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Seattle

Google to vacate a 52K sf office building on Seattle waterfront

Tech giant follows Meta, Microsoft and Amazon.com in shrinking footprint in the market

Google to Vacate 52K sf Office Building in Seattle

A photo illustration of Google CEO Sundar Pichai along with 437 North 34th Street in Seattle, Washington (Getty, Google Maps)

Google will follow the lead of tech companies Meta, Microsoft and Amazon.com in shedding offices around Seattle.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based tech giant will move out of a 52,000-square-foot office building this summer at 437 North 34th Street, in Fremont, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported.

The unit of Alphabet subleased the three-story West Dock building from Tableau in 2017.

Its sublease from Salesforce, which acquired Tableau in 2019, is slated to end this summer, according to Mark Grey, principal of Stephen C. Grey & Associates, a co-owner of the waterfront building.

Unlike other major tech employers in greater Seattle, Google hasn’t dumped large blocks of offices.

In the last few years, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have each shed or planned to sublease hundreds of thousands of square feet of cubicle space, according to the Business Journal.

Amazon’s exits have mostly been in Seattle, including its move out of a tower at 1800 Ninth Street. Microsoft has made plans to vacate all of its offices in Bellevue as it consolidates at its Redmond campus. Meta has confirmed plans to exit offices in both Seattle and Bellevue.

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At the same time, Google has pulled back its expansion plans.

Last year, the firm backed out of a deal to purchase the Lee Johnson Chevrolet dealership in Kirkland, where it planned to develop a third Kirkland campus, according to the newspaper.

Google is still building its Kirkland Urban campus, where the second of three buildings is slated to finish construction this year.

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Last year, the company laid off 12,000 workers. In January, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees to expect more layoffs this year.

The owners of the West Dock building won’t wait long for a new tenant, according to the Business Journal. Public health nonprofit PATH plans to move more than 200 Seattle-area employees into the building next year.

Seattle trails only Detroit, Houston and San Francisco in office vacancies, according to the Business Journal, citing figures from Commercial Edge. The office vacancy rate in Seattle was 22.3 percent in November, a 2 percent increase from the prior year. 

— Dana Bartholomew

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