This would, naturally, remove from contention hundreds of thousands of square feet of real estate in areas such as Pioneer Square, which was particularly hard hit by last February's 7.0 Nisqually Earthquake—or the Kent Valley, which one real estate-industry attendee referred to as "Liquifaction Central."

The site of the symposium, Fisher Plaza, is, of course, a model of the remaining items on Doyne's list -- many of which are particularly critical to companies dependent upon high-tech infrastructure, like Fisher's media and telecom tenants. In fact, Barrett and Rothrock say they are billing Fisher Plaza as "a world-class communications, media and mission critical facility." Independent power, independent water for HVAC, connectivity, redundancy--all of lifeline importance to the data-critical company -- and the list goes on.

Even for the less-tech companies of Seattle, the Colliers' brokers say there is an increasing tenant demand for beefier infrastructure and security—but a limited amount of supply. Rothrock comments that some folks are talking about converting now-vacant telco buildings to high-infrastructure offices. The problem he says is that since they were built to house equipment and not people—there's no parking.

Bottom line, Rothrock concludes, "There's not enough product to respond to the demand. We will see over time more construction orienting itself to what Fisher Plaza is providing today, but it's going to take more than a few years." In the meantime, many companies will need to focus their recovery plans on how to survive even if their buildings or infrastructure doesn't.