Amazon HQ2 thread

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Crawford

So HQ2 was a scam, as expected.

Amazon has repotedly chosen Crystal City. Except Crystal City can't hold 5,000 Amazon employees, to say nothing about 50,000 employees. And it isn't urban, and doesn't really fit any of the supposed requirements. It's 1970's squat office buildings on a highway next to an airport, with zero streetlife. Crystal City is perfect for people who hate traditional cities.

So basically this is a big office, not unlike all the other big offices around the country. All a pathetic show to see how much communities will whore themselves.

Yep

[llamaorama]

How is crystal city not urban? All they have to do is demolish a few obsolete buildings already there and reconfigure a street or two. It’s not like Tyson’s.

It’s a couple metro stops away from Alexandria.

[skyscraperpage17]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

How is crystal city not urban? All they have to do is demolish a few obsolete buildings already there and reconfigure a street or two. It’s not like Tyson’s.

It’s a couple metro stops away from Alexandria.

Crystal city has a cookie-cutter, master-planned feel to it (a city within a city if you will, similar to the GM headquarters in Detroit). It's not the same as what they've done in Seattle as far as how they integrated their developments into the organically built environment of the city.

That said, Crystal City is understandably the best Amazon's going to get as far as an "urban" option without actually being in DC proper and also still getting the benefits of Virginia's relatively business-friendly government and congressional representation.

[k1052]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

How is crystal city not urban? All they have to do is demolish a few obsolete buildings already there and reconfigure a street or two. It’s not like Tyson’s.

It’s a couple metro stops away from Alexandria.

I suppose almost anything is more urban than Tysons lol. Crystal City could be fixed with the right application of money, time, and vision certainly more easily than a lot of places. But calling it urban now is kind of like calling Rosemont urban to me. Technically some of the stuff they've built in recent years has tried to foster (or imitate depending your disposition) urbanity but with varying degrees of success.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

How is crystal city not urban? All they have to do is demolish a few obsolete buildings already there and reconfigure a street or two. It’s not like Tyson’s.

How is Crystal City urban? It's a sterile 1970's office park for Pentagon overflow. It's basically the same as Tysons, except a bit older and more in-town.

They could demolish the whole thing and start over, and it wouldn't be urban, obviously, unless you changed building codes to those of 100 years ago.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by Crawford

So HQ2 was a scam, as expected.

Amazon has repotedly chosen Crystal City. Except Crystal City can't hold 5,000 Amazon employees, to say nothing about 50,000 employees. And it isn't urban, and doesn't really fit any of the supposed requirements. It's 1970's squat office buildings on a highway next to an airport, with zero streetlife. Crystal City is perfect for people who hate traditional cities.

So basically this is a big office, not unlike all the other big offices around the country. All a pathetic show to see how much communities will whore themselves.

HQnot

[bnk]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/03/tech/amazon-hq2-location-tweet/index.html

"Memo to the genius leaking info about Crystal City, VA as #HQ2 selection. You're not doing Crystal City, VA any favors. And stop treating the NDA you signed like a used napkin," tweeted Mike Grella, Amazon's Director of Economic Development.




Memo to the genius leaking info about Crystal City, VA as #HQ2 selection. You're not doing Crystal City, VA any favors. And stop treating the NDA you signed like a used napkin. https://t.co/wqrZLqr8MQ
— Mike Grella (@MikeGrella) November 3, 2018

[The North One]

This is as urban as it gets

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8577985,...XGkwjTgtQ3htf6YnmBfuA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Why are there so many dead trees?

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Shawn

And one of the single largest publishers on the planet, with the single largest publisher network on the planet.

And the world's third or fourth largest streaming service on any given day with 155 million daily users.

And the world's second largest cloud network.

And a content producer with larger annual original programming budgets than CBS, ABC, or NBC: an expected $8 billion a year by 2020, surpassing Netflix.

And above all else:

The single most powerful user data aggregator, bundler, and reseller on Earth. Amazon has deep, longitudinal purchase history, past behavior, and predicted behavior profiles on every person reading this sentence. Doesn't matter if you actually use Amazon: there are a myriad of ways to probabilistically model your behavior based on all the other signals you leave online every moment of every day. And they sell this data to anyone. To my company, so that we can target you all relentlessly with ads for stuff in categories we know you're on schedule to buy soon. To credit card companies. To banks. To thousands of other data vendors, who then repackage and resell at a markup again and again. To governments: police departments especially.

