alt Hacker NewsBack in 2019, I was amazed to learn just how many buildings in Seattle's downtown were Amazon offices. IIRC, it was dozens of buildings, some entirely owned by Amazon, some WeWork leases, etc. Downtown isn't very big, so that's a huge presence.
It was also fun to check out the company-city that is Redmond, not far away.
Seattle's a great city, and it's got great tech presence. I'm optimistic for its recovery.
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The neighborhoods they built that stuff in (mostly South Lake Union and Denny Triangle) used to be so sleepy in 2010 and earlier. It was a big transformation.
owned by amazon ..
now where should data centers be constructed, rather than arable farmland?
What's the point of the "recovery" in terms of stuffing people back to the offices when they can successfully perform their work from home?
Wasn't the shared-workspace business model to take advantage of these vacancies?
Despite the graph shown in the article, I have to wonder if this is really a new problem.
While visiting a family member at least a decade ago, I went to a fireworks display in Redmond, and two things really stood out.
First: It doesn't get dark until practically midnight, so the fireworks show started at 10:00, but it was still pretty light.
The second: Most families there had at least one parent with a Windows phone or Surface Tablet, back when they only used ARM processors. I had seen maybe one of each in use before that, and suddenly I was surrounded by them.