Amazon's head of international real estate is leaving his role just as the online retail giant plans to expand its offices in New York and other markets after calling its corporate workers back five days a week.
Amazon confirmed with CoStar News that Shannon Loew, its vice president of global corporate real estate and facilities, will leave his job and the company. Amazon did not give a specific departure date for Loew, who joined Amazon in early 2023.
"After almost three years at Amazon, Shannon has decided to pursue other opportunities," company spokesperson Brad Glasser said in an email Tuesday. "We appreciate all his contributions and wish him the best of luck."
Loew oversees Amazon's corporate office workplace portfolio, which totals roughly 65 million square feet in around 70 countries, he said on the Leading Voices in Real Estate podcast in March. However, that is only a portion of Amazon's total real estate portfolio.
The company has been active on the commercial property front this year after acknowledging it did not have enough space to accommodate all of the employees it had called back to its workspaces five days a week. Amazon said last week it acquired a midtown Manhattan office property, its first such purchase in New York City since 2020, near both the Grand Central Terminal transit hub and its flagship campus at the former Lord & Taylor building, to accommodate workers.
The company also said it would triple its network of distribution hubs in rural U.S. markets to get deliveries to customers faster in the face of climbing consumer prices and tariff uncertainty. Seattle-based Amazon said last week it plans to spend $4 billion to expand its reach to 200 delivery outposts in the nation's least-populated regions by the end of next year. The effort could create 100,000 jobs, Amazon said.
Working at Amazon presented scenarios where changes in corporate strategy often meant quick analyses and strategy shifts were required, Loew said on the March podcast. Before joining Amazon, the Harvard-educated architect founded Fix Impact Development, a Seattle-based real estate design firm that merges architecture with public policy and strategic management projects.
"Being a real estate professional at a tech company is really different than being, say, in a private development sector," Loew said. "You have a whole other series of forces and assumptions upon your decisions that aren't normally there and among them is the speed and decisions of how much you need to house and hire folks as a company grows and optimizes itself."
Loew did not immediately respond to CoStar News' request to comment via LinkedIn.
When Loew joined Amazon two years ago, he reported to John Schoettler, who oversaw the entire global real estate portfolio for more than two decades. Loew stepped into the role of overseeing the day-to-day operations in 2024 ahead of the retirement of Schoettler, GeekWire reported.
Amazon has not said how Loew's position would be filled upon his departure.