The Urban Land Institute will bring its annual Spring Meeting real estate convention to Seattle in May, and Amazon will be a big part of it.
The online retail giant is one of the primary sponsors for the event, which will be May 2 through 4 at the Washington State Convention Center, and it will host a reception at the Doppler building that is part of its new Seattle campus. The other main sponsors are Vulcan Real Estate — which developed much of Amazon’s original campus and the South Lake Union headquarters — and Holland Partner Group, the company that built many of the new apartment buildings along Dexter Avenue North that house Amazon’s growing stable of workers.
A big focus for the event will be how the technology industry is shaping real estate development around the country. The Seattle area, home to some of the biggest tech companies in the world, is a prime example of that trend.
ULI in its annual Emerging Trends in Real Estate report listed Seattle as the fourth best real estate market in the country, behind only Austin, Dallas and Portland. While manufacturing has slowed locally, technology has made up for it, and then some. Amazon has been a major driver in both the tech industry locally and the real estate market, leading Seattle to be named the “crane capital of America.”
“Transformative development is happening everywhere in the greater Seattle region, with creative, innovative projects that are changing the way we think about the possibilities for our built environment,” said Urban Renaissance Group CEO Patrick Callahan, who is co-chairing the meeting’s host committee along with Wright Runstad & Co. President Greg Johnson.
