Amazon HQ2 thread

[bnk]

Interesting read.


http://www.slate.com/articles/business/m...ose_the_contest_for_amazon_s_new_hq.html



Your City Will Lose the Contest for Amazon’s New HQ


...

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by BnaBreaker

Thank you, guy from White Rock, British Columbia, for informing us all about what it's like to live in Chicago. Guess I shouldn't be outside on a blanket at this park right now because apparently, I'm definitely going to die!

If you read my post I said that Bos/Tor/Wash were whom I thought the battle would be between BUT I also added that if crime is not considered much of an issue by Amazon then Chicago and Philly as well.

Chicago has tremendous strengths {educated workforce, univ, transit, air, affordable} added by the fact that it probably has the largest rail network in the country.

Toronto also has great strengths and also weaknesses both due to being in Canada. Canada offers much lower tax rates and the dollar subsidy that means for every 40,000 American workers Amazon could get 50,000 Canadian workers at the same price. Canada is also more enticing for foreign workers and Toronto offers a higher quality of life. The negative of being in Canada is that Trump's "American first, second and last" mantra may make it politically unpalatable.

Boeing and Comcast are certainly feathers in Chicago's cap but not entirely analogous as they were specifically looking for American head offices and Amazon stressed a NA one.

[M II A II R II K]

Give it to Buffalo.

[mhays]

Slate used bad stats for Seattle offices.

It keeps coming up. Someone decided that 20% of the Seattle's core's Class A offices were Amazon. That has several problems:
--The denominator is only the space they count, even within their criteria.
--Often people quote it omitting "core" and "Class A" as if it's everything.

In truth, find the largest count by the various brokerages and expand it by I'd guess 10-20% to guesstimate the truth. Do this for all cities, though that just covers average undercount not the local version.

Amazon has about 5% of the local office market, which I'd guesstimate at least in the 160,000,000 sf range. Soon they'll be more like 7%.

Microsoft, BTW, occupies 14,000,000 sf in Redmond/Bellevue. They might be the largest single HQ though that's radius of 8 miles I'd guess. Another problem with the Slate stats....they only compared against other urban core users.

[ChargerCarl]

Matt Yglesias: They should just build it in Seattle.

https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/9/8/16271870/amazon-hq2-seattle

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by bnk

Interesting read.


http://www.slate.com/articles/business/m...ose_the_contest_for_amazon_s_new_hq.html



Your City Will Lose the Contest for Amazon’s New HQ


...

That was interesting. Does anyone know how long it took Amazon to build up their Seattle HQs campus? Also, why do they need so much office space?

[JoeMusashi]

The level of jerking off of Amazon we are seeing is remarkable. Remember when people hated Walmart? Amazon is Walmart on steroids. You don't even need to get off your fat ass with Amazon unlike Walmart that at least required you to drive your car and walk around. Amazon is the company that we see in science fiction and dystopian entertainment. I hope they do build in Detroit or Chicago, Robocop style. Their power is so great that they, along with their partner in crime NYT, run a partisan news & propaganda wing.

And then we get to the people working there. I keep hearing about 'Amazon culture'. Holy fucking shit. Reminds me of the movie Metropolis, except it will be a bunch of progressive wunderkinds doing yoga in the clouds above the slaves. The whole Silicon Valley culture makes me cringe.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

If you read my post I said that Bos/Tor/Wash were whom I thought the battle would be between BUT I also added that if crime is not considered much of an issue by Amazon then Chicago and Philly as well.

Chicago has tremendous strengths {educated workforce, univ, transit, air, affordable} added by the fact that it probably has the largest rail network in the country.

Toronto also has great strengths and also weaknesses both due to being in Canada. Canada offers much lower tax rates and the dollar subsidy that means for every 40,000 American workers Amazon could get 50,000 Canadian workers at the same price. Canada is also more enticing for foreign workers and Toronto offers a higher quality of life. The negative of being in Canada is that Trump's "American first, second and last" mantra may make it politically unpalatable.

Boeing and Comcast are certainly feathers in Chicago's cap but not entirely analogous as they were specifically looking for American head offices and Amazon stressed a NA one.

Canadians make a bigger deal about crime in US cities than Americans do. In my experience many Americans just seem to shrug it off as long as a metro has large affluent safe areas to live work and play.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by JoeMusashi

The level of jerking off of Amazon we are seeing is remarkable. Remember when people hated Walmart? Amazon is Walmart on steroids. You don't even need to get off your fat ass with Amazon unlike Walmart that at least required you to drive your car and walk around. Amazon is the company that we see in science fiction and dystopian entertainment. I hope they do build in Detroit or Chicago, Robocop style. Their power is so great that they, along with their partner in crime NYT, run a partisan news & propaganda wing.

