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As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

seattletimes.com

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Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#51

Post by BryantD »

skybrian wrote: post #7
Avicebron wrote: post #5

I know that commercial and residential building codes are different, but you would think converting them to residential units would fix this..

The article goes into this: > The city of Seattle estimates that, with aggressive incentives, conversions could generate up to 6,000 housing units over the next seven years. At a rough approximation, that would use around a fifth of the city’s present office surplus. > But “potential” is doing a lot of work here. > Newer, larger office buildings, like the U.S. Bank Center, are hugely impractical for conversion, thank…

The regulatory process in Seattle is fairly painful, which raises the bar for even some of those smaller, older buildings. It'd help to change that, even though it wouldn't consume the majority of the surplus.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#52

Post by Arnt »

general1465 wrote: post #30
hibikir wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large parts of the floor would be illegal to hand to anyone due to lack of natural light: They are only reasonable for offices because most of the floor doesn't have full walls, or said walls are transparent. They are also in locations where you might not want to live anyway, as there's minimal commercial support around the building for the services you would need if living in a weird, limited apartment. It's a bit l…

> Large parts of the floor would be illegal to hand to anyone due to lack of natural light: This is weird regulation to me. Why it is not allowed for apartment, but it is OK for office? Both buildings are sheltering humans, just during different stage of being awake.

1000m² with one window wall: do you think that's an open-plan office or an apartment? And you can't really split it into ten, an apartment with e.g. 5m of windows and 20m depth doesn't work.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#53

Post by burritoAlPast0r »

freedomben wrote: post #44
Terr_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the graph in the article, NYC is doing about average, and LA/SF are the other front-runners.

It will be interesting to see how that changes with mamdani. Depending on who you ask, it will either bring in the Utopia or it will be a devastating waste, but very few people expect not much to change. Thing is, it takes years to move so it will be a while until we see the results. Regardless of which side you tend to be on, it seems like it will be a useful experiment!

"Regardless of which side you tend to be on, it seems like it will be a useful experiment!"

I strongly disagree.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#54

Post by Schiendelman »

com2kid wrote: post #41
vessenes wrote: post #36

If you haven't lived in Seattle, it's hard to understand the problem. It's multifaceted; business climate, generally poor quality of the city itself as a walking / working destination, extremely hostile to business city government, and greener pastures (literally) east across the bay, which happen to be closer to some very large headquarters. The die was largely cast when Amazon called Seattle's bluff during COVID an…

Seattle's DT business district had always been uniquely bad. Everything is for office workers and closes at 5pm. There is nothing else but offices and restaurants serving coffee for breakfast and workplace meeting suitable lunches. It is an example of piss poor planning and urban design.

We made a lot of gains there just before covid, but it's a fight against empty space. We simply need more residential growth in the core. South Lake Union has improved a lot in the last two years, and Denny Triangle is coming along too. That will help north downtown, it's just going to take time, and there's not much we can do now to speed it up.

There was a 1993 initiative that seriously fucked up our planning process, and created 'design review', which is designed to add a year or two to building a building by having architects and retirees shit on everything. It's very hard to roll those things back, because many people believe public input is inherently good.

Pioneer Square is its own mess - it's that we have too much control, so we made it nearly impossible to build more market rate housing there to support evening and weekend destinations.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#55

Post by bartread »

rolph wrote: post #4
wxw wrote: post #2

Back 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.

owned by amazon .. now where should data centers be constructed, rather than arable farmland?

It’s an interesting thought. One wonders if a lot of the utility infrastructure they need would be more readily available and/or be less negatively impactful to build as well.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#56

Post by jonfromsf »

freedomben wrote: post #44
Terr_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the graph in the article, NYC is doing about average, and LA/SF are the other front-runners.

It will be interesting to see how that changes with mamdani. Depending on who you ask, it will either bring in the Utopia or it will be a devastating waste, but very few people expect not much to change. Thing is, it takes years to move so it will be a while until we see the results. Regardless of which side you tend to be on, it seems like it will be a useful experiment!

Mamdani is going to destroy the entire pre-1974 multifamily housing stock of the 5 boroughs. It will happen really quickly (values already down 40%, 11% of owners are behind on their mortgages).

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#57

Post by BryantD »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #12
fragmede wrote: post #6

Zoning and other regulations getting the way of it being used. The city "just" needs to incentivize it getting used, and someone's gotta come to terms with losing money.

[flagged]

No, that's the rhetoric. The reality: states like Massachusetts which have passed higher taxes on millionaires haven't seen the predicted exodus of millionaires. Mayor Wilson knows this and isn't taking dire predictions seriously. If you're gonna move, move, but it's not going to be because of that -- it's gonna be something you'd do anyhow.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Washington’s real GDP rose 1.1% to almost $730 billion between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026 -- substantially ahead of the overall pace in the US. Anthropic just signed a least for a 113,000-square-foot space in the South Lake Union neighborhood.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#58

Post by Schiendelman »

asveikau wrote: post #35
wxw wrote: post #2

Back 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.

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.

Earlier than that, they were actively dangerous. I spent a lot of my childhood in Belltown, and it was not a safe place in the late 80s and early 90s.

SLU and Denny Triangle are amazing now. Those are some of the few places with restaurants open into the evenings. Amazon, like them or not, does a great job prioritizing local businesses in the retail spaces in their buildings. They can't all survive, but they've had a good track record.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#59

Post by [deleted] »

Arnt wrote: post #52
general1465 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Large parts of the floor would be illegal to hand to anyone due to lack of natural light: This is weird regulation to me. Why it is not allowed for apartment, but it is OK for office? Both buildings are sheltering humans, just during different stage of being awake.

1000m² with one window wall: do you think that's an open-plan office or an apartment? And you can't really split it into ten, an apartment with e.g. 5m of windows and 20m depth doesn't work.

[deleted]

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#60

Post by garbawarb »

jonfromsf wrote: post #56
freedomben wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be interesting to see how that changes with mamdani. Depending on who you ask, it will either bring in the Utopia or it will be a devastating waste, but very few people expect not much to change. Thing is, it takes years to move so it will be a while until we see the results. Regardless of which side you tend to be on, it seems like it will be a useful experiment!

Mamdani is going to destroy the entire pre-1974 multifamily housing stock of the 5 boroughs. It will happen really quickly (values already down 40%, 11% of owners are behind on their mortgages).

How will he do that?
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