Meta abandons new WA sites as Democrats push new payroll tax

Meta Platforms Inc. has quietly walked away from future growth plans in Bellevue’s Spring District, surrendering its rights to five development sites in the mixed-use neighborhood, just as Washington Democrats press ahead with a major new payroll tax aimed at the very jobs the region is struggling to keep.

King County filings from late October show Meta relinquished its development rights to Blocks 2, 3, 4A, 5B, and 15, parcels that had been reserved for potential office expansion in the 36-acre Spring District. With those rights returned, developer Wright Runstad & Co. is now weighing whether to pivot the sites from office growth to apartment construction, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.

Meta’s retreat underscores a broader shift: despite leasing roughly 1.4 million square feet in the Spring District, the company is reportedly using only about half of that space. Giving up future building options signals that Meta doesn’t expect to need more office capacity in Bellevue anytime soon.

Meta’s Spring District expansion began in 2021, when the company pre-leased Block 13, taking the entire nine-story building before construction finished. By 2022, Meta had spread across multiple buildings.

However, by January 2023, Meta confirmed it would vacate and sublease portions of its footprint as part of a broader pullback in Puget Sound office commitments. That trend continued through 2024, when more Spring District space hit the sublease market, at a time when Meta was actively occupying only about half of the 1.8 million square feet it had leased in the district.

Meta’s move lands amid ongoing tech layoffs across the region. Microsoft has cut more than 3,200 local jobs this year. Amazon cut 2,300, while Meta, Oracle, and Salesforce have trimmed hundreds more.

At the same time, Democrats are escalating their tax agenda. On Tuesday, socialist Rep. Shaun Scott (D–Seattle) and Sen. Rebecca Saldaña (D–Seattle) rolled out the “Well Washington Fund,” a proposal to impose a 5 percent payroll excise tax on employer payroll expenses above $125,000 per employee.

The push comes after Democrats already enacted a record $12.2 billion tax increase over four years, yet the latest state revenue forecast shows Washington’s budget $1.2 billion in the red.

Days earlier, Microsoft President Brad Smith warned that if Washington’s tax burden becomes “prohibitive,” companies will reconsider where they place jobs, pointing to Vancouver, BC, where Microsoft’s headcount has more than doubled since the pandemic. “You don’t have to look far to find Vancouver,” Smith said, describing the risk as “air leaking out of a balloon.”