Yup. I know no one on gaf pays attention to local politics but the people that do have been loud and clear that they want Amazon in the OC area and the Board of Supervisors are all in support. I don't think I have seen a single person speak out against it at any meetings (mostly because everyone is too busy trying to get something done about the homeless crisis).
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Amazon looking to build a second HQ in North America, will add 50k jobs
- Thread starter RastaMentality
- Start date
Yup. I know no one on gaf pays attention to local politics but the people that do have been loud and clear that they want Amazon in the OC area and the Board of Supervisors are all in support. I don't think I have seen a single person speak out against it at any meetings (mostly because everyone is too busy trying to get something done about the homeless crisis).
Some of these wild choices here...
Yall need to have a developed metro transit system, which blows out most of the south.
Then theres the need to be economically on the rise, which takes out the rust belt and arguably Chicago.
They want a different culture from the PNW which probably eliminates any West Coast venues (not sure how much Denver is counted as the West.
Yall need to have a developed metro transit system, which blows out most of the south.
Then theres the need to be economically on the rise, which takes out the rust belt and arguably Chicago.
They want a different culture from the PNW which probably eliminates any West Coast venues (not sure how much Denver is counted as the West.
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
You just described the local politics of almost every major city. This is not a differentiator for that location.
Moody's Analytics puts Austin, Atlanta, and Philly in the top three best locations.
The issue is more the french language than the small threat of separation.
Ubisoft made huge investments and it paid off tremendously for them. Then again, they're a French company so the language thing wasn't much of an issue.
Anyway, no chance Amazon comes here, or to Canada.
Chula Vista put in a $400 million bid. Im hoping for anywhere in southern California.
http://fox5sandiego.com/2017/10/17/...-submitting-bid-for-amazons-2nd-headquarters/
http://fox5sandiego.com/2017/10/17/...-submitting-bid-for-amazons-2nd-headquarters/
Gaius Cassius
Member
Please don't let them pick Austin...we don't even match any of their proposed requirements beyond being a young and hip place. Traffic and roads are horrible and the airport would be so far from the site! Yet they see us as a finalist!
Zoe
Member
Plenty of undeveloped land along the toll roads.
The only problem for Austin is mass transit.
Come on Amazon! Come to KC!
We have Cerner already, and our tech infrastructure is rising fast plus we been updating our mass transit AND building a new state of the art airport (although the old one is super convenient...).
And hey land is cheap here! You can buy a house that'd cost ya 5 million on the west coast for only 500k here! (not really, but housing market is super cheap!)
We have Cerner already, and our tech infrastructure is rising fast plus we been updating our mass transit AND building a new state of the art airport (although the old one is super convenient...).
And hey land is cheap here! You can buy a house that'd cost ya 5 million on the west coast for only 500k here! (not really, but housing market is super cheap!)
Well, Google just announced they are developing a neighborhood just east of downtown Toronto... as well as their Canadian HQ.
http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toronto-w...bourhood-google-canada-headquarters-1.3636573
So it's one reason I say there's a chance Amazon does the same. Even a choice quote from article:
http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toronto-w...bourhood-google-canada-headquarters-1.3636573
So it's one reason I say there's a chance Amazon does the same. Even a choice quote from article:
Electric Eye
Banned
Might as well keep heading east to Riverside its close to LA, OC, SD and Arizona has lots of space and housing is still plentiful, continues to be built and cheaper.
Euler007
Member
That's really not a problem and the first thing Ontarians will say to an American company to make them overpay by going to Toronto instead. If Canada ever did split up the American company would be number one on the list of things taken care of. Better in Montreal than cut off from the ocean in Toronto.
ghostofsparta
Member
That's pennies to Amazon. This line is painful to read, however
I wonder if small local businesses get forgiveness on property taxes?
Anyways, I'm hoping anywhere but southern California. Literally anywhere. Bezos you motherfucker, if you're reading this: out of all the cities in North America, if you choose a city in So Cal I will haunt your ass when I die!
