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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (146102)	8/24/2002 11:34:13 PM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164685

It might be true about those newswire writers. But, what is a fact is there's a bunch of commercial office buildings for sale at steep discounts from what the last owners paid. Walk down silicon valley Bill and stick your head in a bunch of office building and yell out hello. What you'll hear is hello,hello,hello,hello. Seattle has the same problem too. Trust me I know! >>Wednesday, August 21, 2002 By TODD BISHOP SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER The federal government has nixed a deal that promised to significantly reduce Amazon.com's excess office space in Seattle. In a reversal, the Health and Human Services Department no longer plans to move into more than 120,000 square feet of the retailer's leased space in the Union Station complex when the agency's lease in another building expires in October. The government had selected the Amazon space, in the 705 Union Station building, through a competitive bidding process earlier this year. Since then, however, the agency's senior management determined the space to be too much, an official with the federal General Services Administration said yesterday. As a result, the government will reopen the competition, seeking new bids from building owners interested in leasing a smaller amount of space to Health and Human Services, said Douglas Foster, chief of special projects in the GSA's regional office. The agency now needs about 108,000 square feet. Amazon will be able to resubmit its space for consideration for the smaller lease, but what happens now "all depends on how the procurement plays out," Foster said. Although terms of Amazon's Union Station lease have not been disclosed, the excess office space represents an extra expense at a time when the company is working to become profitable. Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith declined to speculate yesterday on whether the company would compete for the Health and Human Services lease again. People in the real estate business said the competition for the lease is likely to be intense, given the large amount of available office space in Seattle and the relative scarcity of large companies looking for space. "That just opens up all sorts of opportunities for other buildings," said office leasing broker Garth Olsen, senior director in the Seattle office of Cushman & Wakefield. Because of changes in the market, Foster said, there is a "high probability" that the government will get a better deal as a result of seeking new bids, but he said the new bidding process results from the change in the Health and Human Services space requirement, not the prospect of cost savings. The government plans to negotiate for an extension of the existing Health and Human Services lease in Blanchard Plaza, at Sixth Avenue and Blanchard Street, to accommodate the agency until the new search is complete, Foster said. Amazon leased the 11-story, 254,000-square-foot Union Station building before the economic slump, believing it would need the space to accommodate its rapid expansion. But as the company scaled back its growth plans, much of its space in the building was rendered surplus. Last year, Amazon subleased two floors to Deloitte Consulting. The Health and Human Services deal was expected to leave the company with less than 60,000 square feet of extra space in the building. Although the government selected the Amazon space, it didn't finalize the lease, which allowed it cancel the decision when the Health and Human Services requirement changed, Foster said. Amazon's real estate brokers had marketed the space, but because of a government restriction on sublease deals, the lease was to be made directly with the building's owner. The building is owned by a partnership led by Keith McCaw, one of the brothers who made their fortune in the cellular telephone business. The partnership paid developer Opus Northwest $66.3 million for the building in June 2001, property records show. The year before, a different Keith McCaw partnership paid Opus $84.9 million for two Union Station buildings next door. The larger Union Station complex also includes Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen's 505 Union Station building.<<