E-commerce giant Amazon is boosting its footprint in San Diego - leasing office space in University City with room for more than 500 employees.

The Seattle-based online retailer confirmed that it has signed a lease in the Campus Pointe office park.

Amazon is taking nearly 107,000 square feet at 10300 Campus Point Drive. While Amazon has a small office in Solana Beach, as well as distribution facilities in the region, this is its first major office/engineering presence in the county.

The deal is among the largest expansions of an outside, well-known, tech giant into San Diego – exceeding the 60,000 square feet that Google leased last year for a satellite office.

Google’s decision to set up shop in San Diego was linked in part to its acquisitions of local start-ups, including sensor developer Lumedyne Technologies. Amazon is planting roots without an acquisition.

“Is this part of a larger trend? I think it could be,” said Kevin Carroll, head of Tech San Diego, a software industry trade group. “UC San Diego graduates 10,000 students a year. If you are Google or Amazon, you’re looking at that and saying there is going to be a good local pipeline of talent.”

“They feel that they can grow and find the talent here,” said Mark Cafferty, head of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. “The availability of people from the universities is attractive, and we have technology clusters in cyber, big data and biotechnology -- which attracts a lot of people who work in data and analytics – that show there is also seasoned talent” in the region.

Source: SDuniontribune by Mike Freeman