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But isn't that Target HQ?I don't think Minneapolis has the infrastructure to support a huge company like Amazon. The roads and traffic are awful enough as it is.
But isn't that Target HQ?I don't think Minneapolis has the infrastructure to support a huge company like Amazon. The roads and traffic are awful enough as it is.
Combing through most reactions on the web it appears the top "fit" (culture, cost of living, universities, size, airport, tech scene, etc.) not considering the tax offerings appear to be:
1. Houston, Texas (Massive + Central Location + Access to Key Universities + Bonus points for close proximity to Whole Foods in Austin)
2. Toronto, Canada (I think this illogical given logistics of travelling internationally for all employees in Seattle)
3. Charlotte/Research Triangle, North Carolina (East Coast + Bubbling Tech Scene + Very Low Cost of Living)
4. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (East Coast + Low Cost of Living + Proximity to Major Cities + Encouraging Exploratory Tech)
5. Minneapolis, Minnesota (Health + Retail + Low Cost of Living + Very Liberal)
Less buzz but still interest: Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas/Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Boston
LOL good luck: Denver, Kansas City, Anywhere in Florida
May be Erlanger, KY, since they are already building a aircraft hub @ CVG.
And the tax break will be huge.
Conversely, I'm sure there are quite a few vendors, clients, etc who are on the east coast and a 1-2 hour flight (even international) probably sounds a lot more appealing than a 6+ hour flight to Seattle.It's not just employees. Think about how many vendors, AWS customers, clients, etc. visit the campus on a regular basis. Your forcing a lot of these people to now do unnecessary international travel.
Conversely, I'm sure there are quite a few vendors, clients, etc who are on the east coast and a 1-2 hour flight (even international) probably sounds a lot more appealing than a 6+ hour flight to Seattle.
Some of my business partners are in New York City, and they say it is actually quicker for them to fly into Toronto for a meeting than it is to commute into the office in New York.
These were the statistics for 2017. Now add onto this that Amazon can save dramatically on Employee benefits because they wont have to provide coverage for Healthcare or things like Maternity Leave. There is also significant pressure to get our systems to cover Pharmacare, Dental and Optical so that would be even less medical coverage they would need to provide going forward if it came to be.
Amazons announcement that it wants to essentially duplicate its massive home office presence by constructing a second corporate headquarters in North America set off an irresistible frenzy of speculation. And from the companys point of view, the best part is that it will also set off an irresistible race to the bottom as cities compete to shower subsidies on the company in hopes of luring the proposed 50,000 jobs spread across 8 million square feet of offices at an average salary of $100,000 a piece.
But one city is weirdly missing from the speculation: Seattle.
Seattle checks all the boxes. Its a large, amenity-rich city whose metro area population is well over 1 million. Its also an unusually well-educated city, with plentiful college graduates and a local business culture rich with experience in both engineering and retail with companies like Microsoft, Starbucks, and (historically) Boeing headquartered there. Its airport, though modest in size, serves all the major international business destinations places like London, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Frankfurt, Seoul, Dubai, Taipei, Paris, Toronto, and Shenzhen.
Perhaps best of all, Seattle is where Amazons headquarters is already located. That will spare executives the need to fly to some satellite headquarters in another city, facilitate collaboration between rank-and-file colleagues across the company, and avoid the linguistic absurdity of a company claiming to have two different HQs.
The fundamental problem Seattle is facing is that the city, county, and state governments are trying to funnel demand for growth into a comparatively tiny patch of the city. Downtown and select other areas zoned for high rises are, in fact, seeing a huge boom in high rise construction.
But (depending on exactly how you count) somewhere between 57 and 65 percent of the citys land area is zoned exclusively for single-family homes. The recent devastating flooding in the famously zoning-free city of Houston has sparked a mini-renaissance of enthusiasm for restrictive land use planning. But as Richard Kahlenberg wrote in August, the actual history of single-family zoning in the United States has nothing to do with flood control and everything to do with racial segregation. Houston itself, meanwhile, through parking requirements, largely manages to recreate many of the pathologies of single-family zoning.
