Facebook is grabbing more space in the sprawling Spring District development in Bellevue, Wash., securing a lease for Block 5, an 11-story, 345,000-square-foot office building scheduled to open in 2023.
The social media giant has established a sizable presence in the Seattle region with more than 7,000 employees and roughly 3.3 million square feet of office space. The engineering hub is the company’s largest outside of its Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters.
The Puget Sound Business Journal first reported on the new lease, calling Facebook “the driver” of Wright Runstad & Co.’s $2.8 billion Spring District project. Last fall, Facebook announced it was paying $367.6 million to purchase a brand new 6-acre, 400,000-square-foot complex at the development that was originally intended to be a new headquarters for REI.
In addition to that space and Block 5, Facebook has signed leases for more than 800,000 square feet of office space across three buildings being developed at the Spring District: Blocks 6, 16, and 24.
“Given the hyper competitive real-estate market in the region, we’re always looking for opportunities to accommodate our growing teams,” Facebook spokesperson Tracy Clayton told GeekWire on Tuesday. “The Block 5 lease was a natural opportunity to expand where we already have a presence.”
This interactive map shows the layout of the transit-oriented Spring District east of downtown Bellevue.
Rajeev Rajan, vice president of engineering and head of Facebook for the Pacific Northwest, previously told GeekWire about the company’s excitement around its growing Bellevue presence.
“We think it could be very similar to what we call the ‘classic campus,'” Rajan said. “It affords an opportunity for a lot of talent on the Eastside that previously might not have wanted to make the trip across the lake to commute.”
Facebook has a relatively new office complex in the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle, and Rajan said there are no plans to leave that area.
“We’re growing in general in the region … and we’re definitely looking to tap into the capacity in the Pacific Northwest,” Rajan said. “So we are going to be looking for real estate all over the place.”
Amazon is growing in Bellevue, too, building out what is essentially the tech giant’s second headquarters, with new and leased towers and plans for as many as 25,000 employees in the city across Lake Washington from Seattle.
