Amazon HQ2 thread

[The North One]

Everyone on this website knows what the Hudson Rails site looks like, you don't need to keep reposting it..

Anyway, what if this is all just a sham? A scheme to scare Washington into treating the company better and getting incentives over there? What better way to do that than all this.

[JoeMusashi]

Originally Posted by bnk

The whole 7 point argument is worth the read from marothisu but you would have to go to the Chicago business link I provided earlier in this thread to read it. http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=225033&page=24



This whole post was great ... There's ways of giving incentive without writing Billion dollar checks ala Foxconn scam.

They didn't give them a billion dollar check. Foxconn must meet hiring requirements of 13,000 workers over a 15 year period to get the incentive. I understand political rivals of Walker/Trump and some Chicagoans are salty but cmon!

One could argue that helping bring in a major manufacturer that will create tens of thousands of ancillary jobs for working class residents is a better use of government than the kings ransom that will be paid out to Amazon. The workers hired by Amazon in the winning city will certainly negatively impact existing residents. Lower income residents will be priced and driven out of their own cities by thousands of new yuppies flush with $100,000 incomes.

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by The North One

Everyone on this website knows what the Hudson Rails site looks like, you don't need to keep reposting it..

Anyway, what if this is all just a sham? A scheme to scare Washington into treating the company better and getting incentives over there? What better way to do that than all this.

I said this earlier. Paul Allen once wanted to try and convince officials to move the Port of Seattle to Tacoma and develop that area into a mixed use neighborhood. Makes me wonder...

[chris08876]

I think in the end, NY offers really the best opportunity.

Although as much as I am pro NY, I would like to see a city like Philly get it. I think we all need to share the love. Granted 8 million square feet or more is very nice, but Philly should have it.



But I also think Newark NJ would be great. My order of importance in this regard is: Newark > Philly > NYC. I doubt Newark, but surely would aid the city tremendously.

[sukwoo]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

this is the total opposite reaction of everyone i know who has lived in Seattle long term. most people are not skyscraper fanboys studying density charts on their friday evenings. they just want interesting places to live that are affordable to the middle class, and Amazon has directly contributed to making seattle largely unattainable to everyone other than highly paid tech workers.

also, renters are a massive component of the modern city (increasingly so as younger people push of home buying longer). simply shrugging off their situation is not productive to maintaining a viable healthy city.

i am not opposed to growth, its necessary. but i am a fan of measured incremental growth. a 50K influx all at once is going to fundamentally change what it means to live in whatever city it is that wins this. and it will not all be for the best.

Who said anything about all at once? The RFP talks about 50k over 10-15 years.

[Nomad9]

I just hope they end up in a dark-horse type location. It would be boring and kind of a wasted opportunity to go someplace that's already exploding with growth and prosperity. I'll be disappointed if they end up in:

The "hip" cities:
Austin
Denver
Nashville
Etc.

Sprawly, sun-belt corporate-poachers:
Dallas
Atlanta
Charlotte
Raleigh
Houston
Phoenix
Orlando
Etc.

I know lots of those places make sense from a business perspective, however, which is what will drive the decision. I'd love to see them use this to totally reinvigorate a former alpha city, like Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore.

For personal reasons I'd also love if they chose Philly. Sort of a nice compromise between new hip city and former industrial/rust belt city. Has good transit, easy access to other big cities, strong talent base (Penn, Princeton, Villanova, Temple, several prestigious liberal arts colleges, Univ. of Delaware, Drexel...all within ~1 hour drive, not to mention it's close to all the other northeastern elite schools), cheap compared to other big Bos-Wash cities, really urban and lots of character/history.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by chris08876

I think in the end, NY offers really the best opportunity.

Although as much as I am pro NY, I would like to see a city like Philly get it. I think we all need to share the love. Granted 8 million square feet or more is very nice, but Philly should have it.



But I also think Newark NJ would be great. My order of importance in this regard is: Newark > Philly > NYC. I doubt Newark, but surely would aid the city tremendously.

I would disagree that NY offers the best opportunity.

NY offers the most expensive opportunity for what Amazon is trying to achieve.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by sukwoo

Who said anything about all at once? The RFP talks about 50k over 10-15 years.

Thank you, I was going to post a response to Via on that point, but you took care of it for me.

[JMKeynes]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

I would disagree that NY offers the best opportunity.

NY offers the most expensive opportunity for what Amazon is trying to achieve.

NY blows the doors off of every other city. The fact that NY, London, and SF are among the most expensive cities in the world doesn't dissuade companies fro being based there.

In fact, Amazon is building a new European HQ in London. If costs were their sole concern, they could have gone to Dublin.

[montréaliste]

Wudz all this torque aboud fifty thousand humid beans working for Amazon at this hypodermical location fifteen years hence?

Heck, we'll all be relying on Artie Fischl's intelligence to run things by then. Sheesh.

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by JMKeynes

NY blows the doors off of every other city. The fact that NY, London, and SF are among the most expensive cities in the world doesn't dissuade companies fro being based there.

In fact, Amazon is building a new European HQ in London. If costs were their sole concern, they could have gone to Dublin.

Dublin is a very expensive city.

[osmo]

Originally Posted by JMKeynes

This will be awarded to the city that gives the most money. However, money aside, NY leads by a mile:

1. Unparalleled flight connections to the world.

2. Along with Boston, shortest flights to Europe and the Middle East.

3. Along with Boston, unparalleled universities. In fact, NY blows Boston
away when nearby Princeton and Yale are included.

