Will other companies follow Amazon’s lead?

That’s a key question for the future of downtown Seattle as the tech giant brings workers back to the office five days a week, as part of a new mandate that goes into effect Thursday.

Amazon set a three-day policy in 2023, and now the company is “going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID,” as CEO Andy Jassy outlined in September.

Jon Scholes, president of the Downtown Seattle Association, is hoping that the city’s largest employer — with around 50,000 employees in Seattle — sets a trend for others.

“When a company of that scale moves in this direction — and it’s a pretty significant move, from three to five — I think it sends a signal to many other organizations and companies that have been wrestling with the same set of considerations of, how do we work best?” he told GeekWire.

Amazon is an outlier, as most companies have settled into hybrid policies that allow some remote work, according to Gallup.

The impact of remote work has been felt acutely in downtown Seattle, where many tech companies are based.

In November, downtown Seattle averaged nearly 91,000 workers per weekday — just 56% of the average in November 2019, before the pandemic. That’s a far cry from cities such as Miami and New York that are nearly back to 2019 levels.

City leaders in Seattle point to the return of office workers as key to downtown revitalization.

Scholes said he’s seeing more companies move to three or more days in the office per week and expects Amazon’s move to accelerate that trend.

He said Amazon’s decision to go to five days is “significant and influential” — not just for other companies considering their own work policies, but also the surrounding small businesses that rely on worker foot traffic.

There’s also an element of public safety, a top priority for Mayor Bruce Harrell.

“More people in a public space is a good thing,” he said. “Amazon’s return to [five days] is going to increase real and perceived safety downtown.”

That could help draw more locals into the downtown area, Scholes noted.

DSA this week published its year-end development guide, which focused on residential growth in downtown and made little mention of commercial office projects.

Office vacancy rates in downtown Seattle surpassed 30% in the third quarter of 2024, up 24.3% from the year-ago period, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

High vacancy rates are causing some key commercial real estate developers in Seattle to default on office debt.

The report from Cushman & Wakefield noted that Amazon has given up nearly 595,000 square feet of space in Seattle this year as it lets leases expire and shifts employees to nearby Bellevue, where the company has built several new office towers.

Related: Bellevue real estate brokers bullish about Amazon’s new return-to-office policy as Microsoft moves out