Is Amazon looking to leave Seattle?

Mark Mahaney, Senior Managing Director of Evercore ISI, increases Amazon’s price target as the company ramps up new sales capabilities to expedite same-day delivery.

It’s no secret that Seattle-based Amazon and its headquarters city council have been going through a rough patch for several years, and CEO Andy Jassy opened up on the situation this week.

While Jassy claims the retail giant will always have people around, Amazon is looking at its expansion outside of the Emerald City – and there are no guarantees that Seattle will stay its home.

Amazon boss Andy Jassy. (Isaac Brekken / AP Pictures for NFL, File)

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“I honestly think our relationship with Seattle has had its ups and downs,” Jassy said during an interview at the 2021 GeekWire summit. “I think the first 20 years [were] pretty cooperative, “he said, noting that the council was” very supportive and caring “when Amazon decided to build its campus.

But over the past five years he said, “The city council is less in love with the business or Amazon,” added, “It’s just been rougher.”

In 2018, Seattle passed a “poll tax” on Amazon and other major employers in the city that would have charged an annual fee of $ 275 per employee to companies in the city making $ 20 million or more.

Amazon headquarters in Seattle. (Photo credit should be Toby Scott / Echoes Wire / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

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That would have cost Amazon around $ 60 million a year for its Seattle location alone, most of which was meant to counteract homelessness in the city.

The company, which employs more than 50,000 people in the area, responded by threatening to stop building its downtown buildings at that time. Under pressure from business associations, the council lifted the measure.

Amazon spent $ 1.5 million on campaigns for more business-friendly community council candidates the next year, but was unsuccessful in most of the races. The council went on to introduce a more modest version of the poll tax.

In March last year, Amazon opened a shelter in Seattle to help families at risk.

“Built in an Amazon office building at our Seattle headquarters, Washington State’s largest family home has already housed 700 people safely, served over 130,000 guest meals and taken in 26 babies born to resident mothers,” said the former CEO and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in a statement marking the facility’s one year anniversary. “Thank you to the teams at Mary’s Place and Amazon for their heart and dedication in making the Regrade shelter an important resource for our community.”

Meanwhile, far-left Seattle city council members continue to push for Amazon to tax more heavily without the threat of the prospect of companies like Amazon leaving unfriendly territory.

Kshama Sawant, member of the Seattle Socialist City Council. (AP Photo / Ted S. Warren, File) (AP Newsroom)

Councilor Kshama Sawant was a vocal critic of the company. A tweet from her about a year ago reads: “We need a people’s budget that relieves the police by at least 50%, rejects austerity measures by increasing the Amazon tax on pandemic profiteers, protects tenants and homeowners from eviction and foreclosure, finances tenants who are organizing to build the fight against #CancelRent, fund the Green New Deal. “

Sawant didn’t immediately respond to FOX Business when they commented on Amazon. She is currently facing a recall after defeating a Democrat for her position in 2013.

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But Amazon’s new CEO says the hostility from Seattle city council members in recent years has grown too much to ignore.

“First of all, we don’t think about HQ1 being Seattle anymore,” Jassy told the GeekWire crowd. “We really see it as Puget Sound. We have a lot of people in Seattle, but we also have a lot of people in Bellevue, and that’s where most of our growth will end.”