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The View from Above: Amazon’s Spaceballs

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Amazon’s ever-expanding footprint in Seattle now includes these three towering, 80- to 95-foot-high glass bubbles at Lenora Street and Sixth Avenue. They are, depending how you look at them, beehives or futuristic biodomes—a place where Amazon’s downtown workforce can enjoy a temporary escape from their cubicles for fresh air and, in the words of spokesperson Sam Kennedy, “think and work differently.” The 70,000-square-foot space will maintain a 72-degree temperature and 60 percent humidity by day and encase 400 plant species. When the domes are completed and ready for use in January 2018—four years after the design’s approval—a lower retail area will be open to the public. How much did these spheres from the famously tight-lipped Amazon cost? Only the hive mind knows.

Published in the Cottage and Cabin Getaways issue of Seattle Met.











Hayat Norimine
Hayat Norimine
Hayat Norimine, an Eastern Washington native, is Seattle Met’s news and politics hound and PubliCola reporter. She also contributes features and writes politics and culture stories throughout the magazine. Hayat began her journalism career as an English editor in Amman, Jordan, and later became a local government and Southwest Washington politics reporter at The Daily News in Longview. She has a degree in creative writing at the University of Washington and a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern University. She now lives in West Seattle with her husband and Bedouin dog.