Job losses adding up badly in the Seattle area

If local layoff news seems to be hitting a depressing new high, some statistical perspective may help. Or not.

According to the Washington state Employment Security Department's database of WARN notices, which tracks the layoff notifications that companies must file under some circumstances, three of the five worst months in the past five years have been in 2008.

And that's not counting October, which brought a raft of new layoffs — and isn't over yet.

The Employment Security data, which reaches back five years to the start of 2004, peg March of that year as the biggest month for Washington layoff notices: 2,440, led by 1,000 at Airborne Express and 500 at Todd Pacific Shipyards in Seattle, as well as 600 at agribusiness giant J.R. Simplot in Quincy, Grant County.

This month's WARN notices have already reached 1,222 layoffs, the latest being 162 at Tacoma apparel firm Morning Sun and 150 at Bellevue tax-software developer IntelliTax.

And that's without the 475 announced last week at Redmond-based construction-equipment manufacturer Genie Industries. Or the 240 jobs at Seattle's Rosetta Inpharmatics that parent company Merck said last week it will move to Boston in 2009, or the 22 people laid off at a Renton metal-frame unit of Worthington Industries.

The WARN data doesn't capture all layoffs. To fall under the federal reporting requirement, a company has to have at least 100 employees and the layoff has to affect at least one-third of the employees at a given site or more than 499 people, said Dennis Birge, part of Employment Security's response team for layoffs.

So the cuts at Genie, which employed about 3,000, may never be reflected in the data; nor will the small but significant layoffs this month at local Internet startups Redfin and Zillow.

After getting the 60-day WARN notice, not all those notified are actually laid off. But the data is the best available for tracking overall local job losses.

Birge — who advises companies and workers on finding new jobs, claiming unemployment benefits and seeking retraining — says he also is getting an increased number of calls from smaller companies that aren't required to file notices but still want help for laid-off employees.

"It seems like the last few months have been busier than usual," he says.

Russell to WaMu

space? Not so fast

Out with Washington Mutual — in with Russell Investments?

That's what some commercial real-estate insiders were saying after Russell, downtown Tacoma's biggest private employer, announced this month that it was postponing until 2009 a decision on where in Tacoma or Seattle to put a new corporate headquarters. But there's reason to doubt that WaMu's glistening 42-story headquarters is where Russell would settle.

The financial-services company had planned to make up its mind this year. Russell attributed the delay to "recent economic events [that] have had a significant impact on the Puget Sound real-estate market."

WaMu's collapse — it occupies more than 1.6 million square feet in downtown Seattle — clearly is one of those events.

JP Morgan Chase, WaMu's new owner, hasn't said what it will do with WaMu's space. If a significant chunk were to come back on the market, however, it would substantially alter the balance between supply and demand, giving prospective tenants like Russell a stronger hand.

But Russell's lease on its Tacoma space doesn't expire until 2013. That's a long time for JP Morgan to wait.

Russell's extended timeline also means it could be considering downtown Seattle buildings that now exist only on paper. Triad Development, for instance, reportedly is making a strong push to sign Russell for its 42-story Civic Square project, still months — if not years — from breaking ground.

Other insiders say they can't see Russell leaving Tacoma. Civic and business leaders will make the company a deal it can't refuse, they predict.

As for WaMu, a recent market report from brokerage Grubb & Ellis notes that if JP Morgan Chase were to put all of the bank's downtown Seattle office space back on the market immediately, the vacancy rate in the financial district would almost double, to nearly 20 percent.

But that's highly unlikely, the report adds: "A more probable scenario involves JP Morgan announcing limited layoffs and restructurings in the near-term, while spreading the remaining consolidation over a number of years, softening the blow to the Seattle office market."

— Eric Pryne

Buying an island in emerging Amazon campus

Amid the cranes and debris of the Amazon.com campus now under construction in South Lake Union stands an unexceptional three-story office building with one distinction: It's one of the few properties in the immediate vicinity that's not — repeat, not — owned by Vulcan Real Estate.

It changed hands last week for $6 million, a sign of the opportunity other developers see in Vulcan's ambitious redevelopment of the neighborhood — and especially Amazon's pending arrival. The building, 511 Boren Ave. N., is almost surrounded by properties Vulcan is developing for Amazon. David Wright, president of Wright Devco, the new owner, acknowledges the area will be pretty noisy and dusty for the next few years.

"In three to five years, though," he says, "we think it will be a pretty attractive spot to be."

By then Amazon will have moved into its 1.6-million-square-foot headquarters complex. Wright figures 511 Boren, a 1926 building renovated this decade, will appeal to companies that want offices close to the online retailer, and to shops or restaurants hoping to cash in on the presence of 6,000 Amazon workers.

In the meantime, Wright says, his company will move into about 3,000 of the building's 26,000 square feet. Most of the remainder is leased now, he says, mostly month-to-month deals.

The last time 511 Boren was sold, in 2000, the buyer paid just $890,000, according to county records.

— Eric Pryne

Comments? Send them to Rami Grunbaum: rgrunbaum@-

seattletimes.com or 206-464-8541