Shuttles are out, but dogs may be in

White shuttle buses pulled up in front of the Amazon.com headquarters tower on Beacon Hill at regular intervals Friday to take employees to the company's other locations throughout the Seattle area.

Those buses will no longer be necessary when Amazon consolidates its offices at a South Lake Union campus beginning in 2010 — a prospect that pleases at least one employee.

"Being in one location will make us more efficient. We spend a tremendous amount of time doing nothing but sitting on a shuttle," he said.

A handful of Amazon employees on Beacon Hill said Amazon gave them the news in a short e-mail message Friday. It gave few details — although one employee said they learned dogs will be allowed at the new campus, prompting some cheers around the office. Dogs are allowed at the Beacon Hill headquarters but not at Amazon's other buildings.

Another employee said he lives on the Eastside and worries that a commute to South Lake Union will be worse than his drive to Beacon Hill.

Yet another said he looks forward to working in South Lake Union, since it has more restaurants and shops within walking distance than does Beacon Hill.

"It will be nice just to have stuff to do and to be able to get out and walk around on our lunch breaks," he said.

The employees declined to give their names, saying they aren't supposed to talk to the press without corporate clearance.

Friday's announcement seemed to mark the end of Amazon's hodgepodge approach to office space in the Seattle area.

James Marcus, the author of "Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.com Juggernaut," recalled interviewing for a job as senior editor with the company in 1996. By then, Amazon had moved from CEO Jeff Bezos' Bellevue garage to an old warehouse in Seattle.

As Amazon expanded its online empire, growth was so quick that consolidating under one roof seemed impractical, so it leased "one more floor here, another floor there," said Marcus, who worked in five office buildings during five years with Amazon.

In 1999, the company took over the historic Pacific Medical Center building on Beacon Hill. Marcus remembers driving on Interstate 5 past the building perched atop the hill before leaving Amazon and experiencing "a surge of patriotic feelings."

"I don't know how sentimental they feel about it, though," he said. "Now, obviously, they're a superprofessional operation."

Amy Martinez: 206-464-2923 or amartinez@seattletimes.com