Apple has leased a 190,000-square-foot office building in Seattle vacated by rival Meta.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech firm has taken the six-story Arbor Blocks building at 333 Eighth Avenue N. in South Lake Union, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported, citing unidentified sources.
Terms of the iPhone maker’s lease from owner Ponte Gadea, a Miami-based investment firm led by Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega, were not disclosed. The offices are a block east of Apple’s Puget Sound headquarters.
Menlo Park, Calif.-based Meta Platforms moved into the Arbor Blocks in 2019, when the company was known as Facebook, according to the Business Journal.
The social media platform announced early last year it would sublease the office building as part of its “year of efficiency,” which included layoffs and a reduction of its office footprint.
The possibility of Apple occupying the building was raised last spring, when three commercial sources said the tech firm had expressed interest in moving in.
But the deal is not a sublease. Apple is signing a direct lease with Ponte Gadea, which bought the 388,900-square-foot Arbor Blocks campus from Vulcan Real Estate in 2019 for $415 million, or $1,067 per square foot.
The Arbor Blocks twin buildings, built in 2019 by the locally based Vulcan, are divided by a wiggling, pedestrian-focused roadway known as a “woonerf,” designed to slow cars down.
Last month, locally based Paroline & Associates filed a construction pre-submittal conference application outlining a plan to improve all six floors for an unnamed tenant at 333 Eighth Avenue N.
The Apple lease comes as demand for offices in Seattle has plunged.
“Contractions” by technology and traditional office users led to negative absorption last quarter and an office vacancy of 29.6 percent, according to a report by CBRE.
In Downtown Seattle, Amazon.com let its lease at 1800 Ninth Street expire, putting 209,000 square feet back on the market. Assurance IQ and law firm Davis Wright Tremaine vacated the Madison Centre building, leaving a respective 44,800 and 23,300 square feet of offices empty.
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Knotel left Seattle, exiting 37,800 square feet of workplaces, according to CBRE. “All of this contributed to 562,423 square feet of negative net absorption,” the brokerage stated.
Apple has 2,000 workers in greater Seattle, and is the 13th-largest occupier of offices, at 603,400 square feet, according to research by the Business Journal.
— Dana Bartholomew