Amazon Makes Seattle the Nation's Biggest Company Town

The company town seems like a relic of a previous era of American industry, but Amazon and Seattle are redefining the concept.

1 minute read

August 29, 2017, 8:00 AM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Seattle, Washington

Amazon and environs (aka Seattle) in July 2017. | Kiewic / Flickr

"Amazon’s extraordinary growth has turned Seattle into the biggest company town in America," report Mike Rosenberg and Ángel Gonzalez.

"Amazon now occupies a mind-boggling 19 percent of all prime office space in the city, the most for any employer in a major U.S. city," add Rosenberg and Gonzalez. That conclusion is the result of analysis of CoStar data performed for the Seattle Times.

The article also offers an infographic to illustrate the scale of Amazon's dominance of the city's available commercial space. Amazon's stature among Seattle employers reminds some of the role Boeing used to have in the city. Still, no one is expecting to Amazon to o anything but grow even more in the next several years.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017 in The Seattle Times

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