Amazon’s first day back in the office felt like any other Thursday. Which is to say, none too busy in downtown Seattle.

In Seattle’s South Lake Union and Denny Triangle neighborhoods — home to Amazon’s largest corporate campus with more than 50,000 employees — bundled-up Amazonians trickled into office towers throughout the morning and streamed out at lunchtime to visit food trucks.

Lines formed but didn’t fill the sidewalks. The neighborhood was still quiet after the New Year’s holiday.

Though a seemingly normal day on the outside, Thursday marked a big change for Amazon employees. They will now be expected to work from the office five days a week, an increase from the three-day mandate Amazon has had in place since May 2023.

The new requirement makes Amazon one of the strictest companies in the region and among its tech rivals when it comes to in-person work.

Amazon leadership has argued in-person work allows employees to better collaborate, learn and innovate, and that the past year and a half of a partial in-person mandate has solidified that conviction. But some employees have pushed back on the requirement, asking the company through petitions and letters to restore the flexibility of remote work. Some workers have quit while others said they are starting to look for new jobs.

In Seattle, business groups are hopeful Amazon’s increased return will spur a revitalization of the business corridor that has struggled to regain its prepandemic vibrancy without office workers. 

At King Leroy, a restaurant and bar housed in Amazon’s Doppler tower in Denny Triangle, general manager Nik Taylor said he’s considering staffing up to meet the new demand from Amazon employees. 

Because of its location, King Leroy is unusual, Taylor said. “I’ve never worked at a place that depended on people coming back to the office.” 

Taylor estimated up to 90% of the restaurant’s lunch regulars are Amazon employees, and he expects to see an uptick in business as those regulars bring in the rest of their team. Right now, King Leroy makes most of its money during the dinner hour, Taylor said. But with Amazon’s return, the lunch rush could become the breadwinner. 

“Everything has been going up exponentially every year since we opened in 2022,” he said. “Sales, foot traffic … it continues to grow.”

In November, downtown Seattle saw an average of 91,000 workers per weekday, according to data from the Downtown Seattle Association, a trade organization representing businesses in the area. That’s up 5% from November 2023, but just 56% of November 2019’s average, before the pandemic sent most workers home. 

“Downtown’s largest employer bringing people back more frequently is a home run for downtown,” said Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association. “Other employers may take notice and make similar moves, and downtown is ready for their return.”

David Gurry, an office broker with real estate firm Kidder Mathews, similarly said Amazon’s decisiveness has inspired other businesses to solidify their own return-to-office plans.

After years of business owners being reluctant to sign a lease because they didn’t know how much space they would need to accommodate a hybrid workforce, Gurry said he’s starting to see transactions cross the finish line.

“It’s been four years of people scratching their heads and not knowing what they need,” Gurry said. “Now business owners are ready to draw the line in the sand. … They know who’s coming in and when.”

A lot of times, what they need is less office space, Gurry said, estimating that downtown Seattle’s office vacancy rate would grow from 30% to 40% over the next year and a half. But he was optimistic the vacancies would fill up because high supply meant tenants could secure a good deal.

In Seattle, office building visits in 2024 were highest on Wednesdays, according to data from Placer.ai and provided by Kidder Mathews. 

Tuesday claimed the second-highest number of visits, with Monday trailing in third, ahead of Thursday and Friday. 

Leah Masson, a senior director at commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, said she expects South Lake Union will experience some “recovery pains,” like traffic jams and long coffee lines.

But she’s happy to spend more time waiting. She sees it as a sign the neighborhoods are coming back to life. 

On Thursday, an Amazon employee outside the Spheres said they also expected the return to be an adjustment and a “learning curve.” 

But that employee, a 15-year Amazon veteran who asked to remain anonymous to protect their job, said the company had already made one adjustment at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and could do so again. 

“I understand why the company wants it. I have seen the benefits of (RTO), of in-person collaboration,” the employee said. “But I know it’s hard for some people. … I see both sides of the coin.” 

Amazon said Thursday that teams across the company are working to make sure the return to office is smooth. 

Another Amazon employee, a software engineer who started in 2021 and also asked to remain anonymous, wasn’t as optimistic. They plan to start searching for new jobs as a result of the in-person requirement. 

The worker was in “disbelief” when they heard Amazon’s new plans, and now they’re seeing other companies promote hybrid jobs. The employee pointed to Spotify, which said recently that it would maintain its remote work policy and thought of in-person requirements as treating employees like children.

“It just really limits the flexibility,” the Amazon employee said of the company’s new mandate. “The five-day announcement felt surreal.”

There’s still uncertainty about how the new policy will be enforced and whether the company will require workers to be in the office for a minimum number of hours each day.

When announcing the change in September, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees the expectation going forward “is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances.”

In December, Amazon delayed the return for workers in at least seven cities around the country as it prepared its offices for the surge in traffic. Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond, which Amazon considers its primary headquarters, do not appear to be affected by the delay.