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"Pickleball-Free American"
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Location: St Simons Island, GA
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One factor I had not heretofore considered was The Man Himself:
Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jacklyn (née Gise) and Ted Jorgensen.[12] His maternal ancestors were settlers who lived in Texas, and over the generations acquired a 25,000-acre (101 km2 or 39 miles2) ranch near Cotulla. As of March 2015, Bezos was among the largest landholders in Texas.[13] Bezos's maternal grandfather was a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. He retired early to the ranch, where Bezos spent many summers as a youth, working with him.[14] At an early age, he displayed mechanical aptitude—as a toddler, he dismantled his crib with a screwdriver.[15]
Bezos' mother Jacklyn was 17 and still in high school at the time of his birth.[16] Her marriage to Jorgensen lasted a little more than a year. In April 1968, when Jeff was 4, she married her second husband, Miguel "Mike" Bezos,[12] a Cuban who immigrated to the United States alone when he was 15 years old. His family was originally from Villafrechós, a little town in Valladolid, Spain. Mike Bezos worked his way through the University of New Mexico, married Jacklyn, and adopted 4-year-old Jeff Jorgensen, whose surname was then changed to Bezos. After the wedding, the family moved to Houston, Texas and Mike worked as an engineer for Exxon. Jeff attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. As a child, he spent summers working on his grandfather's ranch in southern Texas.[17]
Bezos often displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency; he once rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room.[18] The family moved to Miami, Florida, where he attended Miami Palmetto High School. While in high school, he attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida, receiving a Silver Knight Award in 1982.[19] He was high school valedictorian[20] and a National Merit Scholar.[21]
So, Bezos' roots run deep in Texas, and he spent many of his formative years in Houston. Score one for Houston.
In 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup company,[34] partially as a result of his fascination with space travel,[35] including an early interest in developing "space hotels, amusement parks, colonies and small cities for 2 million or 3 million people orbiting the Earth."[20] The company was kept secret for a few years; it became publicly known only in 2006 when it purchased a sizable aggregation of land in west Texas for a launch and test facility.[36] In a 2011 interview, Bezos indicated that he founded the space company to help enable "anybody to go into space" and stated that the company was committed to decreasing the cost and increasing the safety of spaceflight.[37] "Blue Origin is one of several start-ups aiming to open up space travel to paying customers. Like Amazon, the company is secretive, but [in September 2011] revealed that it had lost an unmanned prototype vehicle during a short-hop test flight. Although this was a setback, the announcement of the loss revealed for the first time just how far Blue Origin's team had advanced," he stated. [35] Bezos said that the crash was 'not the outcome that any of us wanted, but we're signed up for this to be hard.'"[35] A profile published in 2013 described a 1982 Miami Herald interview he gave after he was named high school class valedictorian. The 18-year-old Bezos "said he wanted to build space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for 2 million or 3 million people who would be in orbit. 'The whole idea is to preserve the earth' he told the newspaper .... The goal was to be able to evacuate humans. The planet would become a park."[38]
In 2013, Bezos reportedly discussed commercial spaceflight opportunities and strategies with Richard Branson, multibillionaire founder of Virgin Group and chairman of Virgin Galactic.[39]
In 2015, Bezos further discussed the motivation for his spaceflight-related business when he announced a new orbital launch vehicle under development for late-2010s first flight. He indicated that his ambitions in space are not location dependent—Mars, Lunar, asteroidal, etc.—"we want to go everywhere, [requiring significantly lower launch costs.] Our number-one opponent is gravity. ... The vision for Blue is pretty simple. We want to see millions of people living and working in space. That's going to take a long time. I think it's a worthwhile goal."[40] In 2016, Bezos opened up the Blue rocket design and manufacturing facility to journalists for the first time, and gave extensive interviews that included an articulation of his vision for space and for Blue Origin. Bezos sees space as being "chock full of resources" and foresees a "Great Inversion" where there will emerge "space commercialization that stretches out for hundreds of years, leading to an era when millions of people would be living and working in space." He sees both energy and heavy manufacturing occurring in space, having the effect of reduced pollution on Earth, in effect reducing the probability that something "bad happens to the Earth."[9] Bezos has said that he is trying to change the fundamental cost structure of accessing space.[41]
