Avalara Moves HQ From Seattle, Downsizes Office Footprint

After moving its headquarters to North Carolina, Avalara is hightailing it out of its former hub in Seattle’s Pioneer Square to smaller offices on the waterfront.

The Durham-based tax software firm has signed a sublease for a 33,800-square-foot office at the historic Maritime Building at 911 Western Avenue, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported.

Terms of its deal to sublease the fifth floor from locally based Big Fish Games were not disclosed.

Avalara will exit its former 152,400-square-foot headquarters in what was once known as the Avalara Hawk Tower at 255 South King Street early next year, an unidentified spokesperson told the Business Journal. It relocated its headquarters in June.

Beacon Capital Partners, based in Boston, bought what was then the five-story Maritime Building in 2015 for $13.1 million.

A few years later, the firm embarked on a $25.8 million makeover, adding two stories to pump up the block-size building to 211,600 square feet, of which 153,000 square feet is now available for lease.

In late 2022, Avalara had already set sights on shedding offices at its headquarters in Pioneer Square. The now 20-year-old company offered four floors for sublease, saying it would keep some offices in the tower.

Late last year, consulting firm Slalom took up “multiple floors” in the building, which was renamed Slalom Hawk Tower.

The Avalara sublease was brokered by Matt Hermsen of Flinn Ferguson Cresa, which represented Big Fish.

Hermsen said he’s seeing activity in the office market starting to pick up again as more companies call their employees back to the office full time.

“The Seattle market is starting to see some signs of life,” Hermsen, managing principal of the firm, told the Business Journal. “I believe we will see activity pick up in 2025 and really gain momentum into 2026 as more and more companies solidify plans.”

The office vacancy in greater Seattle in the second quarter was 15 percent, 9 percent higher than the dawn of the pandemic in 2020, according to Kidder Mathews. The vacancy in Downtown Seattle was 18.7 percent.

— Dana Bartholomew