Apple and civic leadership of Seattle held a special ceremony today celebrating the official announcement that the company will be expanding its presence in the Emerald City at Kilroy Realty’s 333 Dexter, a 645,000 square foot project in Seattle’s burgeoning South Lake Union neighborhood. As The Registry first reported this news earlier this month, the Cupertino, Calif.-based technology company has signed a lease to take over the entire building.
Apple joins Facebook and Google, two other Bay Area-based technology giants slowly encroaching into Amazon’s territory in the city’s popular South Lake Union neighborhood.
Seattle Mayor Jenny A. Durkan issued the following statement in support of Apple’s announcement of a Seattle expansion and added that 2,000 additional employees will call the City of Seattle its home over the next five years: “These new jobs confirm what we already knew, we have the best talent and city anywhere. Apple’s expanded footprint in Seattle is another example of the growing opportunity that exists for residents of Seattle and the economic powerhouse our City has become.”
The Miller Hull Partnership-designed 333 Dexter is an innovative urban office campus located in the city’s South Lake Union neighborhood. The project is slated for completion later this year and is located on the former site of KING-TV’s broadcast studios surrounded by rapidly-growing tech and e-commerce companies as well as major life science and research organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, according to a statement from the company.
Construction on the project began in June of 2017, and it is led by San Francisco-based Swinerton Builders. The project is comprised of two, 12-floor towers totaling 645,000 square feet, including roughly 13,000 square feet of retail space. 333 Dexter encompasses an entire city block, and it features what Kilroy Realty calls a unique through-block design with almost 20,000 square feet of ground-floor, outdoor public space offering streetscape and connectivity to South Lake Union’s Dexter corridor.
Kilroy is spending approximately $370 million to develop the project. The development was on hold for some time until the company saw there was enough momentum in the market to get it going, and in 2017 it did.
Mayor Durkan added at the ceremony that as Seattle continues to grow, it must act urgently to address the pressures that follow – from tackling affordability to new affordable housing to increasing transit.
“By next year, an estimated 70 percent of jobs in Washington State will require some sort of post-secondary credential. It is my top priority that our kids growing up in Seattle today are prepared to fill the great engineering and computer science jobs that Apple announced today. That’s why we created the Seattle Promise and the Opportunity Promise – so our youth are connected with resources and put on a path to the good paying jobs of Seattle’s future,” she added.
