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Comment by notional | Hacker News Reader

Amazon bought the upper floors of the Seattle downtown Macys building. I worked in there for a few days to get a feel for it out of curiosity (my team was in a dif building). It was awful, it was completely dark inside, almost no natural light, the building is old as shit and super janky as a result. It's also across the street from McStabs so once they moved in, every Seattle employee started getting emergency stay inside texts because of the street level problems outside that building.

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Sorry I am from the UK what do you mean? Is there alot of crime in Seattle around the MC restaurants?

Not McDonalds in general, but one particular McDonalds in Seattle is located at a spot with a large number of homeless people, where crime and open-air drug use is pretty common.

That is odd, I dont think there are any locations in the UK where there is open drug use. I also remember seeing clearly mentally ill people on the streets in Miami, something you dont see here ( though you do see homeless every now again - rarely tents ). Is that just a normal feature in cities in the US?

It's a normal feature of many large cities in the US, particularly those run by more progressive politicians. No city has adequate mental health treatment facilities or homeless services. Open drug use has been de facto decriminalized: elected District Attorneys refuse to prosecute and thus police don't bother making arrests.

I do support treating addiction as a health problem rather than a crime. But the current approach in cities like San Francisco is wrecking quality of life for regular people.

>Is there alot of crime in Seattle

Yes. There's a documentary called "Seattle is Dying" that covers a lot of it (particularly the open air drug use), but you might have a hard time finding it because of the recent riots, economic collapse, etc.

I'm curious... how is it possible for mall/retail employees to work there but not engineering teams?

It wasn't possible, Macy's abandoned that location. Shortly afterwards there was a shootout right outside (at peak hour) and an engineer was shot in the mayhem. Nowdays thats just another day in Seattle, with the second highest growth in murder of any city in the US!

I actually know that intersection (3rd/Pike) quite well and think the issue is more the 7/11, cigar shop, and major bus transfer point than the McDonalds in attracting loiterers/criminals.

I was wondering how it was possible for Macy's retail employees to work in the mall prior to Amazon's purchase, but how it was unsuitable for software engineers. Surely at one point the Macy's employees were selling fancy clothes, perfumes, and housewares from that location...

Retail can be soul-draining, some places more than others.

I'm sure the costs would be prohibitive at most malls, but the best use of a mall I can think of would be to use the former stores for SCIFs and other secure work areas, onsite hosting, etc. then maximize skylights for the central atrium. The lack of windows in the former store spaces works in one's favor in these use cases.

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