One of Amazon's pioneering Amazon Go retail locations in its hometown of Seattle has been closed, a victim — at least for the time being — of crime and safety concerns in the city.
The move is Amazon's second safety-driven withdrawal in the city in six months and the latest announcement of such a closing by a major U.S. retailer.
“We have temporarily closed our Amazon Go store at 4th & Pike in Seattle for the safety of our store employees, customers and third-party vendors, and are hopeful conditions in the area will improve and we can reopen in the future," an Amazon spokesperson said in an email, adding that employees had been offered positions at other Amazon stores.
Amazon Go stores are named for the company's "Just Walk Out" technology, which uses a mix of sensors and cameras to allow customers to simply grab items off shelves and leave the store. They are billed automatically without needing to pass through a checkout line.
The affected property, at 1423 Fourth Ave., is located in a stretch of the city's downtown that, despite its proximity to some of Seattle's most prominent office towers and the Pike Place Market tourist district, has grappled with a lingering pandemic surge in street crime. Amazon grabbed headlines in March when it announced the reassignment of 1,800 employees from the nearby office building at 300 Pine St., one of the dozens of properties the company leases or owns in the city center. An Amazon Go store in that building also closed recently, though the reason could not be determined.
The Fourth Avenue Amazon Go store is the latest in a wave of closings, withdrawals or other restrictions enacted by retailers as cities nationwide have struggled to erase pandemic-magnified blight and street crime from their urban cores. Among the most noted was Walgreens' decision in October to close five San Francisco stores because of what it referred to as "organized retail crime."
More recently, Seattle-based Starbucks announced last month the closing of 16 stores in urban areas over safety concerns, including six in Seattle. Interim CEO Howard Schultz later was reported to have told staff that more such moves were on the way.
According to CoStar data, the owner of the 16,700-square-foot, single-story property on Fourth Avenue is Seattle-based Joshua Green Corp. The company did not immediately respond to a request to comment Thursday.