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An Amazon’s building in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. Photo by Cheuk-man Kong, via Flickr.

What if alternative transportation in Seattle was so great that Amazon could turn its parking garages into product fulfillment centers?

John Schoettler, Amazon director of global real estate and facilities
John Schoettler, Amazon director of global real estate and facilities. (Via LinkedIn.)

It might seem like a crazy idea to someone stuck in the “Mercer Mess,” the notorious tangle of traffic just north of Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. But Amazon’s real estate director, John Schoettler, raised the possibility while speaking at a recent Urban Land Institute event in Seattle — pointing to the lack of parking requirements at the planned 600,000-square-foot office tower where Amazon has signed a lease in London. It will have 25 parking spaces.

“We would, in Seattle, put in at least 600 parking stalls, and more, if we could,” he said, according to a video of the event viewed by GeekWire.

But long term, he said, transportation hubs “are going to be critical for these urban campuses or neighborhoods to really be able to thrive.”

“I hope someday that some of the garages that we built in Seattle will be used as maybe urban FCs (fulfillment centers), or something like that, to be able to put them to different use. Perhaps wine storage,” he said, to laughter from the crowd. “I hope they’re not always filled with cars, and that we will someday have some great transportation.”

Schoettler was speaking as part of a larger panel, and during the portion of the video we viewed, he didn’t go into further detail or discuss any plans by Amazon to help the city reach that goal.

Schoettler did say that Amazon expects to have 10 million square feet of office space in Seattle by 2019, up from 5.5 million currently. As reported by GeekWire last week, Schoettler told the group that Amazon is growing so quickly that it needs developers to build 30 new residential buildings in and around downtown Seattle, with at least 200 units each, just to accommodate its employees in the coming years.

In addition to its South Lake Union headquarters campus, Amazon has started construction on what will ultimately be a new, four-block office campus in the Denny Triangle neighborhood just north of downtown.

Although the notion of Amazon repurposing its Seattle parking garages was primarily a way of making a larger point, Schoettler’s comments also underscore Amazon’s push for fast delivery times, particularly in urban areas, and the related need to place fulfillment centers closer to customers.

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