TikTok to Lease 132K sf of Offices in Downtown Bellevue

TikTok is poised to lease more than 132,000 square feet of offices in Downtown Bellevue, doubling down on its e-commerce hub in space vacated by Microsoft.

The Los Angeles- and Singapore-based social media giant has applied for tenant improvement permits for floors 23 to 26 at 700 Bellevue Way NE, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported.

The unit of Beijing-based ByteDance is close to finalizing a lease for floors 23 to 28, totaling more than 132,000 square feet, an unidentified source told the newspaper.

The lease from locally based landlord Kemper Development would bring TikTok’s office presence in Bellevue to more than 242,000 square feet. The firm, in Bellevue since 2021, now occupies more than 110,000 square feet subleased from SAP Concur in the Key Center.

TikTok launched an e-commerce shopping feature last year and plans to spend billions more on merchandising this year, according to a Bloomberg report. Last week, it posted ads seeking 850 workers in Bellevue.

TikTok’s hiring in the Puget Sound challenges Amazon.com to compete for e-commerce talent in its backyard, according to a report last year from The Information.

The firm wants to move into offices recently vacated by Microsoft, which once took up 442,000 square feet of the 28-story tower, which opened in 2007. The software company’s offices were listed last year and broken up into separate leases that expire from 2023 through 2025.

Other tenants include AT&T Wireless and Eddie Bauer, according to Loopnet.

Microsoft’s exit from Bellevue has put more than 2 million square feet of office on the market, including a lease for more than 500,000 square feet expiring in Bellevue’s City Center Plaza, according to the Business Journal.

The flight by Microsoft has left room for TikTok and Amazon, which just opened two unfinished office towers in Downtown Bellevue after expanding to 11,000 local workers.

Pokemon Company International is also eyeing offices in The Eight, a tower expected to be completed early this year.

“After a painfully sluggish start to the year, tenant demand has re-emerged, and there are approximately 1 million square feet of leases pending,” the Broderick Group wrote in its latest Eastside office market report. “Nearly all of the pending leases are concentrated in the Bellevue CBD.”

— Dana Bartholomew