The city of San Diego and the city of Chula Vista (close to the US/Mexico border) both submitted proposals.
From today on HQ2 will be one long waiting game… Amazon hasn’t said when they will reveal the winner, but did say they’d take to the end of the year to review the submitted proposals.
But Amazon put the requirements for an international airport be within 40 miles of the HQ. Whether they use the airport or not, they want it available with non-stop flights to Seattle and DC from that airport.
They have the golden ticket. They can ask for whatever they want, reasonable or not. It’s up to the cities to decide if they will cave to the demands.
Politico Magazine did an excellent write up of the issues surrounding HQ2 for any of the prospective cities, entitled This Is What Really Happens When Amazon Comes To Your Town written by Paul Roberts, a Seattle native. Well worth the read…
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/19/amazon-headquarters-seattle-215725
My personal prediction…Denver
DS (and I) would love the unlikely prospect of San Diego so he could transfer down from Seattle.
I strongly suspect that, if you build it, they will come. In this case, I mean: pick the location and that airport will have non-stops to Seattle, lickety split. Any savvy city without that should be in cahoots with airlines now.
I know folks way out west who consider Colorado “east.” Afaiac, it’s too west to make much sense (in my head. We’re all doing this in our own heads. And that’s the fun.)
Whoever said Nashville, it’s intriguing. And a flight hub. But how much serious brain power is there or that can be drawn there?
Given the volume of traffic, they might be able to get airlines to add flights.
I’m actually hoping ‘Not Denver’. Former Governor Dick Lamm spoke out against it. Dick has the honor of having turned down the '76 Olympics. If they want to build a campus out by the airport, so that all their people will live out there and go to the public schools in Aurora and Adams county, that would be great. Unfortunately, they want to be downtown.
I don’t know how many tax breaks Amazon were offered from Colorado. We don’t have high tax rates so I think they should just decide if they want to be regular corporate citizens and their employees regular taxpayers. We already have a big amazon distribution center. That’s enough.
The more I think about it the more I’m leaning towards Toronto. The city has everything Bezos is looking for, plus the added bonus of the company not having to pay for health insurance for 50k employees. Plus, Canada is way more progressive than the US on every social issue and becoming even more so with each passing day.
I think that could be a strong possibility, @emilybee. This pro business in Ontario piece shows how atractive Canada is from a business tax standpoint:
https://www.investinontario.com/spotlights/canada-ranks-1st-g7-corporate-tax-rate-and-cost-competitiveness
I could imagine a lot of public backlash/boycotting if they went that route though, especially after all the hype they’ve created around this.
Yep. Toronto’s proposal should be a good one. Lots of impressive people involved.
Post # 94, referenced in post # 118 ignored the fact that the young tech workers keep graduating and will keep being attracted to Seattle. I saw references to some lower Midwest (north southern?) states that just don’t have the kind of workers I think would be a best fit.
Remember that distribution centers are totally separate from the headquarters. Very different workforce.
Any city needs to be attractive to educated young singles. Seattle was great, now overcrowded so housing and transportation have become issues. I easily understand why people, like my son, like it. I have to laugh at one link with the distances from Seattle- they listed Tacoma. Seatac, the airport for both, is in between. But, driving time and conditions in the middle of the day, are horrible (been there, done that taking son with us by car from the Amazon area to Tacoma once).
The area needs to be fairly liberal, or it will become so. Hmmm, maybe a plot to change the voting in certain places…
I wish they would survey current employees to get their input. It will be interesting to see what happens.
But they didn’t limit the bidding it to only metros in the US. They specifically mentioned Canadian cities/provinces.
Does Canada have enough workers, or is it willing to issue work permits to all those Americans?
I think Atlantic City is a very interesting idea. Could this finally be the way to make AC something new (casinos and gambling never worked to revitalize the city)?
Still throwing out Cincinnati, next to their new amazon prime hub.
Although Boston and the old tech 128 makes sense the MA infrastructure could never handle it - traffic/ public transportation are already nightmares (this goes for Cambridge, Somerville, East Boston, and Worcester also.) I feel places like Boston, Philly, etc. are too big and mature and overdeveloped already to take on something enormous like Amazon.
Toronto city has 2.7 million people and the metro area has over 9 million people.
It’s the 4th largest city in NA. Only Mexico City, NYC and LA are larger.
Has anyone suggested Fairfield, CT yet? Amazon can take over the campus that GE has vacated.
If GE didn’t want the campus in CT, why would Amazon?
I don’t think Amazon is interested in helping to revitalize Detroit or Atlantic City. It wants new and shiny. It wants food trucks and professional sports teams and airports.
This thread is now running more like “What Are My Chances?” at Ivys thread… 
“Young tech workers” and " young singles" are finding lots of good places to land including Pittsburgh, DC, Denver, etc.