Community Spotlight: Burien Business Growth

The Seattle/Puget Sound region has experienced incredible growth and Burien’s businesses are no exception. Burien is a small city of 51,000 people and 2,000 businesses on the Puget Sound directly south of Seattle. We are home to a bustling small business community of makers, retailers, and medical providers.

Demonstrating this growth is the decline of commercial vacant space due to new businesses moving into town and the expansion of some of our existing businesses. In the Burien market, retail vacancy dropped from 3.2 percent in 2017 to 2.5 percent in 2018. Despite space getting harder to find, the rents have only grown 1.5 percent on average, which means that Burien remains an affordable place for small business. In fact, at $18.22 per square foot, Burien’s rent is about $5.50 less than the average per square foot retail rent in Seattle.

In 2018, we welcomed 179 new businesses. While we love to see new places to shop, work, or eat, even more important is knowing that our existing businesses stay and grow here. In 2018, we are proud to say that 85 percent of our businesses have been Burien one year or more. In a recent city survey, 68 percent of our businesses told us they have experienced an increased or stable profit trend over the past three years and 26 percent told us they were planning to hire additional staff.

While no one likes to talk taxes, sometimes we look to tax revenue to see how well our businesses are doing. Sales taxes are paid by customers who come from all over and in 2018, those customers spent 4.3 percent more than they did in 2017, which means our businesses saw their revenue grow as well.

We look forward to welcoming your business and helping it grow too.