Business leasing a positive trend for downtown Seattle

THE leasing over the past few months of several large blocks of space in downtown Seattle is significant for several reasons.

It is a change in an economic trend. During the past three years, downtown Seattle office space has been freed up in painful amounts. The implosion of Washington Mutual was the biggest disaster, but there were other ones. In many cases, it was simply tenant contraction.

There is plenty of space left. Downtown Seattle office space is still a buyer's market. But the trend is reversed. Tenants waiting for rents to fall lower are served notice that their wait has risks.

Three years ago, the risk was in being too bold. Now there's a risk of being too cautious.

A Seattle Times' Thursday story noted that the tenants staking out territory in downtown buildings are technology companies. By a fluke of nomenclature, the three leasers of space in excess of 100,000 square feet are companies whose names end in "on" — Amazon, Dendreon and Isilon. But the similarity is superficial. Amazon is in Internet retailing. Dendreon has an FDA-approved therapy for advanced prostate cancer. Isilon Systems makes data-storage systems. Really they are in three separate industries. What they have in common is a product or service the market wants and the boldness to act.

When companies grow, they need money, human talent and physical space. All of that exists now. Interest rates are as low as they will ever be. With the unemployment rate at 9 percent, plenty of people are waiting to be hired. And space is still available.