It's the beginning of a new era for Amazon.com. The first Amazon employees began moving into the company's new headquarters campus in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood this week. The move will take place over stages until 2013, with the online retail giant eventually occupying a dozen buildings totaling nearly 2 million square feet of office space.

The Amazonians are beginning to move into Phase 1 of the headquarters campus, which is being developed by Schnitzer West and Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc. (which provided the above video).

Phase 1a includes two buildings plus the century-old Van Vorst Building, on a full city block bordered by Terry Avenue N., Harrison Street, Republican Street and Boren Avenue N. Phase 1b is another building on the southwest corner of Terry Avenue N. and Mercer Street.

“Amazon.com’s move to South Lake Union is an exciting day for the neighborhood, city and region as a whole. We’re thrilled to welcome the first of Amazon’s employees to their new global headquarters,” said Ada Healey, Vulcan's vice president of real estate, in a statement. Full announcement here (pdf, 2 pages).

The entire Amazon campus is made up of 11 buildings totaling 1.7 million square feet of office space, plus another 180,000 square feet Amazon recently leased at Vulcan’s 2201 Westlake development.

The project is also expected to include 100,000 square feet of street-level retail. Seattle chef Tom Douglas is planning to open new restaurants in the historic Terry Avenue Building, which will be part of the Amazon campus.

Amazon currently occupies the Pac-Med building on Beacon Hill and other office space in downtown Seattle. The company has been steadily growing its headcount, reaching 24,300 full-time and part-time employees at the end of 2009. That's a global number, but a large percentage of staff is in Seattle.

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