Amazon's architects offer some details on towers, skybridges

Amazon.com's proposed three-block high-rise office complex in Seattle's Denny Triangle could take as long as eight years to finish, a project architect revealed Tuesday night.

The blocks would be developed in phases, one block at a time, with two to four years between each phase, John Savo of NBBJ told the city's Downtown Design Review Board.

Amazon's proposed timing was among the new details that surfaced at the review board's first meeting to consider the preliminary design of the complex, at 3.3 million square feet the largest development ever proposed downtown.

The block closest to downtown between Sixth, Seventh and Westlake avenues and Virginia and Lenora streets probably would be developed first, he added.

More than 100 people crowded into the Bertha Knight Landes Room at City Hall to hear presentations from Savo and Dale Alberda, another project architect.

No Amazon official spoke.

While most attention so far has been focused on the tower of up to 37 stories that would be the centerpiece of each block, Savo and Alberda said each block also would have shorter buildings up to six stories that would be linked to the tower on that block by one or two skybridges.

On the block likely to be developed first, a small bridge would link the tower to a 40,000-square-foot auditoriumlike building seating 2,000 that Amazon plans to build along Lenora Street, Savo said.

The online retailer's current Seattle offices lack such a meeting space, he added. It would be "more like a ballroom in a hotel" than an auditorium, Savo said, and could be broken up into smaller spaces if needed.

Amazon hasn't yet decided whether it would be open for noncompany events, he added. But the 50-foot-wide courtyard between the tower and the meeting building would serve as a public passage between Sixth and Seventh avenues and a "pre-function" area for auditorium events, Alberda said.

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Amazon's architects offer some details on towers, skybridges