I just don’t get crystal city. Arlington has far better areas for this purpose
Not next to any educational institutions
It’s architecturally boring
The residential neighborhoods close by are modest and can’t be densified
Not a ton of buildable land
close to a sewage treatment plant which probably can’t be moved
Totally a government area (no tech clusters anywhere close by), g-man attitude
My guess is they put their lobbying effort here and hq2 goes somewhere else.
Crystal City is next door to an airport with direct flights to most US cities; it has a shockingly high vacancy rate of 20% so it's cheap compared to other places in the DC metro area, largely under single ownership; has room for expansion; and accessible by transit. It's not the worst pick for a potentially massive campus.
According to that WSJ article Crystal City would be just one of two campuses in NoVa. The other site was nearby in Arlington County - Potomac Yard I think.
Crystal City has vacancies, so Amazon might just be landing there first while their main campus is built in Arlington.
If NYC is indeed on its final short list why on earth would anyone pick Crystal City over NYC? If NYC made it this far to be in the final handful, Amazon likely is OK with high cost of living. NYC is a better HQ address than Crystal City, is more exciting, more transit options, has more talent, more diverse talent, and is objectively the world's capital. Provides better contrast with Seattle than Seattle/Crystal City. NYC would also be able to absorb Amazon while Amazon might negatively affect Crystal City with increased traffic and rising rents. You wouldn't even notice Amazon is HQd in NYC. A study from months ago show rents would be the least affected in NYC, completely unchanged vs every other top finalist location if Amazon moved there.
Amazon routinely blamed for driving up cost of living in Seattle. I'm surprised they would want to go elsewhere and be blamed for doing it again.
If NYC is indeed on its final short list why on earth would anyone pick Crystal City over NYC?
I can think of plenty of reasons. Cheaper, more land, closer to feds, VA is vastly more business friendly, and no NIMBYs. But Dallas is even better on all those counts except for closer to feds.
uhhh, it's about 2 miles from the center of DC and has metro access (not to mention the pentagon and airport)
fun to got back and read early posts itt and see all the usual suspects jump down the throat of those smart enough to know this would end up in nova/dc from day 1
Are you done patting yourself on the back yet? I appreciate your contribution to the conversation, but your tone could not be more off putting. I think you’d be hard pressed to find many posts here that didn’t consider the DMV area here to be a front runner.
Chicago and Illinois are not ready to concede defeat in the battle for Amazon’s highly coveted second headquarters, despite mounting speculation that the field has narrowed — and doesn’t include Chicago.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that Amazon has had advanced discussions about putting the second headquarters, or HQ2, in the Washington, D.C., suburbs in northern Virginia. The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported the company also has had similar discussions with a small number of other communities, including Dallas and New York City.
Despite the reports, officials in Illinois and Chicago, which together have offered more than $2 billion in incentives, aren’t giving up hope of landing the one of the biggest economic development opportunities in recent memory.
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