By Kate Snyder
A technology company in Seattle is looking for a tenant to take over space on the sublease market. Avalara, Inc., is offering four floors in Avalara Hawk Tower, according to a report from the Puget Sound Business Journal. A company spokesperson told the Business Journal that the space has been on the market since last year but would not confirm how many floors the firm occupies in the tower. The report cited a brochure from CBRE, which shows a listing for floors 10 through 14 as available. Each of those floors totals about 19,000 square feet.
Located at 255 South King St., the tower is located in Seattle’s Pioneer District and is owned by Steinhauer Properties. The main tower sits atop the development’s podium base, and the structure shares the parking garage, conference rooms and other facilities with the adjacent Hilton Embassy Suites, according to Steinhauer’s website. Avalara Hawk Tower offers views of Puget Sound, the city’s downtown skyline and the Stadium District, home to the Seahawks, Mariners and Sounders. The project was completed in February 2018.
Avalara is a software company that offers a variety of tax compliance automation services to businesses, according to the firm’s website. Its cloud-based tax calculation software applies rates based on geolocation, item taxability, new legislation and tax regulations. The company provides services to more than 30,000 business and government customers in more than 90 countries around the world.
In 2016, before construction on the Hawk Tower was finished, Avalara announced that it signed a lease to occupy the top six floors of the building and become the structure’s anchor tenant. The company moved into its new headquarters in 2017, according to previous reporting from The Registry. At the time, Avalara was occupying several different offices in greater Seattle, including two offices on 2nd Avenue and its previous headquarters on Bainbridge Island. The move to the Avalara Hawk Tower was originally meant to enable the company to consolidate all of its Seattle area employees into one building for the first time since 2011 while giving the firm room for future growth.
The Puget Sound area has seen a number of companies listing – as well as taking – space on the sublease market in recent months.
In one example, 55,000 square feet previously occupied by Amazon in Bellevue was secured by the logistics startup Flexport. Amazon had announced in November 2022 that it would be vacating 130,000 square feet of office space in Bellevue’s Skyline Tower, with 55,000 square feet available for sublease, which Flexport took. The tower is located at 10900 NE 4th St.
Tech leasing activity has been relatively slow this year compared to previous years, with major tenants relinquishing significant office spaces as lease expiration dates approach. However, Savills, a brokerage firm, stated in its Q2 2023 Seattle market report that Lyft has renewed more than 24,000 square feet of space in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood, and T-Mobile has kept its lease for 87,000 square feet at Canyon Pointe South in Bothell.
