61–70 of 253 posts
Why doesn't Amazon choose a city that almost meets their criteria and invest the wealth they generate there back into the city? Then we get more good cities instead of overinvesting into any single city.
http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/end-of-amazon...
Grand Rapids, MI is just WAITING for something like this to turn it into a major city. It has an awesome culture and a ton of interesting things happening. However, the available tech job pool is still low and what jobs do exist are typically at non-tech companies who happen to employ tech workers.
I'm surprised to see Philadelphia eliminated so quickly, it ticks almost all of the boxes, and has a very large number of engineering schools (UPenn, Penn State, Drexel, Temple, Princeton, Rutgers, etc). It's transit is better than many of the other cities, and it has 2 major development plots in the city with existing full tax abatements. Not to mention its proximity to NYC and Washington, DC via Amtrak (~1h20m to N…
Why would Amazon want that rule? Wouldn't it just mean there's more competition for employees? It strikes me as the type of rule put in to ensure their secret favorite gets chosen.
I'm surprised to see Philadelphia eliminated so quickly, it ticks almost all of the boxes, and has a very large number of engineering schools (UPenn, Penn State, Drexel, Temple, Princeton, Rutgers, etc). It's transit is better than many of the other cities, and it has 2 major development plots in the city with existing full tax abatements. Not to mention its proximity to NYC and Washington, DC via Amtrak (~1h20m to N…
I said on the last thread we had on this that I think PHL is the weak link. It's not a great airport in terms of runways and other facilities and is at capacity. A plan to expand it a few years back was killed by local opposition. There was supposed to be an alternative plan developed after that, but I'm not sure whatever happened to it. I don't know what the time frame on an expansion would be or if the city would b…
As an airport, it's not that bad; I flew through there plenty of times back when I traveled more and did most of my flying on US Airways. Most of the northeastern airports have capacity issues, but PHL is -- no matter how bad it might seem to you now -- much better off than JFK, EWR or even something further west like ORD.
Though if, as you indicated previously, you want to insist only on cities which currently have nonstop flights to PVG, your choices are very slim. Only three US cities east of Detroit have that. Two of them (New York and Boston) either cannot provide the space or would provide it only at ruinous cost, and the other (Atlanta) has one of the worst "transit" systems I've ever experienced. And honestly, if Amazon were to set up somewhere else in the eastern US with an existing international-capable airport, you can bet Hainan and one or both of China Eastern and China Southern would start sending 787s there pretty quickly. As much as people like to complain about it, that plane was a game-changer, and a lot of secondary-tier US cities/airports now are getting nonstops to Asia that never would have happened before.
Though honestly if we're going to decide this on airports, I'd say Detroit is the clear front-runner, probably with Minneapolis not far behind, in terms of access to the rest of the country and the world, and letting Amazon standardize corporate travel on Delta (which is hubbed at Seattle, and at both Minneapolis and Detroit).
And those of us in Utah say... "Wait, no, we have Universities here, and could totally support Amazon." Then we think about the urban sprawl of SLC, and look at the outdoors and think about how crowded it has gotten already at Arches and Zion and say... "Yes, OK. Denver sounds good."
I'm surprised to see Philadelphia eliminated so quickly, it ticks almost all of the boxes, and has a very large number of engineering schools (UPenn, Penn State, Drexel, Temple, Princeton, Rutgers, etc). It's transit is better than many of the other cities, and it has 2 major development plots in the city with existing full tax abatements. Not to mention its proximity to NYC and Washington, DC via Amtrak (~1h20m to N…
Philly was dropped by the "job growth is strong" rule, which is also drops many other cities which would otherwise be fully qualified. So the question really is why would Amazon have that rule and how willing are they to bend in it. Why would Amazon want that rule? Wouldn't it just mean there's more competition for employees? It strikes me as the type of rule put in to ensure their secret favorite gets chosen.
Amazon made it clear that it was looking for "someplace in North America"... there are 2 other countries you've left out with metro areas that fit at least some of the criteria.
> We asked the economist David Albouy to rank these metro areas for us with an index he uses to measure how much people would be willing to sacrifice, in terms of housing costs and commutes, to live in desirable places. On that basis, we cut Charlotte, N.C. My experience being that neither housing costs nor commute times being horribly bad around CLT - this bums me out. It's actually a great city with lots of nature…
I agree that it should stay in the running. I'd like to see more tech in the south - there's too much on the West Coast.