Billion-dollar investment firm to leave Seattle amid chaos with protesters

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An investment firm that manages more than $1.5 billion in assets is leaving Seattle amid continued protests near its office downtown.

Cole Smead, the president and CEO of Smead Capital Management, told KTAR on Monday that the company would be relocating to Phoenix on July 1, with employees taking extra precautions to move during the coronavirus pandemic.

“The unrest that has taken place in the city of Seattle … there is really is not a downtown business community today,” he said.

A statement released by Smead on Tuesday stressed that the move is not “reactionary” to any of the events of the past several months and that it was announced back in January after considering investment opportunities.

“We took great care and deliberation in making this decision to relocate, which we began mentally exploring as early as two years ago. We announced our decision to move to Phoenix internally to our staff in January, long before COVID shutdowns or nationwide protests made their way to Seattle,” Smead said. “Put simply, nothing happening or being reported in the news right now had any weight in our decision to relocate from Seattle to Phoenix.”

Smead further explained to KTAR that the city of Phoenix will offer a better quality of life for him and his employees.

“My colleagues can pick the socioeconomic rung of life that they want to live their life, build their households, and have a family if they like. Where we’re coming from just wasn’t like that,” he said.

Smead said he is not the only company planning to leave downtown Seattle. He said that several buildings could see their occupancy drop to as low as 20% in the future.

“We’re hearing rumors of 40-story buildings that will be only 20% occupied by October,” Smead said. “My biggest concern for Seattle was what the business community is going to come back to, and what kind of businesses are going to come back for customers.”

The mayor of Seattle, Jenny Durkan, has been struggling to regain control of an occupied area of the city first known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ, which was later renamed to Capitol Hill Organized Protests, or CHOP. At least three people have been shot in the police-free area of CHOP, including a teenager who died.

Businesses in the area have been extorted for trying to reenter the occupied area of downtown to access their offices, according to Seattle police. The mayor indicated on Monday that the city would begin to reclaim the area soon and that the police department would return to its East Precinct “in the near future.”

CHOP precipitated out of the protests against police brutality and racial injustice that started following the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died after an officer knelt on his neck for several minutes during an arrest. Some of the protests have devolved into riots featuring arson, looting, and vandalism.

Editor’s note: This report has been updated to reflect that Cole Smead, the president and CEO of Smead Capital Management, said his company announced in January it would move to Phoenix.

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