Another tech company is making moves to drop space in the Puget Sound region. This time it’s Dell EMC, which is opting to vacate approximately 43,000 square feet in Hudson Pacific Properties’ 505 First building in Seattle. Hudson Pacific Properties President Mark Lammas announced the move in an earnings call earlier this month.
“Our in-service office portfolio was 80.5 percent leased as of the end of the quarter, down approximately 140 basis points compared to last quarter,” Lammas said in the call. “This is in line with our expectations and mostly related to mid-sized tenant move-outs in Seattle and the Bay Area, the largest of which were Dell EMC with 43,000 square feet at 505 First and Nordstrom Rack with 45,000 square feet at 901 Market.”
Located at 505 1st Ave. S, the building spans 287,849 square feet of creative office space, according to Hudson Pacific Properties’ website. The asset features a rooftop deck, lobby, electric vehicle charging stations and street-level retail uses. According to a report from the Puget Sound Business Journal, Dell still occupies space in the building.
Throughout the Puget Sound region, tech companies have been dropping office space – a trend believed to be directly related to the rise of remote work and subsequent underutilization of office properties since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google is set to bid adieu to the West Dock building in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood this summer. Google’s occupancy of the space has been through a sublease arrangement with Salesforce, which acquired the site’s original tenant Tableau in 2019. In 2017, Tableau opted to put the premises up for sublease.
In October 2023, Flyhomes, a Seattle-based real estate tech company, downsized its downtown office. Meta also vacated a 150,618 square foot office space. DocuSign also scaled back, shedding 77,951 square feet. These moves have added to the excess office space inventory in Seattle, a situation exacerbated by previous departures from tech giants like Amazon and Zillow.
More recently, Unity Software is giving up space – an entire floor and part of another – in Bellevue’s Lincoln Square South building. Earlier this year, Unity announced in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it plans to reduce its staff by approximately 1,800 employees, or approximately 25 percent of its workforce, as it “restructures and refocuses on its core business, and to position itself for long-term and profitable growth.”
