to employees said the building's water is potable and safe for hand-washing and that drinking water will be provided through a delivery service. Craighead said the building's water is safe to drink and the county provides bottled water in all buildings with older plumbing.
In 2019, the county estimated that it would cost $80 million to maintain and upgrade the Administration Building. That work isn't in the cards, Craighead said, because they only plan on using the building temporarily as they work to find and prepare other office space.
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