I wonder how much the locals are giving away to make this happen?
You do realize that like 3 of top 5 counties by avg family income are in NoVA
Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia
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Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol @ the notion that Amazon cash will give a city “soul”
I think the poster above meant to be a little facetious. I tend to read “millennial ready” as building out a supply of tiny, $2000/mo studios with loads of flashy amenities and terrible quality construction.
Yes plus restaurants with life affirming phrases written in script on small signs and strings of Edison bulbs.
Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia
#153> "The company may be having similar discussions with other finalists." The article sounds very speculative. I don't know anything about this place, but if it's expensive like people here say it is, then I don't see the point of Amazon moving there. I think a place like downtown Chicago would make more sense. (if only the winter was not as cold and better public schools...)
Denver still makes the most sense to me. Single hop to Beijing & Shanghai, real estate and wages aren't at DC, Seattle, Bay Area rates quite. Lots of amenities (open space, good beer, close to skiing) that Amazon doesn't actually have to pay for. Decent tech scene (Google, Facebook, Uber campuses, as well as an ever growing Amazon dev presence). Large downtown property looking for a buyer and is probably underrated (Elitch Gardens). Decent public transit that's trending really well (new light rail within the past couple of years, and more coming out soon).
DC never made sense to me. The other defense contractors manage to not have HQs in DC.
I think this story is exactly what they'd leak if they were trying to buy real estate somewhere else.
Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia
#154Can we refer to this Eastern headquarters as us-east-hq-1?
Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia
#155Noooooooooooo, this is going to completely destroy an already broken transit system.
Growth is coming to the region, regardless of what Amazon does. HQ2 is just an accelerant. Embrace growth or resign your community to irrelevance.
> Embrace growth or resign your community to irrelevance.
Growth has killed plenty of communities, or made them not worth living in anymore. Just ask San Francisco.
Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
DCA is slot controlled so the slot owners are going to have to weigh the revenue of SEA/DCA vs all the other markets they’re currently using those slots for. One business often isn’t going to bring enough revenue to compete with a market like BOS/DCA or NYC/DCA which consumes an enormous amount of the slots.
DCA also has a "perimeter rule" in place, which forbids flights between DCA and airports more than 1,250 miles away, unless a specific exception is made. http://www.flyreagan.com/dca/dca-reagan-national-slot-perime...
What the purpose of a perimeter rule? Just curious...
Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crystal City really has so much going for it: 1. As you point out, right next to Pentagon and federal government. 2. Good transportation: right on the Metro and literally across the street from National Airport. 3. If you're going to have 2 headquarters, having them be on opposite coasts makes sense. 4. And I think another one that is pretty unique to Crystal City is that Amazon and their employees definitely want to…
And to its credit, Crystal City is actually pretty rad. It’s full of highly educated people who can’t say where they work or what they do. But they do have good taste in restaurants.
I don't know. Compared to other areas around the country maybe. But with NoVA there are just better places. I remember going there twice maybe and just never had a reason to go back Crystal City.
Tons of empty office space for sure though. I think proximity to DC itself is probably the main selling point.
Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia
#158There's an irony to this being an article from the Washington Post, maybe they know something we don't
Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
People keep saying this and I really don't follow. Why does the DoD care where the headquarters of the parent company of their contractor is located? Are they gonna pop in and ask questions about the Amazon retail site? Sure AWS needs a sales office in the region. And a datacenter. And a lobbying shop too. Pretty sure they got all that covered already.
Or: Amazon is going to heavily recruit former-DoD and government workers, luring them from low pay rates to high paying jobs. Reduce hiring friction: you don't need to convince them to uproot their families to move. They already live in the area, hell, their commute doesn't even change. Are you more likely to award contracts to AWS if you work at the DoD knowing that in two years you can move over and suddenly quintu…
+1
If anyone in the consulting field is paying attention - right about now is almost too late to begin going out and lining up a bunch of clearance techies who can be on your secure GovCloud consulting team to provide all the services that the DoD will be needing.
Re: Amazon HQ2: Advanced talks about second headquarters in Northern Virginia
#160Just a stones throw away from Washington DC, imagine that. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Amazon is in talks to do billions of dollars worth of work with the DOD and that the location choice of the second headquarters might have a lot to do with that.
Crystal City really has so much going for it: 1. As you point out, right next to Pentagon and federal government. 2. Good transportation: right on the Metro and literally across the street from National Airport. 3. If you're going to have 2 headquarters, having them be on opposite coasts makes sense. 4. And I think another one that is pretty unique to Crystal City is that Amazon and their employees definitely want to…
I love how easy it is to get to National on the Metro. I took public transit to Dulles once, and that was notably less easy.