Are tech workers coming again to downtown Seattle? Right here’s what corporations are planning for

Downtown Seattle and the headquarters of Amazon during the COVID-19 pandemic. (GeekWire photo / Kurt Schlosser)

The plywood is falling off, restaurants that have survived add hours, and vehicle traffic in Seattle is growing from the ghost towns a year ago. But with downtown, Belltown, and South Lake Union poised for tens of thousands of employees to return to their skyscrapers, cafes, and sidewalks, a handful of questions remain unanswered.

Has the pandemic changed Seattle’s central business district or will the deep sleep dissolve in the coming year? Will companies require workers to return to the office and will they need to be vaccinated? And is downtown ready to accept all – or even part – of the 350,000 workers who left 15 months ago?

The answer depends on who is asked.

In late March, Amazon released a statement confirming it is an office business and its commute and cabin culture will resume this fall – a crucial boost to the liveliness of businesses in downtown Seattle amid the pandemic were smashed. In the past year, brick and mortar retail jobs fell 65%, according to data from the Downtown Seattle Association.

Zillow, which had 2,700 office workers in a building on Second Avenue and Union Street prior to the pandemic, is taking a hybrid approach with some workers returning only intermittently.

And some companies say no, we won’t be back. Some are happy to terminate their leases and relocate their employees to full remote work, while others remain preoccupied with crime and homelessness. Seattle startup Ad Lightning, for example, canceled its lease in downtown Seattle last year and has no plans to return.

GeekWire Virtual Event on Wednesday: Compassion Seattle: Is This the Road to Homelessness Solution?

“What I’ve particularly noticed over the past five to ten years is an attitude in Seattle that I would describe as anti-business and anti-job, and that has certainly accelerated in recent years,” says Ad Lightning. Founder Scott Moore said on a recent GeekWire podcast. “And it’s unfortunate.”

GeekWire emailed a handful of tech company executives about their plans to return to the downtown Seattle office, and their mixed responses reflect the diverse approaches taken after working remotely for more than a year.

Jodi Ellias, vice president of marketing at Payscale, said the compensation research firm gave up its Seattle office rental during the pandemic but will return to downtown with a smaller footprint and a plan to mirror Zillow’s approach.

“Payscale plans to eventually … occupy a more collaborative workspace in the Seattle area that supports hybrid work scenarios,” she said. Payscale had 160 out of 600 employees in the downtown area, she said. The company does not yet have a fixed number of how many employees go to the office every day. And no vaccines are needed for employees to return.

Ellias said she’s looking forward to some office hours this summer for one big reason: She hasn’t met a single member of her 10-person team in person after being hired in May.

At the other end of the scale is Textio. The writing improvement services company will not base any of its 90 employees in downtown Seattle. Co-founder and CEO Kieran Snyder – who will speak about Seattle’s homelessness crisis at a GeekWire event on Wednesday – said Textio will not bring full-time employees back to downtown Seattle or anywhere in downtown Seattle.

“We’re considering adding a touchdown room to team members who want to meet in person,” she said. “But we will be distributed first; more of our employees want flexibility.

“We don’t plan to have a single HQ with remote satellites.” As a result, Textio will not need any vaccinations in 2021.

A lone bicycle commuter on a morning ride through Seattle on 2nd Avenue in front of Zillow’s offices. (GeekWire Photo / John Cook)

It remains unclear whether the departures of Textio and Ad Lightning from the city center are an exception for technology companies. However, representatives of large commercial real estate firms are confident that someone will want the extra space that the reduction creates. Lisa Stewart, Seattle-based executive director of real estate giant JLL, said the notion that downtowns are dead is vastly exaggerated.

“The headlines were that all of the coastal cities that led the (boom) last cycle were going to collapse (because) they were all moving to different places,” she said in an online conference last week. “We always talked about it as the three Bs – everyone moves to Boise, Bend and Boseman.”

But the reality was very different. While some people have moved to these places, the actual movement data inundated the anecdotes.

