Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 Evenly Between Two Cities

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 254 posts

Re: Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 Evenly Between Two Cities

#61

Post by bradchris »

chrisco255 wrote: post #55
thebradbain wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The writing is on the wall — Texas will turn blue sooner than later. Dallas is a liberal stronghold in Texas, and in absolute numbers turns out more for Democrats than any other city in the state, including Austin (percentage-wise Austin wins by +5%, I believe). Unlike Austin, which is gerrymandered in the state legislature, every single state/county/city official in Dallas is a Democrat. Dallas is also a gay rights…

Ft. Worth, right next door, is not though. I don't see this happening, by the way. Abbott is up by 15-20 points in the polls this year. And Texas is just different, culturally, than these other states. You can have your LGBTQ anti-discrimination and TX still remain red, BTW. They're not mutually exclusive.

Fort Worth is the largest non-Democratic city in all of the US, yes, but if you also look at every election you can see it too is turning bluer and bluer.

Also, the government race is not a good indicator. Lupe Valdez has made mistake after mistake in her campaign — I’m liberal, and even I wasn’t enthusiastic about voting for her. She’s doing so bad that she’s polling less than the percentage of registered Democrats there are in the state.

For change, look at the Beto polls — he’s not favored to win, but he’ll come within 5 points. That’s huge considering Cruz previously won by +21. Furthermore, in the 2016 election Texas was only +9 Trump — that’s less than conventional swing states such as Ohio.

Hillary did better in Texas than any Democrat since Reagan. Also, Texas last had a Blue governor in 1994. Texas hasn’t always been red — only for the past two decades — and it won’t stay red forever.

Re: Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 Evenly Between Two Cities

#62

Post by slm_HN »

taurath wrote: post #4

I was hoping for a significant cooling of the Seattle housing market with a full fledged hq2, but it appears it will be seattle first for quite a while I’d guess.

The Seattle housing market is already cooling faster than anywhere in the country, and has been for a while (newspapers tend to be a few months behind in this type of news):

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-ho...

Re: Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 Evenly Between Two Cities

#63

Post by taurath »

kevinconaway wrote: post #9
nextstep wrote: post #7

I’d bet money on the two being Crystal City, VA and Denver. The DC suburb makes sense for an East Coast hub, and it’s smart to be near the capital for DoD contracts. And Denver is a nice, growing tech city with an attractive lifestyle.

Crystal City is a nightmare from a commuting perspective and an awful place to live. Its more or less a ghost town since BRAC moved out a bunch of agencies and contractors a few years ago. This had the effect of hollowing out what little independent retail / dining there was there as most of it catered to the office lunch crowd. From a commuting perspective, its right across the river from DC which makes it very diff…

> Its more or less a ghost town since BRAC moved out a bunch of agencies and contractors a few years ago. This had the effect of hollowing out what little independent retail / dining there was there as most of it catered to the office lunch crowd.

That seems to match south lake union in Seattle, which used to be warehouses and car dealerships.

Re: Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 Evenly Between Two Cities

#64

Post by Johnny555 »

oh-kumudo wrote: post #39

This drama is getting ridiculous. HQ2-1, and HQ2-2? What does HQ even mean then? Even if they are called HQ, it is hard for me to imagine they can function as one.

Even if they are called HQ, it is hard for me to imagine they can function as one.

This is true of any large corporate campus -- 25,000 people at one site are not one cohesive unit, there are plenty of competing projects.

And you still end up using video conferencing even with people in the same campus because no one wants to take a 15 minute walk to the building on the other side of campus for a 30 minute meeting.

Re: Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 Evenly Between Two Cities

#66

Post by chrisco255 »

xrd wrote: post #21
thebradbain wrote: post #8

I’m biased, but I’ve had a feeling in the beginning it was always going to be Dallas in some capacity: 1. DC area may have three potential cities, but Texas is the only other region that has two cities being considered 2. DFW airport is one of the US’s busiest airports, and American Airlines is headquartered there, so you can get a direct flight to anywhere in the country in 3 hours tops. Amazon already has multiple…

Can you elaborate on the Texan business environment? This is often lauded by Texas politicians. What makes it different and possible, since it obviously isn't being duplicated in other cities.

To add to what others have said: No state income tax. Relaxed zoning laws (compared to CA).

Re: Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 Evenly Between Two Cities

#67

Post by monocasa »

adventured wrote: post #30
nextstep wrote: post #7

I’d bet money on the two being Crystal City, VA and Denver. The DC suburb makes sense for an East Coast hub, and it’s smart to be near the capital for DoD contracts. And Denver is a nice, growing tech city with an attractive lifestyle.

I'd place that bet on Northern Virginia as guaranteed and Chicago, Atlanta or Dallas as the other most plausible, with Toronto being a slight possibility since they're going with two. Colorado is nice, but it's nothing compared to the Texas population and economic boom. 28m people in Texas, versus 5m in Colorado. Texas is also building high-speed rail, which will end up linking all of their major cities, an immense b…

It won't be Atlanta. They didn't even hook up public transit to the new Braves stadium because it would, to quote the county commissioner, "attract a certain type of person". The MARTA there is known as Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta by that crowd.

Re: Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 Evenly Between Two Cities

#69

Post by mxuribe »

oh-kumudo wrote: post #39

This drama is getting ridiculous. HQ2-1, and HQ2-2? What does HQ even mean then? Even if they are called HQ, it is hard for me to imagine they can function as one.

Sure, some business have multiple "HQs"...in that they split where some of their major divisions are "headquartered". For example, maybe the original HQ in Seattle is where Jeff B. sits, but maybe the crystal city HQ (if that's one of them) is where AWS - as a business/major division - is "headquartered", etc. Oh, and i would venture a guess that they likely will name them something like HQ1, HQ-East-1, HQ-West-1, HQ-South-1, etc. ;-)
Post reply on HN