Amazon HDQ2---if DFW, then where? (Houston, Dallas: living in, average cost, moving)

[happycrow]

"Our lanes?" Good luck with that, buddy.

[happycrow]

So. Doing my due-diligence in case I'm wrong. And I'm reading.... half a billion less in incentives than NY alone and the guy in charge of the marketing saying he didn't go for the "hard sell" according to the article you yourself linked. I think my hypothesis is standing pretty well.

[Mr. Clutch]

Originally Posted by happycrow

So. Doing my due-diligence in case I'm wrong. And I'm reading.... half a billion less in incentives than NY alone and the guy in charge of the marketing saying he didn't go for the "hard sell" according to the article you yourself linked. I think my hypothesis is standing pretty well.

Incentives offered:

NYC: $1.85 billion
DFW: $1.1 billion
NoVa: $819 million

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...=.c0c03544b119

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/...ion-incentives

So the metro that doesn't "care, or need to care, enough about Amazon, to justify making an offer that would outweigh the Acela-corridor stay-near-the-lobbyists advantages of what he chose" (your words) actually offered more in incentives than one of the metros that was eventually chosen.

I'd hate to see what would happen if a company that DFW/State of Texas actually cares about puts out an RFP. The government might give away the entire Rainy Day Fund in that case.

[happycrow]

Wax sarcastic all you like, sir, but as the Germans say, "those who can read, have an advantage":

Dallas' proposal included a mix of incentives that added up to $600 million from the city or $12,000 per job. Texas' pool for economic incentives, the Texas Enterprise Fund, offers up to $10,000 per job. Together, that would have amounted to a maximum of $1.1 billion in incentives.

Dallas doesn't get any more credit for the statewide fund than Austin or Houston does.

(edit: WaPo's is paywalled so I can't read their breakdown. If they're giving a different numerical breakdown, summarize it pls)

[DTXman34]

Originally Posted by Mr. Clutch

I've always been of two minds about the DFW city/suburb relationship. On one hand, I think the fact that all of these cities exist and want to one-up one another as something that's generally beneficial for the residents of each city - the sheer competitiveness makes each city really consider carefully how it wants to plan and grow and makes them all better in the long run overall. I really believe that.

On the other hand, there are situations where the fact that Dallas has such powerful suburbs does hurt the region. One place is carrying out large, regional events (think Super Bowls, NBA All-Star Games, etc.) which can be challenging for obvious reasons. The other is situations such as these when a single, centralized, unified regional front is ideal.

Dallas leaders explicitly said after the fact that central Dallas was the only site Amazon was truly interested in. Not Frisco. Not Plano. Not Far North Dallas or Irving. Central Dallas. I always thought places like Atlanta, Austin, and Dallas had a shot because they offered enough of what Seattle does while still being different enough to attract another type of worker that's perhaps in a different stage of life or has different preferences. But Atlanta, Austin, and Dallas are not Marietta, Round Rock, or Plano.

LA and DC are my best references - LA in particular has huge suburbs but they don't seem as politically powerful or autonomous, relative to the city, as Dallas suburbs do (with the possible exceptions of places like Long Beach and Anaheim). DC has places like Tysons Corner, Arlington, and Silver Spring that are very urban suburbs, but they don't really compete with DC the city on the same level as it seems that Plano and Frisco compete with the city of Dallas. Most suburbs across the country seem to be content with grabbing a share of regional economic development. Some of the North Dallas suburbs seem to see their role as grabbing the reins and driving a good chunk of that economic development themselves. It's an interesting mindset.

The cons outweigh the pros. For one, the income inequality continues to worsen between the northern half and southern half of the metro. Then you have some cities (aka Frisco) that lures companies away from neighboring cities, thus exacerbating traffic woes and forcing workers to either relocate or suffer a miserable commute. This type of bribery should not only be illegal at the local/state level, but also nationally as well. Mobilizing a coalition of urban interests from Dallas, Austin, Houston, Fort Worth, and San Antonio at the state level is something we desperately need. We certainly need a much fairer distribution of transportation funds that's not 95% geared towards building more highways. We need to prevent future cancers (aka another Frisco) from growing.

[Mr. Clutch]

Originally Posted by happycrow

Wax sarcastic all you like, sir, but as the Germans say, "those who can read, have an advantage":



Dallas doesn't get any more credit for the statewide fund than Austin or Houston does.