Stewart said Seattle drew more people to the city in 2020 than it did in 2019. The numbers suggest Seattle likely benefited from the exodus from New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. And because the region has retained its wealth of talent in cloud computing, AI, and gaming, it will continue to attract tech companies, she said. “The more (talent) we have, the more we get,” she said.

Combating crime and homelessness

Representatives of the companies surveyed expressed concern about the homeless problem in the city center and what the city and companies can do to improve it. “We are very concerned and saddened by the growing homelessness crisis in Seattle,” said Mary Miller, senior vice president at Amperity, based in Seattle.

“More needs to be done to help those affected find more permanent shelter and psychological support,” she added. “We are aware that there is still a lot to be done to ensure public safety so that our team members can get into the city center safely and commute safely.”

With the foreseeable decline in the pandemic and a recovery in commercial real estate, the city faces a thorny problem: how is it going to clean up the inner city and help revitalize one of the city’s major tax sources while also finding an acceptable solution to get its homeless residents? the help you need?

Tents line a street in downtown Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / John Cook)

The totals defy deeply ingrained belief in downtown lawlessness. According to the Seattle Police Department’s Crime Dashboard, downtown crime actually decreased in 2020 (although it remains unclear whether the statistical decrease was simply due to fewer people being there to report illegal activity).

But urban crime analysts tracking the gap between crime perceptions and reality know that the usual visual indicators – tents, trash, hypodermic needles, sensational media coverage – mixed a homeless crisis with a crime crisis. This led in part to the corporate-sponsored Compassion Seattle Initiative.

The initiative is a citywide vote to force the city to fund a range of services and housing for thousands of unprotected city residents. It would also require the city to “keep parks, playgrounds, sports fields, public squares and sidewalks and streets free of camps” once the mandatory housing, drug and mental health services are in place.

Initiative wants to force Seattle to finance homeless shelters and then clear camps

The initiative is currently in the process of collecting signatures. She must receive 33,000 valid signatures in the next three weeks to qualify for the election. And while the measure, backed by the Inner City Association, is designed to dictate city policies regarding the homeless population, it is also designed to let businesses and residents know that the city will be forced to do something to move the needle – even if it’s controversial.

Some companies remain loyal to downtown Seattle and look forward to returning and being part of the revitalization process.

Karen Clark Cole, CEO of UX company Blink, said she had 80 employees downtown before the pandemic shutdown. At the height of the pandemic, that number dropped to four. But there are plans to bring them all back, albeit slowly. She estimated that 10% of the company’s workforce could be back in the office by September.

“We didn’t think about moving or downsizing our office,” she said. “[Blink] will gradually demand that people come to collaboration meetings, team meetings and customer meetings. “

In addition, the company plans to expand its workforce in the city center. “We grew (only about 4%) in 2021 and will continue to grow,” she said, adding that Blink must have everyone in the office vaccinated. “There will be more people assigned to the downtown Seattle office, but most people will work part-time so they won’t all be there at the same time.”

Blink and other tech companies are considering some form of what is known as the 3-2 business people model – three days in the office, two away.

F5, the network and application security company, is planning a similar approach to Blink. The company had more than 1,400 employees in its Fifth Avenue tower prior to the pandemic. Currently, fewer than 5% of these workers are in the building. But that will change, said spokesman Rob Grüning.

“When we surveyed our employees during the pandemic to get an idea of ​​how they would like to work in the future, a clear majority said they wanted flexible working hours – the ability to interact and collaborate in the office and from a distance to work when they need to concentrate, ”he said.

“Some people will still come to the office full-time and some will work full-time remotely, but a much larger percentage will do a mix of both,” he said, adding that F5 will not require vaccination of its employees. The hybrid working model means the company has sublet six floors of its building but has no intention of leaving downtown Seattle, he said.

Amperity’s Miller said managers there are planning a 3-2 staffing model and mandatory vaccinations for the 115 Seattle-based workers. The customer data platform company will keep the same footprint downtown, she said.

Amperity has never considered moving, and managers are still seeing significant benefits in the Seattle business district. “Accessibility and central location, facilities and of course the energy,” said Miller.