(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. is searching for office space in Dublin that could hold as many as 800 employees, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
The e-commerce giant is looking for as much as 7,432 square meters (80,000 square feet) of office space in the Irish capital, said the people, who asked not to be named because the information is private. Amazon declined to comment.
Last year, Amazon said it would bring another 500 jobs to Ireland, adding to more than 1,400 people in Dublin. Amazon's search may add to a squeeze in the Irish capital's office market as companies from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to Barclays Plc expand in the city following the U.K.'s decision to depart the European Union.
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While the office vacancy rate in Dublin stands at about 9 percent, the figure falls to less than 1 percent for top-quality buildings in prime areas of the city, Savills Plc said last week. A number of older office buildings were demolished this year, adding to the shortage, the broker said.
Companies leased more than 150,000 square meters of offices in Dublin during the first half of this year, according to CBRE Group Inc. That was 68 percent higher than a year earlier. Nearly a quarter of the 420,000 square meters of office space under construction at the end of June was pre-let, it added.
Amazon is the latest tech company to contemplate expanding in Dublin after Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google both grew their footprint in the city.
“Demand for office space across Dublin remains robust,” Andrew Cunningham, head of offices at Savills Ireland, said in the report. “With Dublin city center having become so built-up over the past two decades, older properties are having to make way to allow for new development to take place.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Peter Flanagan in Dublin at pflanagan23@bloomberg.net, Neil Callanan in London at ncallanan@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ambereen Choudhury at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, Paul Armstrong, Jon Menon
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