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Well Atlanta doesn't need it; it's not a hollowed out, declining Rust Belt city that's seen better days but obviously it would be great to have. And interest did begin to wane some months back when the DC area began to convincingly emerge as the frontrunner but it began increasing again somewhat with the whole back-and-forth over the Gulch deal. But Nashville's win left folks from several cities scratching their heads; Atlanta is just an easy target right now since it's right down the road but you'd better believe there are other forumers talking about it as well, on this board and others. I do look forward to reading about how Music City pulled it off though.
agree there in regards to Nashville. I'm really excited to see what this will do for Nashville. Hopefully this will push the city towards a more dense and walkable layout with their transit improving leaps and bounds.
it's kind of weird. There are some cities that crave growth, almost to the point where if their cousin's family moves there they want to call the census bureau to add them to the population count. They want their city to feel exclusive, to be the next NYC or the next Hollywood. Sense I got was Austin told Amazon they'd discuss incentives if chosen, they didn't just blindly throw money. Most Denver residents I spoke to said "I hope Amazon doesn't come."
Actually the excitement about Amazon in the Atlanta forum wasn't so much about growth; it was about urban development. Shortly after the HQ2 announcement, a development company expressed interest in buying a huge chunk of underutilized land downtown which made for near perfect timing. Combined with two other large downtown development projects, major changes are on the way to downtown Atlanta and an HQ2 would have accelerated that. It was an exciting prospect to consider and it will still happen, but it will just probably take a little longer now.
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I'm happy that DC and NYC got it, and I'm not surprised. I knew it would go to an eastern city and those are the two alphas on the east. Easy choices. No offense to Atlanta, but you're not NYC or DC yet.
I was rooting for Philly and Newark myself as far as East Coast cities go (and Baltimore, before the list of finalists was released).
Atlanta knows it's not DC or NYC nor will it ever be. But I'd still wager that by being a finalist city, Amazon has some type of plans for Atlanta (and most other finalists) down the road. I think these are just the first of a string of announcements Amazon will be making within the next several months or so myself.
A word about Nashville. It is my understanding this pick is more for "Transportation Operations", than another "2nd" HQ. In this case, a good choice as it is roughly in the middle of the eastern half of the US. Combined with the massive population in the chosen areas of Northern Virginia, and New York City, it makes perfect sense from a logistical standpoint. Congrats Nashville.
It'll be on the edge of Downtown Nashville. My impression is that this will be about management and tech, through the management and tech will be a lot about logistics. They're not running products through there.
Also if Nashville is such a desirable city, why did the Tennessee taxpayers have to pay $102 Million to convince Amazon to come there?
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Originally Posted by Gaylord_Focker
Missed this part.
New York and Virginia are also shelling out big bucks, especially NY.
New York promised Amazon $1.525 billion in incentives, including $1.2 billion over the next 10 years as part of the state’s Excelsior tax credit. The state also pledged to help Amazon with infrastructure upgrades, job-training programs and even assistance “securing access to a helipad” — none of which came with a price tag.
Virginia promised Amazon an incentive package worth $573 million, including $550 million in cash grants — $22,000 per job. The state also pledged $250 million to help Virginia Tech build a campus in Alexandria, near the Amazon site in Arlington, offering degrees in computer science and software engineering. (Virginia, too, offered to help the company get a helipad.)
That wasn't Amazon. It was the municipalities and the developer, trying to come up with a catchier name
I always thought Crystal City was kind of catchy. National Landing is blah, but if that's what they want to call it, ummm, ok. Places in the DC metro area seem to change names quite a bit, it's nothing new. Plus you made a good point that the new site is a merge of a few different areas, so I can see why they felt it kind of needed a name. Maybe the locals will refuse to use the new name, and it'll become another National Airport (aka Reagan, but nobody calls it that).
Personally, if they wanted to change the name I would have gone with Bezosville. More honest, and also kind of fun to say.
Last edited by Piney Creek; 11-14-2018 at 05:56 AM..
The state also pledged $250 million to help Virginia Tech build a campus in Alexandria, near the Amazon site in Arlington, offering degrees in computer science and software engineering.
That's my idea of a great incentive. Amazon gets what they want, and Virginia benefits from having this, too.
You mean as far as this forum goes? In the beginning there was definitely a lot of excitement about it. But as time went on and the DC area was starting to look like the frontrunner, and as Atlanta started racking up some other wins of its own and there was a lot of hand-wringing going on over the Gulch deal to get the Norfolk Southern HQ, the excitement definitely subsided. And on top of that there's uncertainty about who the state's next governor will be. All of that quelled most of the enthusiasm that remained.
Well when the news of the split DC/NYC HQ2 broke, there was no need to justify anything; those choices speak for themselves and nobody can make up for not being DC or NYC. Then when the news of Nashville broke, it was like wait a minute...what's behind that? There aren't many logical lessons that can be gleaned from that one, at least not anything that Atlanta isn't already making significant progress on (e.g., improving downtown). And again, Atlanta gained a new F500 HQ and a couple of other nice eco-devo wins before the HQ2 news broke. Obviously the city still retains its appeal as a business hub, even if Amazon bypassed it (and several other cities). Plus, who knows? There are probably more announcements to be made by Amazon in the near future; they didn't collect all that data from all those cities for nothing. Much of this chastisement could very well be premature.
You'd have to be familiar with DavePa's recent posts in the Atlanta forum to know why Iconographer said that and it HAS been kinda weird on his part. It's one thing for locals to discuss it in detail and the potential impacts it could have on their city; it's quite another for an outsider to repeatedly come in talking about how he doesn't want to see Southern cities win this. He's been repeating the same lines for a few weeks now, regardless of the actual context of the discussion.
I visited like each of the ATLANTA forums in self-praise but infighting to ..... that got them ALL CLOSED. Visited like once each. A thread on Hartsfield's multi-billion dollar Improvements .... had me interject a competitors and the airport being brand new a few years ago. Had taken O'Hare's former titled as being stymied in expansions by locals.
That was when O'Hare was reported to get its own multi-billion investments. Did that really provoke Atlantan's that much? Now even a NYC airport is to get 13-billion in investments. Good for them too.
There was at least 3-Atlanta forum thread on Amazon coming. A new one created after the other was closed. They got themselves into bickering. But blaming visitors was big there and replies to argue. Better to ignore them if you can't stand questions and comments. In contrast .... the Chicago forum had one. Most comments hopeful, but the state politically without a budget and pension debt. The common reason it would not probably. No one needed to fight. It also became the SOUTH'S TIME IN RISING vs the North's decline and gonna lose getting Amazon and heads would explode there ..... in the Atlanta forum it seems.
One still ongoing I see.
The cognitive dissonance on this topic is off the charts! Why can't people just admit that yeah, we're really bummed, but congrats to the winners! instead of the well, we didn't really want them anyway and screw the cities that won. This after spending a year rambling on about why their city was clearly the best choice.
I thought Chicago would have been a good choice, but Amazon didn't, so although I'm disappointed, it's all good and I wish AMZN, NYC, DC and Nashville all the best.
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