Two weeks after detailing why the Seattle economy could face ongoing troubles due to layoffs at tech giants Microsoft and Amazon, The Wall Avenue Journal is again this week with a have a look at why heading east is likely to be the extra enticing choice for tech corporations and their staff.
“Tech Corporations Can’t Get Sufficient of This Picturesque Seattle Suburb,” WSJ headlined a mostly glowing piece about Bellevue’s cleaner streets, higher faculties, decrease crime fee, and rise in new workplace house that’s luring corporations comparable to TikTok, OpenAI, Snowflake and others.
Peter Steinbrueck, a former member of the Seattle Metropolis Council, instructed the WSJ that Seattle’s glory days of financial enlargement have ended and “the pendulum has swung to the Eastside.”
The Bellevue Chamber of Commerce didn’t miss its likelihood to advertise the article in an emailed e-newsletter this week: “The Wall Avenue Journal has its sights set on Bellevue, and we don’t blame them one bit,” the Chamber wrote. “Our little chunk of techy paradise, it appears as if the remainder of the nation is lastly catching on to what all of us already know: Bellevue frickin’ rocks.”
Effectively, frick. It’s the newest iron within the Seattle-vs.-Bellevue fireplace that’s been stoked lately by a battle over whether or not tech staff are higher suited engaged on the east or west facet of Lake Washington.
“You’ll be able to look out the window of our constructing and see the mountains,” stated Warrick Taylor, a Snowflake vice chairman primarily based in California, who is maybe unaware that those self same views exist in Seattle.
Snowflake moved more than 700 employees into new workplace house in Bellevue’s Spring District in June.
“Just like the airways say, ‘We all know you may have chosen one other metropolis, we’re glad you selected us,’” Bellevue Mayor Lynn Robinson stated whereas serving to to chop the ribbon at Snowflake.
The largely pleasant beef between the 2 municipalities has been happening for many years, and up till about seven years in the past, it was largely lopsided in Seattle’s favor. The Emerald Metropolis is the place younger tech staff wanted to be, not only for the roles and innovation however for the tradition.
However in 2018, a rift opened up between Amazon and elected officers in Seattle when the Metropolis Council sought to impose a $275-per-employee “head tax” on the tech large. Since then, Amazon has rapidly grown in downtown Bellevue, with new buildings holding 14,000 of a deliberate 25,000 staff within the metropolis.
Whereas Amazon is selling a extra regional footprint for its headquarters, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell made it clear final month that he thinks Seattle nonetheless holds the sting over Bellevue, citing his metropolis’s variety, arts, music, eating places, and modern historical past. He touted Seattle’s new waterfront AI House, saying that Bellevue didn’t have the thought for the startup hub, Seattle did.
However as Seattle’s downtown core has struggled to bounce again from the pandemic, with excessive workplace emptiness charges and a few main retailers exiting, some in Bellevue see a gap.
“Clear and protected is all the pieces and Seattle isn’t that,” stated Steve Luthman, world head of actual property at Hines, a developer and supervisor in Bellevue, within the WSJ report.