Marky Mark
Member
I srtill think Pensylvannia shuld get it.
Moody's has a nice quantitative analysis ranking the choices, but they also write up a qualitative case for each.
I like the qualitative approach better, as I think many of the critical qualities can't be quantified. It's not the best approach to simply average the categories, because obviously some criteria are more important than others. For a business as reliant upon the quality of its knowledge workers such as Amazon, cost considerations need to be secondary to which city can provide the most talented workforce available. It's also not the best idea to look at the data and simply compare cities based upon the percentage of college-educated workers. Amazon needs the absolute cream of the crop and that's harder to quantify.
I can really only see the Northeastern Corridor cities of Boston and New York being chosen. I think Amazon needs to be located in a true destination city to attract the best of the best, and my recommendation would be New York as it's a giant business cluster and it houses so many Fortune 500 companies and is located near so many Ivy League schools that it would be easy to find the best and poach the best.
I like the qualitative approach better, as I think many of the critical qualities can't be quantified. It's not the best approach to simply average the categories, because obviously some criteria are more important than others. For a business as reliant upon the quality of its knowledge workers such as Amazon, cost considerations need to be secondary to which city can provide the most talented workforce available. It's also not the best idea to look at the data and simply compare cities based upon the percentage of college-educated workers. Amazon needs the absolute cream of the crop and that's harder to quantify.
I can really only see the Northeastern Corridor cities of Boston and New York being chosen. I think Amazon needs to be located in a true destination city to attract the best of the best, and my recommendation would be New York as it's a giant business cluster and it houses so many Fortune 500 companies and is located near so many Ivy League schools that it would be easy to find the best and poach the best.
Rochester is actually a good choice. Plenty of veteran tech people from Kodak/Xerox, can partner with RIT to train new people, and there's a toooon of recently abandoned industrial space to rehab.
No public transit to speak of but they have a good highway system that's basically half used because of population loss.
Also, the snow. God damn that snow.
I'm down for them building it in Toronto. We're quite big in the tech sector and getting bigger.
Eaten By A Grue
Member
Philadelphia is on the Northeast corridor as well...
Also if you are talking about recruiting you need engineering schools that have not been sapped out by other tech companies, not just Ivy League schools. You can't just build a workforce built off Ivy League graduates, that would be ridiculous. Philadelphia has universities with engineering schools in its general proximity like UPenn, Drexel, Temple, Rutgers, Villanova, Penn State, UDel, Lehigh, Bucknell, Lafayette, and Carnegie Mellon across the state, just to name a few to sap from. Then of course they could further sap out talent from NJ/NY/ other New England Schools. I am not sure why they would go to New York when they would be competing with so many other giant tech companies out there. In Philadelphia their largest tech competition for talent would be Comcast.
Agreed. DC, NYC, and Boston are just too pricey (and unwilling to offer substantive kickbacks). Philly makes the most sense in the NE corridor. Baltimore would probably be next-best, but it's a big step down in most ways.
Overall, Atlanta and Philly are the locations that seem best suited for HQ2 to me, but I'm obviously not privy to all the incentive offers being made to Amazon.
Captain Tuttle
Member
Yeah, it seems Philly makes the most sense
Philly seems like the most likely to me, with Pittsburgh being in the mix as well. Philly gets you the advantages of a NE Corridor city at a lower cost than NYC/Boston/DC.
Worcester just threw in a pretty sizeable bid ($500mil), but I don't see it having a shot of winning. On the one hand, I do think it would be a good fit for the city in many ways (lots of unused old industrial space, rail and highway connections, airport, relatively low cost of living, tech schools in the area, easy access to Boston/NYC), but I have a hard time believing Amazon will go for anything besides a major city.
Worcester just threw in a pretty sizeable bid ($500mil), but I don't see it having a shot of winning. On the one hand, I do think it would be a good fit for the city in many ways (lots of unused old industrial space, rail and highway connections, airport, relatively low cost of living, tech schools in the area, easy access to Boston/NYC), but I have a hard time believing Amazon will go for anything besides a major city.
