More than half a year after Amazon called its corporate and tech workforce back to the office five days a week, overall worker foot traffic in downtown Seattle continues to show signs of improving, according to the latest figures released this week by the Downtown Seattle Association.
The DSA’s Downtown Revitalization Dashboard shows that worker foot traffic in July reached its highest monthly rate since the start of the COVID pandemic more than five years ago. With 154,000 daily worker visits in July, DSA reported a 7% increase from last summer.
Amazon moved from a three-days-per-week in-person mandate to five days at the start of the year, and DSA and businesses around the company’s headquarters noted an immediate bump from that change. Microsoft is now reportedly preparing to tighten its return-to-office policy, potentially requiring most employees at its Redmond HQ to be on-site at least three days a week starting in January.
Despite the move by some tech companies to bring workers back to the office, the ongoing recovery of Seattle’s core business and retail sector remains a “fragile” dynamic according to one official, with rising vacancy rates continuing to generate concern.
“While a number of metrics are moving in the right direction, downtown is still fragile, and we face challenges with high office and retail vacancy,” DSA President and CEO Jon Scholes told GeekWire. “Those circumstances ultimately will negatively affect the city’s tax base if not urgently addressed.”
While Amazon employs roughly 50,000 corporate and tech workers in buildings across its Seattle headquarters, the city’s broader office vacancy rate is still among the highest in the country, trailing only Austin and San Francisco, according to recent figures from CommercialCafe.
In its Q2 report, commercial real estate company Colliers said Seattle’s vacancy rate rose to 32.4%, up from 28.7% a year ago. The firm expects vacancy to rise further in the coming quarters but also said “improving RTO adherence and economic clarity could support stronger leasing activity in late 2025 and into 2026.”
- Colliers noted new leases in downtown Seattle for tech companies including Stackline (Madison Centre), Carta (Columbia Center), and Supio (Century Square).
- Digital remittance company Remitly moved more than 500 workers into new headquarters space in the Rainier Square skyscraper in May. The company occupies three floors and there are plans to take over another next year, with room for 220 more workstations.
- Elsewhere, “AI House,” a first-in-the-nation hub designed to bring entrepreneurs, investors, students and community leaders together to enhance collaboration on artificial intelligence, got up and running this spring along the waterfront at Pier 70.
Others are departing. Real estate firm JLL noted the vacancy created by global health nonprofit PATH, which moved from a 111,000-square-foot space downtown to new headquarters in the Fremont neighborhood.
DSA has been in lockstep with Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell about boosting downtown activity. Seattle is two years into Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan to revitalize the city core post-pandemic, but the mayor is facing a tough re-election battle against challenger Katie Wilson.
Downtown revitalization is a key part of Wilson’s platform. According to her website, the mayoral candidate said she supports a potential vacancy tax for commercial property owners and office-to-housing conversions.
Along with the worker numbers, DSA also reported on “unique visitors” to the city’s core, with 3.2 million such visitors being counted in July, representing 97% of the amount seen in July 2019.
DSA credited a number of factors and events, including a busy July 26, when more than 671,000 people were counted on the night of a Morgan Wallen concert at Lumen Field and the Seafair Torchlight Parade. Only July 2023 — when Taylor Swift was in town and the Major League Baseball All-Star week was happening — reached that level since March 2020.
According to DSA, downtown foot traffic data is provided by Placer.ai and is based on cell phone location data. Each person is counted once per day.