4. Bezos has a $30m apartment here.

5. Amazon just bought a building across from the ESB.

6. Amazon is opening two bookstores here.

7. Amazon just announced a huge new facility in SI.

8. NY is the financial and cultural capital of the world.

Amazon could build a campus here!

Where is the 100 acre is in NYC for Amazon to build? This is where old world cities of Boston and NYC get hammered as they don't have the land availability to make this work. Amazon wants land it ready to go, they are not looking for quirk land assembly or challenging land arrangements. Your Chicago and Houston types all have land tracts that can be easily put together and made into a campus site.

Where near mass transit does NYC have 100 acres open?

[JMKeynes]

Amazon could build millions on sf right there in the yards, which is a transit
Mecca.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by subterranean

I said this earlier. Paul Allen once wanted to try and convince officials to move the Port of Seattle to Tacoma and develop that area into a mixed use neighborhood. Makes me wonder...

That's incorrect. Nobody has ever suggest that "the port" move. Only repurposing one terminal. If I recall it was mostly Frank Stagen.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by chris08876

I think in the end, NY offers really the best opportunity.

Although as much as I am pro NY, I would like to see a city like Philly get it. I think we all need to share the love. Granted 8 million square feet or more is very nice, but Philly should have it.



But I also think Newark NJ would be great. My order of importance in this regard is: Newark > Philly > NYC. I doubt Newark, but surely would aid the city tremendously.

Originally Posted by JMKeynes

NY blows the doors off of every other city. The fact that NY, London, and SF are among the most expensive cities in the world doesn't dissuade companies fro being based there.

In fact, Amazon is building a new European HQ in London. If costs were their sole concern, they could have gone to Dublin.

Oh, get over the over the top dramatization. Amazon doesn't need to be in New York. This is just going to be a glorified back office. They would be idiots to put this in Manhattan.

[JMKeynes]

If, in your view, they seek nothing other than cheap space, great financial incentives, and proximity to a major airport, then the "contest" is over. They should plant their flag in Plano, Texas tomorrow.

[ssiguy]

Again, I am sort of surprised how my American friends seem to list a litany of US cities but not Canadian ones. Just the fact that they stressed an NA location and not just American one reveals that they think a Canadian location is viable.

Toronto and, to a lesser extent Montreal, have all the boxes checked with 2 very distinct adanatges that effect the botton line which this is all about..............a 25% discount on everything due to the CDN$ and Canada's MUCH lower corporate tax rates. Income taxes are slightly higher as are sales taxes but that means little to Amazon itself as those are personal taxes and not corporate ones. Canada's national corporate tax rate is only 40% of the US and when compared at federal/provincial/state Canadian tax rates are still about 40% lower than in the US. Canada's paid for healthcare is far supperior and encompassing than Obamacare with much lower business contributions and no personal contributions. Canadian universities for continual learning are also about 60% cheaper.

All of these represent mega money for corporations and Toronto has lower Hydro rates than most US contemporaries and Montreal has the cheapest in NA.

Even forgetting the more "social" infrastructure that every city claims to have in spades, those "subsidies" offered by being in Canada represent huge savings for any corporation.

[ScreamShatter]

Hudson Yards is impressive. Philly has a version of its own ready to go with Schuylkill Yards (http://schuylkillyards.com/) and it sits right on the Amtrak line. Senior management could live part time in NYC or DC and commute to Philly pretty quickly.

Philly's also go Comcast and the second strongest university scene behind Boston. Plus, the city is affordable. That's an important factor for its employees (as they call out "cost of living" in the RFP).

Honestly, I think Philly is probably the most competitive city for the bid outside of Chicago. Philly's location on the east coast is a pretty huge asset, especially now that Boston, NYC, and DC are so expensive and Philly has remained affordable.

[James Bond Agent 007]

I'm almost starting to wish Amazon hadn't announced this, all it's doing is giving people stupid reasons to argue in favor of their favorite city and to bitch and moan about other cities.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I'm Canadian so I admit to having a bit of a bias but that said, I think many of you are not taking seriously Toronto's chances. Amazon said another NA headquarters so if they were just thinking US they would have said American headquarters. Obviously they think a Canadian city is viable and Toronto seems to check a lot of the boxes.

Very low crime, highly educated workforce, much lower corporate taxes than any US city, great urban transport with a direct downtown to airport rail line, excellent universities, Eastern time zone, a massive amount of developable downtown land, the fastest growing high tech workforce in NA, excellent road, rail, and international connections, one of the world's largest banking & financial centres, and a very high quality of life that would be very enticing to get their international workforce from.

All of Canada also offers a 25% discount due to the CDN$ over their US rivals and Canada's much more welcoming immigration system makes getting foreign workers much easier as opposed to the US which seems to be gong in the other direction. Hell, Geekwire just put out it's list of the top 6 choices in NA and Toronto tops the list.

I am not saying Toronto will get it but I am shocked how many Americans here think a US location is a given.

I've been skimming quickly through the posts and I came to the same conclusion as you: 95% of Americans dismiss Canada because they know next to nothing about it.

The biggest challenge for Toronto is effectively communicating what already exists. Toronto ticks off every box in Amazon's proposal... and a few none of the others do. If Toronto does land this thing I imagine there will be a collective gasp of shock and puzzlement right across the United States.