By Meghan Hall
Facebook is continuing to lay the groundwork for its expansion into Bellevue’s Spring District, taking a third building in the development known as Block 6. The 325,000 square foot lease was first reported on by Business Insider and confirmed by Facebook on Monday. The lease means that Facebook now intends to move into nearly 3 million square feet on the Eastside, a move that could accommodate thousands more employees.
“This represents our investment in continued growth in the greater Seattle region,” said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement. “We continue to source available expansions to accommodate our growth in both Seattle and Bellevue. The Seattle area is a dynamic and competitive real estate market and we have always wanted to keep our options open as we grow in the region.”
Facebook has also leased two other properties within the Spring District. In January of this year, Facebook signed a 13-year lease in Wright Runstad and Shorenstein’s Block 16, which will rise 11 stories and total 316,009 square feet of space upon completion. Facebook has also leased Block 24, just adjacent to Block 16. Block 24, which rises nine stories, will open at the end of 2020. Block 6 is not yet under construction, but Facebook plans to move into the building by 2023.
In January, Facebook also leased 47,396 square feet in Civica Office Commons, owned by Unico Properties, and at the end of last year, the tech conglomerate also leased 85,000 square feet in Skyline Tower and Key Center, both owned by Kilroy Realty. Facebook has also submitted plans for a 650,000 square foot campus called Building X in Redmond.
According to industry sources, the newest lease for Block 6 means that Facebook will eventually be able to accommodate close to 20,000 employees in the region. Currently, the company has about 5,000 workers in Seattle. Currently, the company has 43,000 employees worldwide, about half of which are located in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Facebook also occupies more than 2.7 million square feet of office space across Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond, Wash. Once the Spring District is complete, it will total three million square feet of high-tech flexible office space with open park space, a brewpub and market hall. Facebook will join the likes of REI—who has plans to move its headquarters to the Spring District—as well Amazon, Microsoft and numerous other companies expanding quickly into the Eastside for extra space.
