Lately there’s been a mini tech growth over in Bellevue, Wash., town simply east of Seattle that has attracted extra firms and expertise — together with a large Amazon enlargement that may carry 25,000 staff to the Eastside.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell made it clear that his metropolis nonetheless holds the sting on the subject of innovation and tradition.
Talking on the AI Home on Seattle’s waterfront, the place he unveiled town’s new synthetic intelligence coverage and plan, Harrell was requested how Seattle can compete for firms contemplating places of work within the area — together with in close by Bellevue and Redmond, house of Microsoft.
Harrell touted Seattle’s artistic power, range, and progressive historical past — and threw a pleasant jab at his rival throughout Lake Washington.
“They don’t have an AI Home in Bellevue,” Harrell stated, citing the lately opened startup hub that’s financially supported by town. “We considered it right here.”
Harrell stated Seattle has its “personal distinctive historical past that we play to for workers.”
“We’re leaders, innovators … the Seattle World’s Truthful was not in Bellevue, it was right here in 1962, which put us on the map,” he stated.
His remarks underscored the rising sense of competitors between the 2 cities.
Quite a few out-of-town tech firms have opened and grown places of work in Bellevue over the previous 12 months alone, together with Zoom, OpenAI, Shopify, Anduril, and Snowflake. It’s additionally house to headquarters for T-Cell, Valve, and Smartsheet, plus places of work for Meta, ByteDance, and Pokémon.
Amazon has shortly grown its footprint in downtown Bellevue after sparring with Seattle lawmakers in recent times over company tax initiatives. Bellevue is the main focus of a lot of the corporate’s future progress in what it now calls its Puget Sound headquarters area.
Chatting with GeekWire final 12 months, Bellevue Mayor Lynne Robinson stated town didn’t have curiosity in insurance policies like Seattle’s payroll tax.
Harrell didn’t point out tax coverage in his remarks on Thursday. The mayor has supported a proposal to extend Seattle’s enterprise & occupation tax, which is already larger than Bellevue’s price.
Seattle voters additionally lately accepted a new tax on large companies reminiscent of Amazon that may fund a social housing developer.
Each cities have taken successful to their business actual property markets because the pandemic. The emptiness price in downtown Bellevue is 17.1%, up from 3.3% in 2019, in line with a Q2 report from Broderick Group.
Seattle’s downtown emptiness price topped 30% within the second quarter, in line with Kidder Mathews.
The 2 cities will change into extra related, actually, by way of public transit — with a brand new gentle rail line anticipated to open early subsequent 12 months. One other new line lately opened that hyperlinks Bellevue to Redmond.
Harrell’s feedback got here as he unveiled the Seattle’s new AI coverage and plan, a part of a broader push to ascertain town as a nationwide chief in synthetic intelligence.
“We try to be very intentional about positioning Seattle as a nationwide chief in accountable synthetic intelligence implementation,” Harrell stated. “Make no mistake about that.”
Associated: Seattle unveils a ‘accountable AI plan’ to information metropolis’s tech use and increase the native economic system
