Belltown bar expanding to Microsoft

A little bit of Belltown is coming to Microsoft's Redmond campus.

Spitfire, a sports bar in that trendy Seattle neighborhood, is expected to open a new location at Microsoft next year, in the middle of the mammoth complex being constructed for Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, west of state Route 520.

We already knew that a bar was planned for that location, based on city planning documents we dug up last year. But Microsoft has been mostly silent on the subject, so we didn't know many details beyond that.

It is a potentially lucrative contract for Spitfire, given Microsoft's large population of young, affluent males -- particularly in Xbox, Zune and other groups inside the E&D Division.

And the Spitfire team should know how to cater to that crowd. After all, the bar is partly owned by Jonathan Sposato, a former Google and Microsoft employee who now runs the online photo editing startup Picnik.

Sposato, who spent more than a decade at Microsoft, declined to comment for this story. Lou Gellos, a Microsoft spokesman, also was mum on the subject of the bar.

So how did we figure this out? Signs inside the complex, visible from the edges of the construction site, point future visitors to "Spitfire," among other buildings on the new E&D campus.

The bar will be part of a central area called The Commons. That area also will include food outlets, a mini day spa, salon, bank and post office, Gellos confirmed. Buildings in the complex are slated to be occupied in stages between March and July of next year.

At the very least, parking for Spitfire's Microsoft patrons won't be nearly the hassle it is on Belltown's crowded streets. The new Redmond complex includes a gigantic underground parking garage with room for about 5,000 vehicles.

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