Quote:
Originally Posted by mumu
I agree that Atlanta has a lot going for it, objectively. However, less tangibly, it's a soul-less kind of place. It has no real center, similar to DFW and Houston; just endless sprawl with downtown(s) that empty after sundown. These are not places workers with a lot of options nationally prefer to live.
Maybe Amazon thinks they can change that with a massive investment in downtown Atlanta by collecting a bunch of parcels, but it'll be tough to make that happen in practice. Amazon, as big as it is, will just be another megacorp in the 6+ million metro area.
This factor is why I think it's going to come down to Denver and Austin as the finalists.
That Oracle grabbed another 6 acres in the Riverside Corridor might be a tell that they wanted to proactively secure more land as they consider Amazon a credible competitor for space in what may become a place for HQ2 or other large tech that wants to develop in an urban area that's already zoned to be walkable, mixed-used- lots of dense residential and retail all next to each other, and few NIMBY concerns.
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You are basing the reason that you think Austin and Denver will be the finalists on a factor that wasn't mentioned in their 10+ page RFP. I just don't see it.
I agree about the approach in Atlanta and that approach is their preference. The RFP says they are open to a ground up build but it's not their 1st choice.
In terms of Austin, I really like the Riverside and Pleasant Valley area for Amazon. It is big enough in sq feet but the RFP was clear for a big preference for land that is ideally already developed, more ideally has infrastructure and most ideal is zoned for us. The Riverside area is none of those things BUT maybe that would be ok since they have some room to grow in the Domain until their campus is ready. It's harder to imagine since only a portion of the Riverside fixes are going to be done from the 2016 bond. It'll have to be finished from funds from a 2020 bond and Amazon cannot make any assumption that there will ever be rail down that corridor.
Still, it's going to be a really great corridor down the road and it has the best balance of access to the airport and downtown. It's a shame we aren't already building a light rail line that we would have only had to pay for half of the bill (or else it would have never been built). Oh Well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Novacek
Why do they think Amazon would have put a size criteria in their RFP if they think they're going to judge in a way that make it impossible for a city even double that size to be considered?
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They did put a size criteria and Austin meets it but it's obviously on the low side from that requirement considering they are around the 31st more populated metro. That doesn't mean they will ignore the advantages that bigger metros have which make them stronger in some of the areas that the RFP identified.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Novacek
And how does Chicago score 6X on _percentage_ of population that is college educated?
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This is a little confusing. It makes more sense that they do an absolute count of college educated adults since that represents the number of potential employees they can pick from. I don't really think a percentage matters. I'm not sure if those lists for Austin are counting current students which would skew austin upward since the vast majority of UT graduates do not find jobs in Austin.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Novacek
Because that one the most egregious, and the one that I most readily knew (without looking it up) that Austin is way better than the cities ranked higher.
But let's look at the others.
>> They also considered ratio of general fund balance to expenditures
As in not running a deficit? Check.
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Where are you getting your information? The Austin 2017 budget is 3.9 billion in expenditures with a 1 billion general fund. This is a negative relationship.
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/loca...OEthirXYTg4VP/
Quote:
Originally Posted by Novacek
>> ratio of pension contributions to total government-wide revenues
I don't know this one off the top of my head, but at least no pension crisis in Austin.
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Not the case.
https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12...ng-texas-city/
Quote:
Originally Posted by Novacek
>>change in property values in 2015.
Again, a single year number is basically meaningless. But Austin is growing like gangbusters.
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It's not meaningless. You just only care about where Austin could be going instead of where other cities already are.
You guys are obsessed with growth. Austin needs to grow especially to meet a lot of these metrics while a lot of other metros don't. The hype of this growth is exaggerated because of how small austin is relative to all the other municipalities. That puts the potential damage to a slowdown or stop in growth bigger than Austin. You already have a huge workforce to choose from.
It doesn't help that Austin's only fortune 500 company was going down in flames and desperate to sell. Whole Foods was (ironically here) purchased by Amazon but that still isn't a good thing. Amazon could not have purchased it if it wasn't dying.
I'm sorry to sound like a broken record but the HQ of fortune 500 companies is important. They typically employ a lot of people and they are more likely to be college educated and full of people who have the necessary experience to populate a large corporation like Amazon.
It's actually really depressing to see the biggest employers in Austin. It's not even Dell which is the size of a fortune 500 company but it's private.
I mean... our biggest employer is a grocery store that doesn't have their HQ here. We're talking about employee at their stores.
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