CHICAGO | Economic & Business Development

[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by Kenmore

yeah, more tax payer money funneled to wealthy developers, love it!

If you want things that have a public benefit, like a new red line station, then you need public funding. Would you rather there be a “Related” L stop where only their tenants can get on and off?

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Kenmore

hq2 has always been about power and influence, everything else was just a smoke screen

they are essentially printing money, costs aren't a concern when you're in line to suck up billions

I was talking about the workers pay, not Amazon's build cost. While they make nice salaries, in NYC it's not going to afford you anything special. I make a higher salary than my average peer at Amazon in NYC and I still cannot afford in Manhattan what I had in downtown Chicago comfortably on my own. I could go to Long Island City and afford that (semi comfortably but not totally), but ....

They want their workers, apparently, to have a good QOL and while you don't need to live in a luxury high rise or anything for that..you also aren't doing much favors by picking NYC in this regard alone in my opinion. Amazon gives good salary, but not good enough to say, afford an actual house in most parts of NYC or to afford a 1 bedroom condo in Manhattan (maybe a 1 bedroom in parts of Queens and Brooklyn though if you are senior). My co-worker and his father just bought a house in the very north part of the Bronx, almost out of the city. Pretty big at 2100 sq ft but still $650K. I think the house is at least 70 years old too. They were having a hard time finding places under $750K. Imagine if 70+ year old houses in Beverly or Mount Greenwood cost an average of $700K..

As far as this goes, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Dallas are much better. So maybe Amazon really doesn't give a damn about the quality of life of its workers if this is true other than going to a city with a lot of activities and renting your entire life.

[Kenmore]

Originally Posted by marothisu

I was talking about the workers pay, not Amazon's build cost. While they make nice salaries, in NYC it's not going to afford you anything special. I make a higher salary than my average peer at Amazon in NYC and I still cannot afford in Manhattan what I had in downtown Chicago comfortably on my own. I could go to Long Island City and afford that (semi comfortably but not totally), but ....

They want their workers, apparently, to have a good QOL and while you don't need to live in a luxury high rise or anything for that..you also aren't doing much favors by picking NYC in this regard alone in my opinion. Amazon gives good salary, but not good enough to say, afford an actual house in most parts of NYC or to afford a 1 bedroom condo in Manhattan (maybe a 1 bedroom in parts of Queens and Brooklyn though if you are senior). My co-worker and his father just bought a house in the very north part of the Bronx, almost out of the city. Pretty big at 2100 sq ft but still $650K. I think the house is at least 70 years old too. They were having a hard time finding places under $750K. Imagine if 70+ year old houses in Beverly or Mount Greenwood cost an average of $700K..

As far as this goes, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Dallas are much better. So maybe Amazon really doesn't give a damn about the quality of life of its workers if this is true other than going to a city with a lot of activities and renting your entire life.

obviously

loyalty is to shareholders

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Kenmore

obviously

loyalty is to shareholders

Obviously, but to think that's the only thing a large company knows that matters is both ignorant and naive. At the end of the day, it's many people (even with the 80-20 rule) that do the work. Many (not all) companies like this know you have to make the worker happy to want to work there in the first place. If you don't have that, you aren't going to be successful to your shareholders. It goes hand in hand and is obvious to anyone who has worked in large corporate environments before like this.

[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by marothisu

As far as this goes, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Dallas are much better. So maybe Amazon really doesn't give a damn about the quality of life of its workers if this is true other than going to a city with a lot of activities and renting your entire life.

If Amazon located in Honolulu, their employees would enjoy ridiculous amenities but pay for them in lower wages and higher rents. There's no free lunch they can offer their employees in that respect. The cities you listed offer different combinations of wages, rents and amenities--who is to say which offers the best "deal" for workers, if any?

[bnk]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Personal opinion on this is that people pay way too much attention to rumors. The fact that Chicago or about 16 other areas weren't mentioned in a few articles means nothing to me. They are all under NDA, and a few people were dumb enough to speak even though Amazon has been very adament the entire time about honoring the NDA.

A director of Global Economic Development from Amazon actually tweeted this out after the Crystal City news leaked:




I think a lot of cities, including Chicago, have been very tight lipped about this whole thing down to the the commercial real estate brokers. The news of "Chicago not negotiating" and not being mentioned in the articles, to me, could mean the following:

1) People in the Chicago camp from the city delegation to the commercial real estate side are actually treating the NDA very seriously and haven't said anything yet which is why these articles don't mention them. This is pretty obvious.

2) Chicago got HQ2 (one of the cities chosen at least) and is done negotiating. The WSJ article means that just because they aren't negotiating doesn't mean they're done.

3) Chicago did not get it and the city is still smart enough to honor the NDA.

4) Chicago did not get it, the city is smart enough to honor the NDA, and it's showing Amazon how tight lipped it can be in case they decide to go back on another city.

It is any one of these, but IMO it's too premature to count #1 and #2 out for Chicago. Not that it might not be the case, but there's not enough info to count Chicago out yet IMO. I find it interesting that the spokesperson for Chicago did not go all negative in their quote. They could have said something else, but they're not even saying that the phone went cold like some other cities said last month when work of more visits to NYC, Chicago, Miami, etc broke. Still sticking to the NDA better than a lot of other places:

"As fun as it is to speculate on rumors, we're not playing that parlor game. We've led the nation in corporate relocations for five years in a row because of the strengths of Chicago's talent, transportation, training, technology and transparency."

