Microsoft Redmond campus

Microsoft campus

A sign at the campus entrance
Built	1986
Location	Redmond, Washington
Coordinates
Industry	Technology
Employees	30,000–40,000
Buildings	80
Area	500 acres (200 ha)
Address	One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Washington
Owner(s)	Microsoft

The Microsoft campus is the informal name of Microsoft's corporate headquarters, located at One Microsoft Way in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft initially moved onto the grounds of the campus on February 26, 1986, weeks before the company went public on March 13. The headquarters has since experienced multiple expansions since its establishment.

It is estimated to encompass over 8 million square feet (740,000 m²) of office space and 30,000-40,000 employees. Additional offices are located in Bellevue and Issaquah (90,000 employees world-wide). In January 2006, Microsoft announced the purchase of Safeco's Redmond campus. (Formerly one of Redmond's major employers, Safeco began consolidating its offices in Seattle's University District at the Safeco Tower in 2005.)

In February 2006, Microsoft announced that it intended to expand its Redmond campus by 1,100,000 square feet (100,000 m²) at a cost of $1 billion and said that this would create space for between 7,000 and 15,000 new employees over the following three years.

The Seattle Times reported in early September 2015 that Microsoft had hired architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to begin a multibillion-dollar redesign of the Redmond campus, using an additional 1.4 million square feet (130,000 m²) allowed by an agreement with the City of Redmond. The city of Redmond had also approved a rezone in February 2015 to raise the height limit for buildings on the campus from 6 stories to 10.

Notable buildings

• The Commons, a 1.4-million-square-foot (130,000 m²) shopping mall that opened in 2009. It consists of a main building called the Mixer, a smaller building call the Submixer and a large football field. The Mixer has a two-story cafeteria, a post office, a bank, a bike shop, several mobile shops and conference rooms for Microsoft employees.
• Building 92 houses the Microsoft Visitor Center, the Company Store, a library for employees, and the Studios User Research lab.

Transportation

The campus is located on both sides of the State Route 520 freeway, which connects it to the cities of Bellevue and Seattle as well as the Redmond city center. Microsoft paid part of the cost for an overpass over the freeway at NE 36th Street to relieve congestion on other cross-streets in the area.

The campus is served by buses to Seattle and some Eastside cities at the Overlake Transit Center, operated by Sound Transit and King County Metro. The RapidRide B Line also runs through the campus, connecting to downtown Bellevue and Redmond. The transit center will be the eastern terminus of the East Link light rail extension, scheduled to open in 2023. Microsoft partnered with Sound Transit and the City of Redmond to fund a pedestrian bridge connecting the light rail station to both sides of its campus to open in 2020, providing $33.3 million of the cost.

For employees, Microsoft also operates a commuter bus service called "The Connector" that provides non-stop service to neighborhoods in Seattle, the Eastside, and Snohomish County from the Redmond campus. The shuttles, which began operating in 2007, were targeted in early 2014 as a symbol of gentrification in similar fashion to the Google bus protests in San Francisco, California that same year.

The company also runs a shuttle bus service, named the "Shuttle Connect", between buildings on the campus.

External links

• Images of the campus
• Campus map