(This Nov. 2 story has been refiled to fix a typo in paragraph 1)
(Reuters) – Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said on Thursday he was moving to his childhood home of Miami from Seattle to be near his parents and his space firm Blue Origin’s Cape Canaveral operations.
“As exciting as the move is, it’s an emotional decision for me. Seattle, you will always have a piece of my heart,” the billionaire said in an Instagram post on Thursday.
The post included a video of Bezos in Amazon’s first office in Seattle, where he founded the e-commerce company out of his garage in 1994 and grew it into one of the biggest retailers in the world.
Private space company Blue Origin’s operations are increasingly shifting to Cape Canaveral, Bezos added.
Amazon’s rapid growth transformed Seattle’s South Lake Union district, replacing warehouses and parking lots with offices towers, highly paid tech workers and expensive eateries. The growth contributed to an economic boom and rising rents.
(Reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)