If it appears, on many days, like Amazon’s Seattle headquarters has seemingly popped up overnight to transform the look of the city, a new time-lapse video will back up that belief.
In just 40 seconds, a new video from the Washington State Department of Transportation shows six years of work at the northern end of the years-long SR 99 tunnel project.
The video was released to celebrate another milestone for the project as it inches closer to completion. A section of Sixth Avenue North, long closed to allow for the construction of the tunnel’s north portal and operations building, reopened this week.
But in the background, crane city is also hard at work and an evolving skyline takes shape. Specifically in the center of the frame, where three Amazon HQ towers rise out of nowhere, starting in 2012. They include the Doppler and Day 1 buildings, and the still-under-construction Block 21 project.
Apartment towers and other buildings also rise out of the ground. And somewhere in there, hidden in this particular view, the Amazon Spheres were also built.
The video is reminiscent of another one released early this year, which showed Seattle’s dramatic change over a 3-year period with images from the Space Needle’s web cam.
WSDOT points out that the intersection of Sixth Avenue North and Harrison Street near Seattle Center, which served as the receiving pit for the tunnel boring machine Bertha, has seen a lot of change in the past decade. A Google Maps streetview from 2008 and shows how the area is almost unrecognizable to what is there today.