All good stuff but it’s more likely Rahm has known for some time that we were out of the running, and made up his mind not to run for re-election.
I couldn't imagine Rahm walking away from something like this unless he was going to be employed by AMZN personally.

[the urban politician]

Ugh, I already see Aaron Renn tweeting how this is a "repudiation of Chicago" and falling back on his "Superstar cities" nonsense. Anything that supports his hypothesis, I guess.

Reality is, I think Chicago's biggest failing right now is the State's finances. That would scare anybody away. There are no issues with talent and workforce--at all.

But I already predict that there will be some sort of Blog Post about how this is a "write off" of Chicago, and of course Crains will post it, and all of the doomsayers will be out in full force.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Ugh, I already see Aaron Renn tweeting how this is a "repudiation of Chicago" and falling back on his "Superstar cities" nonsense. Anything that supports his hypothesis, I guess.

Reality is, I think Chicago's biggest failing right now is the State's finances. That would scare anybody away. There are no issues with talent and workforce--at all.

But I already predict that there will be some sort of Blog Post about how this is a "write off" of Chicago, and of course Crains will post it, and all of the doomsayers will be out in full force.

NYS isn't any better from a fiscal health perspective. It may actually be worse overall. I think there are more factors at play than we could possibly hypothesize about.

[Kenmore]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Reality is, I think Chicago's biggest failing right now is the State's finances. .

don't worry, tax increases and legalization are coming

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Reality is, I think Chicago's biggest failing right now is the State's finances.

I think you meant to write, "Reality is, I think Chicago's biggest failing right now is the weather."

. . .

[the urban politician]

Crains isn’t shedding a tear:

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/news...-amazon-office

[marothisu]

The only whining should have been if Chicago did not make the top 20. Chicago made the top 20 so there could not be complete whining. I'm not counting anything until the official announcement for whoever gets it

[rgolch]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Crains isn’t shedding a tear:

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/news...-amazon-office

Respect level for Crains just jumped exponentially.

Make no mistake, I would have loved to see H2Q at even half size to come to Chicago. But not getting it doesn't mean we're second rate or dying. Crain's pretty much nailed it in that article.

And I'll prematurely issue a congrats to NY and DC for landing a shit load of high paying jobs. Time to move on...

[marothisu]

I find that a few of these guys from Crains kind of know what they're talking about with tech sometimes. I forget who but either Cahill or Pletz was literally the only person in the world in an article to call out how important labor force size is in terms of pulling something like this off. Anybody who didn't consider it, you can judge instantly that they don't know as much as they think. One of these two guys though hit the nail on the head with that, so I'm not surprised with this article either.

[F1 Tommy]

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

I think you meant to write, "Reality is, I think Chicago's biggest failing right now is the weather."

. . .

NYC has pretty bad winter weather also with the noreaster helping them get bigger storms than Chicago has ever had and only a little warmer on average. And atleast Chicago does not get hurricanes with massive flooding !!

[killaviews]

I was and still am hoping Chicago will land a new largest private employer. Who’s the largest private employer in the CBD? JPMorgan Chase, United? What’s the largest lease - probably under 1,000,000 square feet. It is an impressive CBD no matter what, but what if we had something like a Comcast filling up multiple towers? I want to see a growing giant downtown. I don’t think we have one of those yet.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by killaviews

I was and still am hoping Chicago will land a new largest private employer. Who’s the largest private employer in the CBD? JPMorgan Chase, United? What’s the largest lease - probably under 1,000,000 square feet. It is an impressive CBD no matter what, but what if we had something like a Comcast filling up multiple towers? I want to see a growing giant downtown. I don’t think we have one of those yet.

I'm not sure if your semantics are off here, but Chicago has the 2nd largest CBD (NYC being the largest) in the country. As of March 2017, there were 168,000 more jobs downtown than in March 2010 which is a 16.6% growth (https://www.chicagobusiness.com/arti...eak-in-decades). The population of downtown has also grown (comparing ACS to ACS) by over 25% since 2010. Not sure what you mean by this because it's already very big and growing very well.

[the urban politician]

Yeah, plus there is something to say about not having too many eggs in one basket.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by killaviews

I was and still am hoping Chicago will land a new largest private employer. Who’s the largest private employer in the CBD? JPMorgan Chase, United? What’s the largest lease - probably under 1,000,000 square feet. It is an impressive CBD no matter what, but what if we had something like a Comcast filling up multiple towers? I want to see a growing giant downtown. I don’t think we have one of those yet.

If steely hadn't deleted my comments on lease sizes in the WPS thread you might have some sense of scale when it come to lease scale.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by marothisu

I'm not sure if your semantics are off here, but Chicago has the 2nd largest CBD (NYC being the largest) in the country. As of March 2017, there were 168,000 more jobs downtown than in March 2010 which is a 16.6% growth (https://www.chicagobusiness.com/arti...eak-in-decades). The population of downtown has also grown (comparing ACS to ACS) by over 25% since 2010. Not sure what you mean by this because it's already very big and growing very well.

I think he meant a giant company growing rapidly downtown, not downtown itself growing.