King County employees slow to return to downtown offices

Dec. 10—On any given day earlier this year, only about one-quarter of desks and offices at King County government’s two main downtown Seattle office buildings were occupied by an employee, according to a new report from the county auditor.

The finding comes as the county is embarking on a potentially multibillion-dollar plan to remake its downtown campus, raising concerns that county leaders may be overestimating the amount of office space they need in future buildings.

At the Chinook Building, on Fifth Avenue, and the King Street Center, on South Jackson Street, no more than 50% of workspaces are occupied on any day of the week, the audit found.

The King County auditor used card-swipe data over four months last spring and compared it with available workspaces in the buildings to come to its findings.

Source: King County (Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times)

The finding also comes as downtown Seattle continues its slow, sputtering recovery from pandemic-era abandonment. Roughly one-third of downtown office space is now vacant, with an even larger percentage technically occupied, but unused.

High vacancy rates have led to plunging property values, as downtown office buildings are likely to see their assessed values decline by 35% to 40% next year, according to the county assessor.

Both Seattle and King County, in August, said they would soon require executive branch employees to return to the office at least three days a week. But those requirements begin in January for city of Seattle employees and at an unknown future date for King County employees.

A spokesperson for Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said they didn’t know what percentage of executive branch employees in City Hall and downtown office buildings were working from the office.

The county auditor’s analysis looked at data from March through June of this year.

Kristin Elia, a spokesperson for King County Executive Dow Constantine, said Monday more than three-quarters of county employees already work in-person everyday (this includes nonoffice workers where remote work is not an option, like bus drivers, jail guards and sheriff’s deputies).

Constantine has asked department directors to work at least three day a week in office, and to develop a plan by February that would allow their employees to work in office a minimum of three days a week.

“To support these plans, we are assessing our current office spaces and how to optimize their use,” Elia said in a prepared statement.

King County’s 165 legislative branch employees, who work for the County Council, have no in-office requirement.

Amazon, in September, announced it would require employees to be in the office five days a week in 2025.

In the course of its analysis, the auditor found that the county doesn’t track an array of data that could be crucial as it plans what could be a $3 billion makeover of its downtown campus.

For instance, the county doesn’t have a comprehensive inventory of its workspaces, it doesn’t have a record of where employees are assigned to work, and it doesn’t regularly track how its office spaces are being used.

“It’s vital that we improve the way we’re tracking this data now to ensure that the County has accurate data inputs for the next phase of planning for the new downtown campus,” King County Auditor Kymber Waltmunson said in a prepared statement.

King County government offices are mostly empty

At the county’s two main downtown office buildings, only about a quarter of desks are occupied, on average.

Source: King County Auditor’s Office analysis of access logs for March through June 2024, and workstation counts from July 2024 (Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times)

The county’s downtown campus reboot is in the earliest steps of what could be a multidecade process. A report earlier this year proposed redeveloping the current nine-building downtown campus — sandwiched between City Hall Park and Interstate 5 — and building a new jail and courthouse elsewhere, perhaps above a Metro bus parking lot in Sodo.

The plan, spearheaded by Constantine, envisions transforming the eight-block area of county offices into a high-rise neighborhood with stores, restaurants, apartments and a new light rail station near Fourth Avenue and James Street.

The county shuttered its downtown Administration Building in 2022, saying its office space was no longer needed due to remote work, with staff reassigned to the Chinook Building and the King Street Center.

The auditor’s report noted that it had also chided Constantine’s office, in 2015, for not collecting enough information to determine its office space needs.

“Unless the County improves its data tracking now, it will not have the systems in place to ensure accurate numbers are used in the next phase of planning,” the report reads.

The auditor made six recommendations on how the county should improve data collection as it embarks on its new campus project, things like cataloging office space, maintaining a record of where people are working and regularly analyzing badge-swipe data.

Constantine’s administration agreed with all six and said it would implement them by the end of next year.

“County agencies are preparing to have more staff return to office work in 2025,” Dwight Dively, the county’s chief operating officer, wrote in response to the audit.