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Commercial Real Estate

Office Development in Seattle Kicks Into High Gear in 2019

More than two dozen building projects are slated to be completed this year

By Bill Conroy April 10, 2019

The worldwide headquarters of Amazon.com, located in downtown Seattle, are under construction. The large campus is being expanded to eventually house up to 50,000 workers.
The worldwide headquarters of Amazon.com, located in downtown Seattle, are under construction. The large campus is being expanded to eventually house up to 50,000 workers.

Seattles office market is primed for a major growth spurt, with 26 projects encompassing some 6.4 million square feet of space slated to come online in 2019, according to a study by commercial real estate blog Commercial Cafe.

By comparison, in 2018, Seattles office inventory expanded by 1.7 million square feet via six new projects, according to the study, which was based on an analysis of Yardi Matrix data. Seattles mark of 6.4 million square feet of office space slated for delivery this year represents a 276 percent increase over 2018.

Seattle also lays claim to the seventh largest office building delivery slated for 2019, Amazons 37-story, 1.1 million-square-foot Rufus 2.0 Block 20 office building, slated for completion in June, according to Commercial Cafe.

Seattle ranks fifth among U.S. metro areas in office-building deliveries scheduled for 2019, up from 17th in 2018, according to Commercial Cafe, which separates office development in San Francisco from other Bay Area projects. In the 2019 ranking, New York City is No. 1, with 15.9 million square feet of office space in the pipeline for this year; followed by the Bay Area, with 10.2 million square feet; San Francisco, with 6.9 million square feet; and Dallas-Ft. Worth, with 6.6 million square feet.

In total, the top 40 U.S. markets delivered a total of 76 million square feet of office space in 2018 and are expected to add some 115 million square feet this year, according to Commercial Cafe.

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