(edit: WaPo's is paywalled so I can't read their breakdown. If they're giving a different numerical breakdown, summarize it pls)

I'm not sure I'm understanding your argument here. Are you saying Dallas giving $600 million of it's own funding means city leaders somehow care less than other metros? My point is that giving a major level of incentives, on the city level, indicates that as a city you care about this potential economic development. I'm not sure how you can argue otherwise. If one guy bids $100 on an item at an auction and the next guy bids $200 on the same item, does that mean the first guy doesn't care whether or not he gets the item? Of course not.

If we're just quibbling over numbers, that's a potato/potatoe situation to me. NY clearly cared about this but offered orders of magnitude less incentives than New Jersey ($7 billion) and Maryland ($8.5 billion). Does that mean those states care that much more?

Bottom line, if a city is willing to put together detailed economic and site proposals on it's own dime and offer hundreds of millions of dollars of its own money - it's not doing it for practice to woo the next company that it really cares about. The fact that other metros or states offered simply speaks to the local priorities of those areas moreso than anything else.

[HP48G]

Originally Posted by DTXman34

I think this article perfectly sums up why it actually was good thing that Amazon did not choose Dallas: https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburne...a/?ref=feat-hp
.

Some of those arguments are so insane and out of touch. Basically keep the city seedy, rough and in disrepair so it is “authentic” and not “generic urban cosmopolitan”.

[happycrow]

Mr. Clutch:

Fair enough; my original point is something like ten months old now and a lot of people even back then read into my argument, rather than taking it at face value.

Dallas cared -- in real-estate boom alone it would have put a section in the city on "Easy mode" for attracting a broad swath of the affluent to pump value into the area. But Dallas didn't need to win. It would be nice, but not mandatory, and Dallas' loss here amounts to *shrug* "well, poo. Okay, back to work, what else we got cooking today?" So Dallas could never justify putting together a package so good that it would outweigh the benefits of Bezos' new digs being on the Acela Corridor where he needs to be because of the massive lobbying he must engage in to avoid becoming an anti-trust target.

And in the end, as I predicted, it didn't: Dallas' package combined with its merits as a city, was strong (certainly stronger than the embarrassing string of cities who clearly did not, as noted, read the bloody rfq), but insufficient. I don't know that anybody foresaw Bezos plopping down operations on BOTH ends of the corridors near his houses, but he parked pretty much where he was always guaranteed to park.

[DTXman34]

Originally Posted by HP48G

Some of those arguments are so insane and out of touch. Basically keep the city seedy, rough and in disrepair so it is “authentic” and not “generic urban cosmopolitan”.

I think what Simek is trying to argue is that there is no clear distinction between private and public urban space. You have a company essentially owning a huge piece of the urban fabric. We have plenty of examples of it here anyways.

[RJ312]

Originally Posted by DTXman34

The cons outweigh the pros. For one, the income inequality continues to worsen between the northern half and southern half of the metro.

I agree that the cons outweigh the pros and am deeply disturbed by the income inequality between the northern half and southern half of the metro. I don't like that there is a push to develop land up north on the way to Oklahoma (tornado alley, seems unsafe) when there land south of downtown that doesn't need tearing up. Infill development is a better idea than pushing north towards Oklahoma.

Originally Posted by DTXman34

This is part of the problem with DFW. The suburbs here do not know how to stay in their lane nor do they know how to read a company's relocation criteria.

Originally Posted by Mr. Clutch

On the other hand, there are situations where the fact that Dallas has such powerful suburbs does hurt the region. One place is carrying out large, regional events (think Super Bowls, NBA All-Star Games, etc.) which can be challenging for obvious reasons. The other is situations such as these when a single, centralized, unified regional front is ideal.

I agree that there are issues with the city-suburb relationship. Dallas' Super Bowl hosting debacle was a good piece of evidence of that. The next six Super Bowls are already planned. The soonest Dallas could possibly host a Super Bowl is February 2025. That would be 14 years after the debacle.

A lot of cities are not well equipped to host Super Bowls and Final Fours. In most cities, the stadium where the Super Bowl/Final Four is far from the main nightlife district (see Miami, Dallas, Phoenix). New Orleans has the best setup for hosting Super Bowls and Final Fours since the Superdome is within walking distance of the French Quarter.