And then we get to the people working there. I keep hearing about 'Amazon culture'. Holy fucking shit. Reminds me of the movie Metropolis, except it will be a bunch of progressive wunderkinds doing yoga in the clouds above the slaves. The whole Silicon Valley culture makes me cringe.

k

[dc_denizen]

I would view Toronto has being in the running specifically because the tech sector there has had a big hole to fill with the demise of Nortel and RIM. amazon could swoop and in and take some of the workforce that was built up for those companies and which is now fallow.

I'm less convinced about the other reasons for toronto (internationalism, etc)

[The North One]

I'll hate Amazon no matter what city they're in.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by lio45

Vancouver is one of the least livable cities on this continent, no question. Housing is totally unaffordable, wages are really low, and the weather sucks.

Gee . . . and it's on my short list of North American cities I enjoy visiting along with New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Miami and Washington DC.

It's really the only Canadian city I enjoy spending time in. My guess is it's like SF: You have to sacrifice some other things you might spend disposable income on to live there but there's so much free stuff to do you hardly notice.

Originally Posted by The North One

I'll hate Amazon no matter what city they're in.

I both love and hate them. I hate what they are doing to brick/mortar retail and, derivatively, to American streetscapes in larger cities but I love having a way to quickly and easily buy everything and anything I want when I am in places that simply don't offer much brick/mortar retailing like in the small Arizona community where I go in winter.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Gee . . . and it's on my short list of North American cities I enjoy visiting along with New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Miami and Washington DC.

It's really the only Canadian city I enjoy spending time in. My guess is it's like SF: You have to sacrifice some other things you might spend disposable income on to live there but there's so much free stuff to do you hardly notice.

Just playing around on craigslist its waaaaay cheaper than the Bay Area.

Hell its cheaper than Socal.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I both love and hate them. I hate what they are doing to brick/mortar retail and, derivatively to American streetscapes, in larger cities but I love having a way to quickly and easily buy everything and anything I want when I am in places that simply don't offer much brick/mortar retailing like in the small Arizona community where I go in winter.

This is only a problem because of inflexible zoning which makes it hard to reconfigure spaces and put them to other uses.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

This is only a problem because of inflexible zoning which makes it hard to reconfigure spaces and put them to other uses.

No: The "other uses" are rarely as interesting to passersby or neighborhood denizens as retailers.

I am watching a good example right now. A local art flick house is closing, put out of business not by Amazon but by streaming services like Netflix, to be replaced by some service provider or business office I will probably have no interest in at all unless I work for them (which isn't possible).

I'm just waiting for the nearby book store, that's been a book store for 35 years, to succumb to Amazon itself.

[pico44]

Originally Posted by The North One

I'll hate Amazon no matter what city they're in.

Yup

Fuck Amazon. Fuck them to fucking hell.

This is such a disgusting play by the most disgusting company in the history of the world. Woe to the city that allows them to build their Death Star. For shame!!!

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

Just playing around on craigslist its waaaaay cheaper than the Bay Area.

Hell its cheaper than Socal.

Yeah, but the wages are probably way lower and/or the taxes way higher.

[Pedestrian]

Why Amazon’s Growth Ambitions Don’t Fit in Seattle
By Laura Stevens
Updated Sept. 9, 2017 1:09 p.m. ET

A major reason behind Amazon’s new plan to build a second headquarters elsewhere in North America is the need to hire thousands more software developers. That will almost certainly be cheaper and easier in a city other than Seattle, experts say, where Amazon’s growth has helped fuel soaring labor and real-estate costs and a shortage of space.

In Seattle, where Amazon has been based for more than 20 years, the retailer has opened new office buildings to accommodate its rapidly growing workforce, which now tops 40,000. But Amazon said Thursday it is seeking a new campus to eventually house an additional 50,000 workers.

Seattle is “just not big enough to double the size of their footprint,” says Christopher B. Leinberger, a professor at George Washington University School of Business and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in land use.

Amazon accounted for more than half of the Seattle office space created over the past year and a half . . . .

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-amazons-growth-ambitions-dont-fit-in-seattle-1504954806

[subterranean]

I took a few classes with Leinberger. Interesting guy, but I call BS about there not being enough room in Seattle. There are plenty of areas around town that could be built up.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by subterranean

I took a few classes with Leinberger. Interesting guy, but I call BS about there not being enough room in Seattle. There are plenty of areas around town that could be built up.

It's not that there's not enough room. It's that there are not enough unemployed programmers and engineers (and probably that those who exist would have to be paid too much).