Bellevue Chamber Lunch – Microsoft on the Move

On Thursday, October 11th, I attended a lunch held by the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce at the Hyatt in Bellevue.  Jim Stanton, Microsoft Senior Community Affairs Manager, was the speaker for the lunch talk.  He talked about Microsoft’s expansion on the Eastside – both past and plans for the future.  I took some notes and will pass along the highlights here.

Microsoft has approximately 78,000 employees globally – 40,000 workers on campus here (5000 are vendor/contractors).  Last year, Microsoft hired 12,000 globally.  Microsoft had revenue of approximately $50B last year, $10B more than the year previous.  This expansion has pushed them to acquire more space. 

Microsoft and Redmond have created an agreement to support this expansion.  Each party contributes some set of actions for this goal.  The slide that showed the pieces of the agreement went by too quickly for me to write down all of the elements – and the slide no doubtedly was a synopsis of the major elements.  The pieces i noted are:

• Microsoft agrees to continue using the current campus as their corporate headquarters for at least 20 more years.  Microsoft expects to complete the majority of campus construction in the next 5 years.
• Both parties will support the construction of more infrastructure elements to support the campus expansion
  • 520 on / off ramps
  • At least 6 intersections will be upgraded to support more traffic
  • an extra bridge across 520 in 2008 to link West and East parts of campus

Recently, Microsoft purchased the Safeco campus, the Eddie Bauer site, and the Nintendo site.  This gives them the real estate they need to fill thier expansion plans for the next 5 years.  Those sites are all on the West side of 520 and will benefit from the new bridge scheduled for 2008.  Microsoft expects to house 4400 employees on that part of campus.

 In 2001-2004, the campus ocupancy reached over 100% – employees were put in kitchenettes, bathrooms, lobbies, and every other place they could find.  This compression was required partly for real estate reasons and partly because of some market economics.  In 2005, Microsoft started acquiring more real estate and accelerated hiring.  Now, the building boom in Bellevue has opened up even more office space for expansion.

Jim showed the distribution of employees housing in the Puget Sound area.  He showed a map that plotted each housing location – showing some very popular locations around Greenlake, Fremont, Redmond, etc.  The breakdown in distribution was:

• Redmond – 22%
• Seattle – 17%
• Bellevue – 13%
• Sammamish – 8%
• Other – 20%

Approximately 80% of the employees live on the Eastside.  The average employee is 36 years old and has kids.

Microsoft is expanding into the new office space in Bellevue and Seattle.  The sites are:

• Lincoln Square (Bellevue) will provide office space for approximately 1400 employees in 318,000 square feet
• Bravern (Bellevue) will provide office space for 2700 employees in 750,000 square feet
• Advanta (Bellevue) will have 2400 employees in 601,000 square feet
• Westlake Terry (Seattle) will have 575 employees in 127,000 square feet
• 505 Union Station (Seattle) will have 25 employees in 4000 square feet
• 110 S Jackson (Seattle) will have 140 employees

Microsoft has a preference for new construction because of their high requirements for power and bandwidth.  The current campus uses 45-50MW of power per day.  This level of power / bandwidth is difficult to acquire in older buildings.  most of the off-campus employees are in operational groups or marketing groups that require somewhat less infrastructure.

13-17% of Microsoft employees commute in carpools.  Indeed, some 35% of the employees commute in some way other than their own personal car.  Less than 5% telework – though Microsoft is creating what they call ‘touchdown stations’ to allow an employee to go someplace nearer their home, with an environment close to campus level.

It will be interesting to watch the development of the new bridge and campus elements over the next couple of years.  It was nice to get a glimpse of their plans.