The Russell Investments Center building, where Zillow is expanding.
The Russell Investments Center building, where Zillow is expanding.

Fast-growing Zillow continues to gobble up space at its downtown Seattle headquarters, with the company confirming today that it will take over five new floors at the Russell Investments Center at 1301 Second Avenue.

“This is an exciting time at Zillow,” CEO Spencer Rascoff said in a release. “We continue to hire the best and brightest to support our record growth. At the same time, we’ve maintained our start-up like culture where we think big, move fast, and everyone has an impact.”

GeekWire broke the news on the expansion last week.

With the new office space, Zillow will become the largest tenant in the 42-story skyscraper, occupying floors 29 to 40 in the building. The new lease accounts for 113,471 square-feet, about double the company’s current space of 150,000 square-feet.

The new offices, which can be occupied in early 2017, will give Zillow enough room to add as many as 600 new employees.

Zillow employed just 300 people worldwide when it moved into the Russell Investments Center in August 2011, a number that has more than tripled to 1,099 as of September 30th. Much of that growth in headcount has come via acquisitions, with new offices in New York, San Francisco and Lincoln, Nebraska (home to Mortech, which Zillow purchased in 2012).

Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff at the company's offices in Seattle.
Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff at the company’s offices in Seattle.

But Zillow also is growing organically as well, with plenty of new jobs available in its hometown. In fact, the company has 120 open positions in Seattle right now. It employs 750 in Seattle right now.

Zillow also will more than double in size if its $3.5 billion acquisition of San Francisco-based Trulia — owner of Bellevue-based Market Leader — goes through early next year. Trulia employed about 1,100 people at the time that the acquisition was announced, with the companies not saying whether layoffs will occur after the deal occurs.

The lease comes at a critical time for the Russell Investment Center building owners, given Dendreon’s recent bankruptcy and that the building’s namesake, Russell Investments, is being sold to the London Stock Exchange Group.

We’ve asked Zillow whether they will seek naming rights for the building, and we’ll update this post as we hear more.

UPDATE: Zillow declined to comment beyond the press release that it issued on the lease, and it did not comment on the idea that the company could obtain the naming rights. The company did file with SEC about the lease, noting that the base rent is $42 per rentable square foot beginning on Jan. 1, 2017. Full lease agreement here.

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