Philadelphia is a good choice, it would be in my top 5. The distance between Philadelphia and New York City is so minimal that I consider the schools you listed as being within the range of an quick recruiting trip of a NYC company (and in fairness, vice versa).
I would consider neighboring my competition as Amazon would be doing in NYC to be a good thing, and not a detriment. Industries that service the tech companies would locate next to them, lowering the costs to use them. The costs to find information and find potential employees would also be lower due to the industry congregation. Tech people would associate with other tech people, exchange information, trade knowledge, and so on. I just made the argument for why business clusters exist in the first place, and generally they do provide more benefits to companies that outweigh the downsides of competition. In addition to NYC being considered more of a destination city, the synergistic business cluster aspect is why I would recommend it over Philadelphia.
What time of day? I live in Tampa, FL, and my 6.8 mile commute home at 530PM takes around 35 minutes.
Violence Jack
Member
Putting an Amazon headquarters in Sandy Springs would choke whatever is left out of that city with even more traffic and out of control home and rental prices. I worked in that city for 5 years at a corporate headquarters, and the traffic is no joke. I lived there an additional 3 years once I quit that job, and saw rent skyrocket by $300-$500 for mediocre apartments once it was announced that Mercedes Benz was moving their headquarters to Sandy Springs. Georgia Tech grads are known for moving out of the state for jobs that offer higher paying wages. It's possible that Amazon could get more of them to stay, but speaking as a Tech grad, I got a lot more offers to move elsewhere for better pay and benefits.
It would make more sense to build in a less crowded location that the city could build around, and bring more people to a state that needs them.
It would make more sense to build in a less crowded location that the city could build around, and bring more people to a state that needs them.
It's been fascinating to see some of the proposals that my city sent in its package:
Some of these are developments that were already being planned before Amazon's announcement. I'm sure they're salivating at the thought of Amazon filling them.
Victory Park
South Dallas
Midtown
Oak Cliff
Reunion
This one apparently incorporates the future Dallas-Houston high speed rail.
Trinity Groves
Some of these are developments that were already being planned before Amazon's announcement. I'm sure they're salivating at the thought of Amazon filling them.
Walter White Walker
Member
I don't know why cities in Washington like Tacoma are putting in bids. Amazon is not going to build an entire second HQ and then put it 30 miles down the road. That makes zero sense.
Pagusas
Elden Member
And thats just downtown, I would more likely expect them here in Frisco, or in Grapevine/Irving/Las Calinas for proximity to the airport
I agree, but from what I can tell they must have done that. Given certain categories more weighting than others. Although maybe my math is off. But I expect moodys to have done better quantitative analysis than simply adding up the categories and dividing.
Mister Zimbu
Member
Also, if Amazon can vacuum pack and ship garbage plates to the entire US, they would make this entire country a better place.
Apple built its new HQ in Cupertino down the road from the old HQ in Cupertino which will still be fully used. Google is also building a new HQ in Mountain View. It can make sense.
Youve got to root for the little city like Chula Vista. Southern California has the most Amazon Warehouses with the biggest one being built in Eastvale at 1.1million square feet. They are already all around you.
shira
Member
low WA taxes, thirsty af mayors
DC's bid idea are either on top of Union Station, at RFK, or on either side of the Anacostia by the Nationals.
Union Station's is the coolest idea, which will likely happen anyhow, but I doubt any bid actually builds support in Virginia or Maryland to actually invest in the Metro like it needs.
NihonTiger90
Member
I thought you were exaggerating when you said on top of the station but it actually is. Wow.
Electric Eye
Banned
Hasphat'sAnts
Member
It won't be DC
Frustrated_me
Member
What if a Canadian city gets in?
Could be. Both Montreal and Toronto have great CompSci schools, and the cost of igloos are very reasonable.
It would be such a big win, youve gotta at least throw your hat in the ring.
You think it would help? Lol