Amazon to Exit Massive Office Lease Near Seattle Headquarters

Amazon is abandoning offices near its headquarters in downtown Seattle.

The Jeff Bezos-led e-commerce giant will not renew its lease of the 251,000-square-foot 1915 Terry Avenue building in the Denny Triangle neighborhood and plans to exit the space in May, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported. Amazon’s corporate headquarters are located half a mile south at 2021 7th Avenue in Denny Triangle.

Seattle Children’s bought the building in 2007 for $35.9 million, per King County records. The hospital used rent payments from Amazon to lease other spaces and pay for expansion plans in the region. The building’s assessed value is $63.5 million.

The company will relocate employees to other nearby offices, a company spokesperson said. The number of employees who work at the building was not disclosed.

Amazon began leasing the entire seven-story building in 2014. At the time, the online retailer was in growth mode in the Seattle area. In recent years, the company has been slimming down its space in the city as it expands on the Eastside.

Amazon’s office growth has been concentrated in Eastside cities like Bellevue and Redmond. Last fall, the company leased a 70,000-square-foot building in Redmond Town Center, taking up space at 7277 164th Avenue Northeast vacated by AT&T earlier last year. In recent months, it started construction work on three downtown Bellevue towers it had left empty for more than a year, the Business Journal reported.

The flight east has been ongoing since the outbreak of the pandemic. In 2024, the company gave up nearly 595,000 square feet in Seattle as it let leases expire and relocated employees to Bellevue. That year, Amazon let its lease expire at the Metropolitan Park North building at 1220 Howell Street, a block away from 1915 Terry. The year before, it exited towers at 2001 Eighth Avenue and 1800 Ninth Avenue.

Amazon plans to beef up its Bellevue headcount to 25,000 in the coming years from 14,000 today. The company has approximately 48,000 workers in Seattle, a decrease from a 2020 peak of 60,000, attributable to layoffs and relocations.

— Chris Malone Méndez