Vegas. Land is cheap, the weather is less miserable than Boston although it is indeed miserable in the summer. A couple of hours from LA and a major airport.
Few Cities Could Accommodate Amazon's New Headquarters
71–80 of 118 posts
Re: Few Cities Could Accommodate Amazon's New Headquarters
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went through Alpharetta with a friend once and saw all the expensive cars and jerk drivers. I thought it must be what living in Silicon Valley is like.
My experience has not been as bad, but since moving to the north side, I don't use the interstates as much to get around. The psychos all seemed to use the interstates. Or maybe I am one of the jerks.
[deleted]
Re: Few Cities Could Accommodate Amazon's New Headquarters
#73Most of the internal talk I've seen favors Vancouver. It's geographically close (with excellent transportation), is big but still has room to grow. Canada in general is a good choice because they have more lax limmigration policies.
What's the value in having two headquarters a few hours apart?
The cities are geographically close, but there is an international border between them. Canada has more open immigration laws opening up Amazon to a much wider talent pool. Considering that major difference, there could be a strong case made for having these major offices close by for in person collaboration.
Re: Few Cities Could Accommodate Amazon's New Headquarters
#74I find it interesting how many of these comments are sales pitches for their chosen cities. I don't have any preferences, since I have no desire to work for Amazon nor do I think my current city of SF is a good choice for reasons laid out in the article.
What I'm most interested in, however, is how you get around some of these problems. The article points out a number of issues:
Can even Amazon afford to pay 50,000 people on a New York or SF salary? That's going to be (almost) prohibitively expensive. They certainly can pay for a Michigan salary or an Alabama salary, but is the job market there in those places? The Philadelphia example from the beginning points out that while the city is large enough, the job growth hasn't been there for quite some time, implying that there might not be enough people to fill the needed jobs.
Could a city like Birmingham, AL or Gary, IN or Lincoln, NE support 50,000 new jobs? Are there enough available homes to house all those people? Parking spaces? What about the support jobs? For every N employees, you need M doctors or dentists or accountants or fast food workers or maids or auto mechanics to support the growing population. Are those jobs there? Are there people qualified to take those jobs? Can the new traffic be handled smoothly? I think the answer is "yes" to the above in the long term, but is Amazon going to put their HQ in an up-and-coming town and just deal with the growing pains in the short term? Or would they rather go to a larger city and skip those problems?
What about international airports? That limits it to a dozen or so cities around the country. Can Amazon survive in a place like Nashville, TN? Why or why not? Are there ways to mitigate potential problems of not being able to fly to London or Paris direct?
IMO, the potential cities themselves are much less important and much less interesting than the problems that moving a 50,000 person HQ to almost any city would cause.
Re: Few Cities Could Accommodate Amazon's New Headquarters
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn't Amazon be more interested in the economic conditions, rather than hiking and biking and the brewery scene?
Tons of sunbelt and non-coastal cities have spent decades optimizing for cheap land and making themselves "business friendly" over all other concerns. They still don't have much of a tech scene or high impact industries. And the same calculus that has prevented a mass migration of tech companies to Boise or Waco is the same calculus that will prevent Amazon from moving there either. My bet is Boulder; the Research Tr…
Boulder is too small. The whole city only has a 100,000 now. It's got a greenbelt and height restrictions, so you can't build it out much more. And there's very little regional mass transit to get people into and out of the residential areas beyond the greenbelt. There's nowhere to put another 50,000 families. Plus it is on the wrong side of Denver from the airport.
Denver or one of its suburbs would be a decent choice, but not Boulder.
Re: Few Cities Could Accommodate Amazon's New Headquarters
#76I think Philadelphia is a good choice. Center City is a 30 minute drive to Philly international airport. Land is relatively cheap, much cheaper than NYC, Boston, or dc. We have an ivy league school in the city, with another less than an hour away, as well as many other schools in the area. We have a large metro population with a good size technical and business industry already. We also have rail and sea shipping ava…
Philadelphia has gross receipts tax https://business.phila.gov/overview-of-business-income-and-r...
Any development Amazon did would be in KOZ (Keystone Opportunity Zones) which have existing tax abatements on most forms of taxes. Comcast was the initiator and argued for those tax incentives, so you know they've got to be pretty good. That means no fighting with state or local legislatures as the tax incentives are in place. Amazon would automatically qualify since they would be coming in from out of state.
Re: Few Cities Could Accommodate Amazon's New Headquarters
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn't Amazon be more interested in the economic conditions, rather than hiking and biking and the brewery scene?
They have to be able to get top talent willing to move to whatever city they select.
Agreed, and I've personally noticed a lot of people moving out to the Denver / Boulder area. On my team alone we had 3 people from the bay area move out to Colorado. It's an attractive place for tech talent, which certainly wouldn't hurt Amazon's cause.
Re: Few Cities Could Accommodate Amazon's New Headquarters
#78I find it interesting how many of these comments are sales pitches for their chosen cities. I don't have any preferences, since I have no desire to work for Amazon nor do I think my current city of SF is a good choice for reasons laid out in the article. What I'm most interested in, however, is how you get around some of these problems. The article points out a number of issues: Can even Amazon afford to pay 50,000 p…
Houston.
Low Taxes. Low Cost of Living. International Airport. Major Port. Plenty of Housing. Universities.
Re: Few Cities Could Accommodate Amazon's New Headquarters
#79I think Philadelphia is a good choice. Center City is a 30 minute drive to Philly international airport. Land is relatively cheap, much cheaper than NYC, Boston, or dc. We have an ivy league school in the city, with another less than an hour away, as well as many other schools in the area. We have a large metro population with a good size technical and business industry already. We also have rail and sea shipping ava…
The problem with Philadelphia is it's got too many poor people. There is a significant amount of crime, a lack of available housing, and a lack of land that would be easy to develop. Trying to acquire and develop land in Philly runs into problems of reducing the amount of affordable housing.
The city has advertised for bids multiple times to develop new properties, and only one or two people will bid. When someone does bid, it is for ten times the cost of other similar private development, and with many fewer available units than needed. And of course, there is already no parking, and parking garages are being demolished regularly in center city to be replaced with high priced rental units.
Assuming you got the space for your HQ and finished construction within a few years, where are your young tech people going to live? Out in the suburbs on regional rail, away from the amenities in the city? Gentrify a few more neighborhoods and build more ugly cubic-modern apartments? I just don't see where they'd put all those new people.
Re: Few Cities Could Accommodate Amazon's New Headquarters
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, the article doesn't address the Twin Cities, but it meets his criteria: - 3.5M metro area population - Very high education levels - Diverse population protected by strong civil rights - Major international airport (Delta hub; 16th largest in the US) - Very affordable - Large business community already (Cargill, Target, Best Buy, major Wells Fargo office, etc.) On the negatives, it is growing slower than other m…
> and the weather will be a turn off. Wow, one of the few cities that competes poorly with Seattle weather.
The weather here is beautiful a little more than half the year, but winter here is definitely a hard pill to swallow for those not used to it.