Amazon is unlike any other corporate entity we've seen to date. And if you think it's just an online resale platform . . . I have some nice oceanfront property in Montana you'd be perfect for.

thats the corporate koolaid candy for attracting millenial techies. yes the future is always bright. the fact is amazon started as a retailer and primarily remains one. 85% of their money is made that way. more if you count prime. yes there is opportunity in logistics, thats their future. yes there is money to be made with their sales data, but amazon is only recently at the top of that if indeed they truly are because there are a lot of players in that particular game. google, fb, axiom, merkel, alliance, etc. are right there with them. just for one example, when someone buys amazon products, what do they use? my spouse’s company has all of that data.

amazon:

[mrnyc]

yeah looks like its dc — watch trump try to claim credit lol:

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/20...sions-hq2-crystal-city-northern-virginia

[bnk]

DC housing prices are already high. I guess heart was more important and housing and urban environments be damned.


https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk...ington-the-second-headquarters-of-amazon

...

The benefits of being chosen as the site of HQ2 are obvious, including at least five billion dollars in local investments. But Washington is already one of the most expensive, segregated, and unequal metropolitan areas in the country, despite—and in part because of—an already large white-collar workforce earning incomes well above the national median. Some fear, too, that with a base in Washington, Amazon might receive more favorable treatment by policymakers. “The only thing in between Amazon and one trillion and two trillion in market cap is regulation,” Scott Galloway, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said at Recode’s Code Commerce conference, in September. “No one is going to regulate the gentleman throwing out the first pitch of the 2019 Washington Nationals season.”

...

[mrnyc]

if they wanted to put themselves in a better position to lobby to not be trust busted and broken up, they needn’t have bothered with this administration.

[skyscraperpage17]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

if they wanted to put themselves in a better position to lobby to not be trust busted and broken up, they needn’t have bothered with this administration.

Bezos is concerned about a (Bernie) Sanders administration come 2021, not the current one.

Thus, see how he hollered when Sanders kept hitting him over Amazon's labor abuses.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by skyscraperpage17

Bezos is concerned about a (Bernie) Sanders administration come 2021, not the current one.

Thus, see how he hollered when Sanders kept hitting him over Amazon's labor abuses.

i see. well he needed worry about that happening either.

[skyscraperpage17]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

i see. well he needed worry about that happening either.

It's needn't, not "needed."

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by skyscraperpage17

It's needn't, not "needed."

hhah yes that cursed autocorrect obvs im on mobile so thanks h.l. menken good catch there.

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

thats the corporate koolaid candy for attracting millenial techies. yes the future is always bright. the fact is amazon started as a retailer and primarily remains one. 85% of their money is made that way. more if you count prime. yes there is opportunity in logistics, thats their future. yes there is money to be made with their sales data, but amazon is only recently at the top of that if indeed they truly are because there are a lot of players in that particular game. google, fb, axiom, merkel, alliance, etc. are right there with them. just for one example, when someone buys amazon products, what do they use? my spouse’s company has all of that data.

amazon:

You're focusing on revenue, not profits. No one cares about revenue - if they did Walmart would have a similar valuation to Amazon.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Crawford

So HQ2 was a scam, as expected.

Amazon has repotedly chosen Crystal City. Except Crystal City can't hold 5,000 Amazon employees, to say nothing about 50,000 employees. And it isn't urban, and doesn't really fit any of the supposed requirements. It's 1970's squat office buildings on a highway next to an airport, with zero streetlife. Crystal City is perfect for people who hate traditional cities.

So basically this is a big office, not unlike all the other big offices around the country. All a pathetic show to see how much communities will whore themselves.

There you go again, with your impossible standard of urbanity for America. Crystal City is quite urban for American standards. No, its not 14th st or something, but it doesnt have to be. The area is like a few train stops from the best parts of DC. It also is easier to get to from the Virginia suburbs than central DC(albeit very small time savings).

Its not like they are putting this in some suburban office park...

[The North One]

I don't think he has high standards in this case, Crystal city is pretty awful. There's really no sense of traditional urbanism to be found, roads are extremely wide, office buildings built like fortresses. It's a tiny strip of land bound by an airport with a large highway running through the entire thing, it only exists to house workers.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by The North One

This is as urban as it gets

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8577985,...XGkwjTgtQ3htf6YnmBfuA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Why are there so many dead trees?

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8533604,...gNqwoYeG5JcbuPLnxrprA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8562194,...-nuijuoOIWZOWoKwPRwqA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

These two examples arent central DC urbanity...but they aren't bad and could be worked with very nicely.