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Amazon closes another Go convenience store in downtown Seattle; location was second to open

By TheFinanceBase Team 4 min read

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Amazon closed its Amazon Go convenience store at 5th Avenue and Marion Street in downtown Seattle on June 16, 2023. The roughly 1,450-square-foot store was about five years old and, according to contemporary reporting, was the second Amazon Go location to open.

The closure was separate from the eight Amazon Go stores Amazon announced it would shut in March 2023. Amazon did not provide a store-specific reason, but the decision came as downtown Seattle was still adjusting to hybrid work and as Amazon was tightening its physical-retail strategy.

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Which Amazon Go store closed?

The store was at the base of Seattle’s Madison Centre office tower, near the intersection of 5th Avenue and Marion Street. Its last day of business was Friday, June 16, 2023; the closure was reported on June 20.

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Amazon opened the location in August 2018, several months after the first Amazon Go store opened at the base of its Day One office tower. Contemporary reporting described the 5th-and-Marion location as the chain’s second store to open.

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A customer told GeekWire that shelves appeared increasingly bare before the closure and that the store had meaningful morning and lunchtime traffic. That account offers context, but it does not establish whether the store was profitable or underperforming.

It was not one of the eight stores announced in March

Amazon’s March 2023 announcement covered eight other Amazon Go locations: two in Seattle, two in New York City and four in San Francisco. The Seattle stores named at that time were in the Macy’s Building at 3rd Avenue and Pine Street and at 4th Avenue and Pike Street.

The 5th-and-Marion store closed later and was not included in that list. It is more accurate to describe it as another closure following Amazon’s March retrenchment, rather than as one of the original eight.

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See the contemporary accounts from GeekWire and TechCrunch for the March closure list.

Amazon did not give a specific reason

Amazon said it continued to evaluate its physical-store portfolio and was working with affected employees to identify other opportunities at the company, including at nearby stores. It did not say that the 5th-and-Marion location was unprofitable, nor did it identify a particular lease, sales or staffing issue.

In March, Amazon described its broader store decisions as portfolio “optimization” and said it was studying which Amazon Go locations, formats and features resonated with customers. At the time of the June closure, Amazon said it still operated more than 20 Amazon Go stores in the United States and expected to open more.

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There is no public store-level revenue, profit, transaction or foot-traffic data in the available reporting. As a result, claims that this particular location failed financially would go beyond the evidence.

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Why downtown Seattle was important context

The store operated in an office-heavy part of downtown, where convenience retail depended in part on workers, commuters and nearby residents. Its closure came while Seattle officials and Mayor Bruce Harrell were trying to restore downtown activity after the pandemic.

Amazon’s return-to-office policy, which required employees to work in the office at least three days a week, was part of that recovery story. Hybrid work had changed downtown foot-traffic patterns, making it a relevant factor when considering the environment around the store.

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But Amazon did not say remote work caused the closure. The connection should therefore be treated as context, not as a confirmed explanation. A report from Retail Tech Innovation Hub drew a more direct connection, but that remains outside interpretation rather than Amazon’s stated reason.

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How Amazon Go worked

Amazon Go stores used the company’s Just Walk Out system. Customers identified themselves at entry through the Amazon Go app or another approved payment method. Cameras, sensors and software tracked which products shoppers picked up or returned, allowing them to leave without stopping at a conventional checkout. The associated payment method was charged afterward.

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Amazon explains the technology as a combination of computer vision, sensor fusion and artificial intelligence. Its value proposition was speed and convenience, particularly for small purchases, rather than the broad assortment of a full-size grocery store. The trade-off was a shopping environment that required customers to accept extensive camera- and sensor-based tracking, along with the operational complexity of maintaining that infrastructure.

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The location mattered symbolically because it was one of the earliest physical demonstrations of Amazon’s cashierless-retail experiment—not a recent or peripheral outpost.

What happened to other Seattle-area stores?

Immediately after the June 2023 closure, contemporary reporting counted four remaining Amazon Go stores in Seattle, plus locations in Mill Creek and Puyallup. That was a snapshot of the market at the time, not a current count.

Readers should not treat those six locations as still operating in 2026. Amazon later announced a much broader change to its company-operated physical retail business.

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What the closure meant in hindsight

On January 27, 2026, Amazon announced that it would close its remaining Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores and shift greater emphasis toward Whole Foods and grocery delivery. That later decision makes the 5th-and-Marion closure look like an early sign of a broader retreat from Amazon-operated cashierless stores.

It would still be inaccurate to say the 2023 closure proved Amazon had abandoned Just Walk Out. Amazon separated the store format from the underlying technology. It continued to develop and license Just Walk Out for third-party settings such as sports venues, airports and other retail locations, as well as selected Amazon facilities. Amazon’s explanations of the technology and its later uses are available in its technical overview and retail update.

The most defensible reading is therefore narrower: Amazon was willing to discontinue its own Go and Fresh store networks while preserving Just Walk Out as a technology product. The physical-retail experiment contracted; the checkout technology did not simply disappear.

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Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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