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My wager is on Atlanta. There is a large area of Atlanta, between downtown and the airport, which has not seen the enormous development that the area north of downtown has. The large property that used to be Fort McPherson would be ideal.
The "heavy rail" mass transit has two stops in the immediate vicinity. The airport is the largest in the US. Georgia is a right-to-work, low regulation state. The CoL is not astronomical. The city is diverse.
Yea, I think Atlanta is a really strong contender especially in regards to the universities, the airport, and having heavy rail transit.
I agree, if you build it, they will come, haha, as they say. So, the airport can grow/evolve, as can public transport. That's a big reason I still think a city like Nashville, or even Indianpolis, has a shot. They can land Amazon, then build out the infrastructure. This is most likely a super long shot though.
I agree that Denver is probably not on their radar. All in all, I think higher education and esteemed university status may win out over most everything else. That puts Boston, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta near the top of the pile....
I'm not sure why Denver wouldn't be on their radar. Denver makes a whole lot more sense with their attractiveness to educated Millennials and massive airport compared to places like Nashville and Indianapolis to me. Plus, Denver is a pretty good cultural fit for an organization like Amazon. The only real knock that I see on Denver is if they want to avoid another Western presence (it's not on the West Coast, but it's still fairly far from the East).
Once again, if people read the RFP, it is very clearly NOT a "if you build it, they will come" request. Amazon is requiring the infrastructure to be in place TODAY because they want to start moving in 2019 (which is essentially within 12 months of when they make their decision). I can't emphasize this enough. They're looking for the handful of perfect resumes (not rehab situations) and then it's going to come down to the financial incentives and cultural fit.
Frankly, Amazon probably knows which city it wants already and they're just using this RFP process as leverage to extract the best deal possible from them. This is about as "open" as an executive search at Amazon, which means that it's not really open at all. They virtually always know who they want to hire from the get go, but they're going to go through the motions of making it appear to be an open race to put pressure on the person that really want to agree to deal more quickly and/or on better terms for Amazon.
Frankly, Amazon probably knows which city it wants already and they're just using this RFP process to extract as leverage to extract the best deal possible from them.
...literally EVERYTHING they're looking for and more, wrapped up into two videos.
#AmazonYardsPhiladelphia
Ultimately I think this will come down to either Philly or Baltimore because of the visionary plans that are 30th Street Station District and Port Covington.
From my perspective, the value proposition isn't so much about Amazon itself, but rather that Amazon can instantly supercharge a whole slew of high paying ancillary businesses around it by moving to a city. We've seen incentives being provided to bring in factories in the recent past (which can employ a lot of workers but don't necessarily spur further development beyond the standard retail and restaurant options to serve those workers) along with executive headquarters moves (where the top executives move to a city, but the bulk of the other employees stay behind), but almost nothing on the scale of what Amazon is proposing where it wants a new base of both executives AND a critical mass of higher-paid employees that can instantly create an entire ecosystem around it.
There won't be just retail and restaurants being built to serve these workers (although that's still all well and good). This is about the accounting, law, marketing and consulting firms in that city getting a massive influx of business and, in turn, hire even more highly-paid employees. It's also about the top tech talent that ends up *leaving* Amazon to create new companies and/or become new leaders of existing companies in that city. Amazon is also unique among tech companies where, for better or worse, they're involved in a LOT of different industries. Beyond web commerce retailing, they have (a) become the dominant cloud services providers to companies with Amazon Web Services (created off of the backbone of their own IT infrastructure operations), (b) created an entertainment business where they're funding TV shows that have won Emmy Awards and movies that have been nominated for Oscars, (c) instantly became a dominant food industry player by buying Whole Foods, and (d) a logistics operation that can be leveraged far beyond their own needs (similar to what they've done with AWS and cloud services). As a result, Amazon isn't just a leader in the tech, but it provides world-class opportunities for workers in the entertainment, retail, food and logistics industries (so all of those sectors will get an instant boost in whichever city is chosen).
At the end of the day, if you're not growing as city, then you're dying. High profile opportunities like the one being presented by Amazon come along very rarely. Ultimately, the financial calculation for a city that wants to compete is whether it believes the ancillary businesses that will be developed *outside* of Amazon would compensate for the incentives provided to Amazon itself. Just looking at the scale and scope of Amazon's business, this is an instance where heavy financial incentives could very well make sense because the upside of the instant ecosystem that can be built around Amazon is so potentially huge.
Yep, what they bring to the table will be well beyond the 5 billion over time. Other companies may move their HQs there to be a part of it. I'd give them free rent if I had to. They are a major positive for the city.
Yep, what they bring to the table will be well beyond the 5 billion over time. Other companies may move their HQs there to be a part of it. I'd give them free rent if I had to. They are a major positive for the city.
One thing not included in that though is what is lost as a result of their presence. In MSP, it could include Target and Best Buy -- both home-grown companies, and culturally relevant -- and good talent leaving existing companies. Not to mention cultural changes, traffic congestion, wage stratification, etc., etc., etc. It's not all sunshine and roses.
Ultimately I think this will come down to either Philly or Baltimore because of the visionary plans that are 30th Street Station District and Port Covington.
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Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
Yea, I think Atlanta is a really strong contender especially in regards to the universities, the airport, and having heavy rail transit.
That, and the amount of public and private works development in Atlanta right now is ambitious and overwhelming.
The Beltline and proposed connecting trails
Bellwood Quarry Park
The movie studios
Memorial Drive
West Midtown
South Downtown
Georgia State University
Serenbe (the absolute prototype of a sustainable community that is being mimicked all over the country, if not the world)
One thing not included in that though is what is lost as a result of their presence. In MSP, it could include Target and Best Buy -- both home-grown companies, and culturally relevant -- and good talent leaving existing companies.
While that may be true, Amazon could certainly harm (and already has harmed) home-grown Target and Best Buy from far outside of Minneapolis. To the extent that Amazon runs roughshod over multiple US industries (including retail), your city is far better off having Amazon there to cushion the fallout from companies like Target and Best Buy as opposed to having no cushion at all. For Minneapolis to take your position would be like saying that Chicago should have actively turned away the HQs of Target and Best Buy back in the 1980s/90s in order to protect their homegrown Sears. Seeing where Sears is today, that would have been a patently ridiculous and short-sighted stance of Chicago.
Quote:
Not to mention cultural changes, traffic congestion, wage stratification, etc., etc., etc. It's not all sunshine and roses.
Are those all great? No. However, when balanced against no downtown foot traffic, wage stagnation and high unemployment due to a lack of corporate interest, I would take all of the supposedly negative byproducts of success every single time. The "Mo Money, Mo Problems" complaints are only valid if you actually have money. All of the cities that have economic development problems and clearly *don't* have a gentrification "problem" (and there are far more of those in this country than there are Manhattans and San Franciscos) are not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
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