Starbucks closes another Seattle store as downtown office vacancies mount

( Post Millennial )

Starbucks has shuttered another Seattle location, this time inside a downtown office tower that is preparing to lose a major tenant. The coffee giant closed its store at 999 Third Avenue on Friday, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal, adding another closure to Starbucks’ shrinking footprint in its hometown. Starbucks founder Howard Schultz announced his move to Miami earlier this year, the same day Washington Democrats passed the state’s first income tax.

The location sits inside DocuSign Tower, where the outlook is about to get even worse. DocuSign announced plans earlier this year to leave the building and relocate to JPMorganChase Center at 1301 Second Avenue by next summer. Once the company departs, more than half of the office space in the tower is expected to be vacant.

The Starbucks closure comes as both companies reduce their presence in a downtown Seattle office market already struggling with historically high vacancies. Seattle’s office vacancy rate has climbed to roughly 37 percent, the highest in the US, while downtown has lost approximately 30,000 jobs since 2020, according to a recent Downtown Seattle Association analysis. The taxable value of downtown office buildings has also fallen approximately 48 percent during that period.

The 999 Third Avenue closure is also part of a much broader Starbucks pullback in Washington. Over 32 Starbucks locations in the state had been permanently closed, including the company’s prominent Seattle Reserve Roastery on Capitol Hill. Starbucks also filed notice of five additional closures affecting 69 employees, four of which involved unionized stores. Many of its most profitable locations, including near tourist sites like Pike Place Market and the Space Needle, have closed in the past few years.

Starbucks itself has been steadily reducing its Seattle corporate footprint. Starbucks’ headquarters employment has fallen more than 25 percent since 2023, from roughly 3,700 employees to about 2,800, with multiple rounds of layoffs announced. Meanwhile, Starbucks is making a major investment more than 2,000 miles away. The company is developing approximately 250,000 square feet of corporate office space in Nashville, Tennessee, with plans for the operation to eventually support as many as 2,000 workers. Some sourcing-related positions are being relocated from Washington to Tennessee.