KENT, Wash. — Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space effort now officially has more space. To be precise, 232,885 square feet more space.
That’s the bottom line from today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for Blue Origin’s new headquarters building — a multimillion-dollar facility across the street from the site of its original HQ and New Shepard suborbital spaceship factory in Kent.
Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith told GeekWire that the new HQ was required because “we’re growing like crazy.”
“We’ve grown a third in just the past year,” Smith said during an interview on the mezzanine of the U-shaped building. “So we’re now north of 2,500 people here.”
The new structure, built on a 30.7-acre site that the company purchased a little more than two years ago for $14 million, is built to accommodate 1,500 of those employees. Hundreds more are based elsewhere in the Kent area, south of Seattle, as well as at Blue Origin’s suborbital launch site in West Texas, the Florida rocket factory where Blue Origin’s New Glenn orbital-class rocket will be assembled, and at the site of its future BE-4 rocket engine factory in Alabama.
