Meta Platforms Inc. has given up its rights to five development sites in Bellevue’s Spring District, according to documents filed with King County in late October. The decision ends any plans the company may have had to grow its presence in the 36-acre mixed-use neighborhood.
The parcels, Blocks 2, 3, 4A, 5B, and 15, were originally reserved for Meta as potential office expansion. With those rights now returned, Spring District developer Wright Runstad & Co. is considering converting the sites into apartment buildings instead of offices, as reported by Puget Sound Business Journal.
Meta is currently using only about half of the 1.4 million square feet it already leases in the Spring District. The company’s choice to relinquish future building options reflects its reduced need for additional office space.
Meta’s involvement in the Spring District has grown and shifted over several years, beginning with major leasing activity in 2021. In December of that year, the company pre-leased Block 13, a nine-story building, securing the entire tower before construction finished.
By 2022, Meta had significantly expanded its presence, with leases across multiple blocks in the district, including Blocks 6, 13, 16, 24, and the former REI headquarters at Block 20. During the same year, Meta signed a 13-year lease for Block 16, which features an “Open Arts” space on the ground floor, equipped for digital fabrication.
The Spring District received LEED Neighborhood Development certification in early 2022, with Meta identified as one of its major anchor tenants.
By 2023, Meta began reevaluating its real-estate footprint. In January of that year, the company confirmed it would vacate and sublease parts of Block 6 as part of a broader restructuring of its Puget Sound office commitments. This trend continued into 2024.
In April 2024, Meta placed additional Spring District office space on the sublease market, and out of the 1.8 million square feet that the company was leasing, only actively occupied about half of it. Snowflake, a cloud-computing and data-services firm, became one of Meta’s primary subtenants during this period.
Activity continued into 2025. In June, Block 13, the building that was pre-leased by Meta in 2021, was sold to Drawbridge Realty while remaining fully leased by Meta. Later that month, Snowflake opened its new Bellevue office in Block 6, further illustrating the shift in occupancy within Meta’s leased buildings.