On November 23, 2015, Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle successfully flew to space, reaching its planned test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) before executing a vertical landing back at the launch site in West Texas.[42] Blue Origin is in an extensive flight test program of New Shepard which expects to begin carrying "test passengers" in 2017 and initiate commercial flights in 2018.[9] Blue is currently building six of the vehicles to support all phases of testing and operations: no-passenger test flights, flights with test passengers, and commercial-passenger weekly operations.[43]
In June 2016, Bezos reiterated his long term goal to see nearly all heavy-industry manufacturing factories in space as part of a wide-ranging, but rare, interview.[44] In September 2016, he added that he hoped to colonize the solar system.[45] Recently, Bezos also revealed that he was selling about $1 billion in Amazon stock a year to finance his Blue Origin rocket company.[46]
Blue Origin is obviously an important part of his portfolio and will only grow in importance in the years to follow. He has already made a very significant investment in Texas on behalf of this venture, and will no doubt want proximity to its' ongoing operation and development.
Score +1 for Houston and/or Dallas.
One thing that is clear is that in terms of philanthropy, Mr. and Mrs. Bezos are right up there with the Gateses, and Seattle has been a prime beneficiary of it. Aspiring cities are no doubt ecstatic over the prospect of that level of largesse.
Dallas is going to submit a bit for this one I just read this morning in the local paper. Looks like the transit bit is standing in a lot of these cities way. We just just landed L3 regional headquarters also.
I'm going with Baltimore (Which would be a less expensive option than DC, which at this point is almost as pricey as San Francisco)
maybe...Detroit would also be a good fit. And maybe Pittsurgh or Atlanta.
Raleigh-Durham hits every mark except for an existing mass transit system. They are constructing light rail currently. They airport is brand spanking new and has all the flights required. And as far as higher education Raleigh is right up there with the best.
Austin like Raleigh is techie heaven but also has issues with mass transit and all the good flights general depart out of Dallas and Houston.
i agree with everyone else likely an east coast city.
That's very interesting. I can see Austin inheriting Amazon's second headquarters. I don't think it's the best city as it seems to be overburdened with growth and doesn't meet their stated criteria, but you raise some interesting points.
This! Austin just does not have the space, work force or mass transit. Too much way to soon. Dallas Ft. Worth could support it but we keep getting companies as is. Toyota just moved their 5,000 folks from LA here a couple months ago. and the prices of everything are going up.
I don't want to make this a Pittsburgh versus DFW pissing contest. I think it's fair to say that Dallas outscores to Pittsburgh on several metrics, but Dallas misses two of Amazin's stated criteria (universities and transit) whereas Pittsburgh only misses one (airport). Blah blah blah Dallas has miles of light rail. It's still completely car dependent because they have terrible last mile transit.
Yes! It's a wake up call for the city. From what I've read, Dallas got real butthurt when Boeing chose Chicago over it back in 2000 over QOL metrics. Since then, the Uptown/Downtown core has gotten way more vibrant. I can see them doing the same for transit. DART is finally (and I mean finally) beginning to plan for a better future with more focus in the city. Sometimes you have to lose to get this town moving.
I read another article that stated they want a 1 million person metro, while also being 30 miles away from a major population center. So that rules out Denver and Minneapolis. Philly, DC, and Boston still seem good though.
I really hope they pick somewhere that allows them to be a big fish in a big pond, rather than a shark in a fish tank. They seem to be aware of the downside of having a huge work force in a small market. I can't imagine they would want to pick any place smaller than Seattle.
That is not a surprise to me. As I suspected earlier, they werent going to invest $5 billion and open a new HQ in a city of lesser international stature than Seattle-why should they? --if this article is true than kudos to Boston.
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