What city would you move to so you can work at HQ2?
Los Angeles
Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America
361–370 of 490 posts
Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America
#362Come to Atlanta! Great schools, great weather, downtown is under utilized, decent mass transit. One of the fastest grow tech locations in the country. We offer, no hurricanes, no earthquakes, no tidal waves, no forest fires, no flooding, and once every 10 year snow storms. We are on the opposite coast which protects you from N Korean actions. Plus you can fly anywhere from our airport!
A reasonable choice to be sure, but I do disagree on the weather and mass transit part. Atlanta's urban sprawl means that fewer residents live near a transit stop than in most cities of comparable size. And the weather - obviously that's a personal choice, but for me the heat and humidity in summer is debilitating.
Summer is hot for sure. But in a world of AC I find it doesn't bother me as much. I go for a bike ride at 7 am when its 73 outside, and work all day!
As for the sprawl, there is a huge building boom going on inside the city, 10's if not a 100 thousand new apartments going up. Bike lanes being added, its actually becoming civilized!
Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally agree! 50,000 people making 100k+ per year is a lot of taxes, it will increase land values. Please come to my city so my house can double in value. Hm...
I'm hoping not, because I'm enjoying cheap rent in a metropolitan city (Chicago). I don't want to compete for rent with even more technies than already exist with, esp. when Amazon is going to pay above market wages.
Chicago would be another good candidate.
Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America
#364Come to Atlanta! Great schools, great weather, downtown is under utilized, decent mass transit. One of the fastest grow tech locations in the country. We offer, no hurricanes, no earthquakes, no tidal waves, no forest fires, no flooding, and once every 10 year snow storms. We are on the opposite coast which protects you from N Korean actions. Plus you can fly anywhere from our airport!
Atlanta was one of the top places that came to my mind given their requirements. It's really compares favorably with Seattle for size, access, tech talent.
Having grown up in ATL and moved to SEA I don't think there's a lot of tech talent in ATL, but there's tons of potential for that to change. GT's college of computing has ~4k undergrads and masters. There's also ga state and emory within a short drive.
Right now it seems like mailchimp is getting as much of the graduates as they can.
Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree. Atlanta is a great choice.
Except that I want to live in Atlanta even less than I want to live in Seattle. It has a kind of psychic oppression field over it that makes me want to immediately turn around and leave. Atlanta looks good on paper. It always does. But actually being in the city tells me a different story. That said, I think only Atlanta, NYC, Chicago, or Boston could absorb the extra demand for skilled employees without sucking the…
What rubbed you wrong with ATL?
Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone needs to pay taxes Why is this different than New Hampshire competing with other states by having no income tax?
Honestly, because it's a race to the bottom. On top of that, there have been many instances of companies negotiating massive tax breaks only to relocate again after a few years. Those tax dollars are better spent making the city more attractive to people and improving the universities. This will provide for more organic growth through startups founded by people anchored to the city by their social network.
I could see why a city wouldn't want to pay real money and then have the company move, but what's the problem if they agreed not to tax Amazon and then Amazon relocates?
Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America
#367OK, what are the options? Here's the list of the top 50 North American metro areas over the desired 1,000,000 population.[1] This gets down to the Nashville, TN area, at 1.8 million, so it's not the full list. Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba are probably out, both for political reasons and being islands. Mexico is probably out given the current administration's positions. San Juan is on an island and too remote, although the tax deal in Puerto Rico might keep it in consideration.
Amazon seems to want a city where they would be a Big Deal, maybe the dominant employer. In New York or LA, they'd just be another big business.
Weather is an issue. They'll want some place that doesn't flood or get snowbound, since their HQ city will include some distribution centers. That knocks out Minneapolis - St. Paul, Houston, Miami, and Tampa.
They probably don't want a super high cost area, which knocks out SF-Oakland-San Jose. Maybe Washington, DC, too.
Extreme high crime areas are out - that takes out Tijuana and Detroit.
Mass transit is a specified requirement. This takes out cities with weak transit systems.
Not too close to Seattle, since they want to be more geographically distributed. That probably takes out the West Coast cities.
So what's left?
Chicago
Dallas–Fort Worth
Toronto
Philadelphia
Atlanta
Boston
Phoenix
Montreal
Denver
St. Louis
Baltimore
Charlotte
Orlando
San Antonio
Pittsburgh
Cincinnati
Las Vegas
Kansas City
Cleveland
Columbus
Austin
Indianapolis
Nashville
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_metropo...
Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America
#368I'll suggest a dark horse candidate: Indianapolis. Indy is close to two top 5 engineering colleges (UIUC and Purdue) and one top 10 business school (IU). Purdue has a unique product history with Amazon [1] and Amazon has four warehouses within an hour drive (though to be fair, that's true of a lot of cities). The city has seen major investment from outside tech companies like Salesforce [2], IAC [3], and others in re…
Unlikely. One of the requirements is daily direct flights to/from Seattle. Indy does technically have that but it's exactly 1 flight with poor timing for business considerations. They list a few other destinations as must-have nonstop flights, but I'm not sure how good those are. They're also putting a lot of stress on public transit, which is pretty abysmal in Indiana. They also don't want to sacrifice on some of th…
The flights will come as soon as the demand is there.
Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America
#369Come to Atlanta! Great schools, great weather, downtown is under utilized, decent mass transit. One of the fastest grow tech locations in the country. We offer, no hurricanes, no earthquakes, no tidal waves, no forest fires, no flooding, and once every 10 year snow storms. We are on the opposite coast which protects you from N Korean actions. Plus you can fly anywhere from our airport!
A reasonable choice to be sure, but I do disagree on the weather and mass transit part. Atlanta's urban sprawl means that fewer residents live near a transit stop than in most cities of comparable size. And the weather - obviously that's a personal choice, but for me the heat and humidity in summer is debilitating.
ATL does have marta it's just that white people neglected it for most of it's history.
The last year I lived in ATL I took marta to work as my commute.
Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America
#370Portland, Philadelphia, Atlanta based on what Amazon wants / needs.
Portland suffers from the same cascade fault as Seattle and Oregon was much later to the party in terms of realizing they had a risk and addressing it.