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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

> Amazon's is the most ambitious gambit of them all. When its spheres and three surrounding towers are completed, the company will have 10 million square feet of office space in Seattle, more than 15 percent of the city's inventory, on a campus that occupies more than 10 square blocks.

15% of a city's commercial inventory seems like a lot. Any comparable levels to companies in other cities? Is this typical for one company to own/lease such a large percentage of commercial real-estate or is the statistic misleading?

[edit] removed duplicate quote

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The real information here is that 10 square blocks is enough to be 15 percent of the city's inventory.

Seattle is tiny. So is SF. I'm amused by how small the core of all of the West coast cities seem to be when people try to convince me that there's dense urban living to be found outside of the East Coast.

Density and size are different dimensions.

Eh, you've got to keep in mind that Seattle is pretty tiny itself, and is surrounded by a lot of suburbs that are also industrial/tech centers (Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Etc).

Humana has more than 15% of the commercial inventory in downtown Louisville, KY, and maybe even still more than 15% of the entire Louisville metro area as a whole. I don't recall the exact numbers and searches aren't turning them up right now.

I'm not sure it's that unusual, statistically. If anything, one large company per city is maybe closer to the historic norm (especially if you count old fashioned company towns and more modern might as well be company campus towns like Redmond, WA) and something of the median or mode of city existence, at least in the US.

I live in Seattle and and I'm not surprised by the 15% figure. But that will change. The majority of Seattle is not developed yet and there's a lot of new construction going on. Give it a few years for all the current development to finish and your going to see significantly more apartment and office buildings. So the 15% figure will start to go down.

why paste the quote twice? why paste the quote twice?

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