(RTTNews.com) – Amazon.com Inc. ( AMZN ) plans to grow its Seattle headquarters to almost 14 million square feet of office space, an addition of more than 2 million square feet from the last time the company updated its local real estate plans, the Seattle Times reported.
As Amazon continues its search for a second headquarters, the retail giant has increased its forecast for the size of its campus in Seattle by about 2 million square feet, the equivalent of three additional skyscrapers.
Amazon now occupies more than 10 million square feet of office space in Seattle, according to a tally the Downtown Seattle Association released in a report Monday and the company confirmed. The retail giant plans to have almost 14 million square feet upon the completion of current and planned construction.
Back in September, when Amazon started its search for its so-called HQ2, the company’s footprint stood at 8.1 million square feet, with plans to grow to about 12 million square feet. At the time, Amazon’s was already the largest presence of any company in a major U.S. city. The company, with more than 40,000 employees in Seattle, is the city’s largest employer.
Amazon has continued to scoop up real estate since, leasing all of the office space planned for a downtown skyscraper called Rainier Square, most of the Macy’s building, and two mid-sized buildings in South Lake Union.
Amazon’s voracious appetite for real estate, taken for granted in Seattle for most of the decade since the company announced its South Lake Union campus, has taken on a new importance after the announcement that it planned to build a second, “equal” headquarters somewhere else.
The company has said it plans to staff that campus with up to 50,000 workers, in a campus of up to 8 million square feet. Amazon hopes to staff HQ2 with its first employees next year.
The real-estate listing company Zillow surveyed dozens of housing experts and economists on what city they believe could land Amazon HQ2, the company’s $5 billion headquarters.
Atlanta, Georgia and Northern Virginia are their top picks.
The survey’s conclusions are similar to other HQ2 analyses, many of which have also pointed toward the Washington, DC area and Atlanta as top contenders.
Earlier this year, Amazon said that it selected the 20 metropolitan areas to move to the next phase of the selection process for the company’s second headquarters. The company planned to invest over $5 billion and grow the second headquarters to accommodate as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs.
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