Tech giant Amazon is slowly abandoning Seattle. The company will not renew its lease for the top eight floors of an office building in South Lake Union. The space reportedly totals over 180,000 square feet. They’re heading for Bellevue, another upscale city across Lake Washington from Seattle.
Amazon, which leases over six million square feet of office space in Seattle, will bring another 10,000 jobs to Bellevue, in addition to the 15,000 previously announced jobs. These aren’t just new jobs. An Amazon source says the plan includes moving Seattle jobs to Bellevue.
So what's the motivation behind this move?
Seattle city council's new payroll tax - on top of all of the other taxes the company pays. And this isn't really all that slow a move: they plan to be out of Seattle in December. The Seattle city council managed to bite themselves well and truly in their collective butts with this move, as it's going to cost them a lot of revenue.
As they'll soon discover, actions have consequences.