I think Detroit gets ruled out because the people who they'd be trying to attract to work there aren't going to want to live there.I wonder if Detroit will get ruled out due to lack of good mass transit.
I think Detroit gets ruled out because the people who they'd be trying to attract to work there aren't going to want to live there.
So thinking about things logically. Amazon is going to primarily be looking at locations on the East Coast. I base this off of the fact that Amazon already has an extremely sizable west coast presence. They have HQ1 in Seattle, and they also have a sizable base in silicon valley. In addition, its also the typical expansion path for most companies when looking at regions. West-East-Center or East-West-Center. So with that in mind, I have a couple locations that I think might make it to the short list. In no particular order
- Toronto
- Ottawa
- Montreal
- DC
- NYC
- Houston
- Detroit
Putting aside the fact that I'm Canadian and am desperately hoping we get the HQ, I do think that we have some added benefits compared to the USA. Mainly, our Federal government is heavily pushing jobs in tech through massive subsidies, infrastructure investments, education (both employee and employer-wise).
Since everyone says it, I wont emphasise on this point as much, but we do have a highly educated population in Canada. Within the GTHA alone we have several world class universities that produces talent that Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple regularly hires from. On top of that you can get top talent extremely cheaply here. Wages in tech for top talent across canada are often tens of thousands of dollars cheaper per employee. Amazon says they are going to have plenty of people at this office earning more than $100,000, which tends to be the average in the USA but in Canada it's just over half.
These were the statistics for 2017. Now add onto this that Amazon can save dramatically on Employee benefits because they wont have to provide coverage for Healthcare or things like Maternity Leave. There is also significant pressure to get our systems to cover Pharmacare, Dental and Optical so that would be even less medical coverage they would need to provide going forward if it came to be.
Public transit in our major cities are fairly decent and are only getting better as all three levels of government are continuing to expand rail systems and increasing bus frequency. Millennials like not being able to own a vehicle and our systems have been at a point where its an actual reality for awhile now.
Amazon would be lessening their reliance on the USA. This is a major bonus for both Canada and Mexico because currently if Amazon wants to hire someone overseas and bring them over to the USA they are entirely reliant on the USA granting the Visas and proper permits. If they don't approve it, Amazon is effectively screwed in regards to that person. On the other hand, if Amazon expanded into Canada or Mexico, they now have a second route to attracting talent since they can choose to bring them into their international HQ or their USA HQ. If one denies the person, they still have another route they can use to bring the person over.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Chicago_Main_Post_OfficeI hope you mean 245 post offices.
So thinking about things logically. Amazon is going to primarily be looking at locations on the East Coast. I base this off of the fact that Amazon already has an extremely sizable west coast presence. They have HQ1 in Seattle, and they also have a sizable base in silicon valley. In addition, its also the typical expansion path for most companies when looking at regions. West-East-Center or East-West-Center. So with that in mind, I have a couple locations that I think might make it to the short list. In no particular order
- Toronto
- Ottawa
- Montreal
- DC
- NYC
- Houston
- Detroit
I think Detroit gets ruled out because the people who they'd be trying to attract to work there aren't going to want to live there.
what's a better way to develop a city than get 50k high paid workers? Bring the people and the coffee shops, Whole Checks, fancy restaurants and what not, will come
MD doesn't work because transportation would be a serious issue -MD's very, very hilly and it makes their roads/metro/etc way more annoying to build and develop. It'd have to be in DC/NOVA logistically. (The Pentagon, for example, has 23K employees.)I'll admit DC is a wild card though if it's in Maryland like Under Armour is that really even DC metro?
It's not just the culture aspects- good public schools is another, and moving to a state that keeps trying to give its citizens lead poisoning is a non-starter.what's a better way to develop a city than get 50k high paid workers? Bring the people and the coffee shops, Whole Checks, fancy restaurants and what not, will come
I think Detroit gets ruled out because the people who they'd be trying to attract to work there aren't going to want to live there.
MD doesn't work because transportation would be a serious issue -MD's very, very hilly and it makes their roads/metro/etc way more annoying to build and develop. It'd have to be in DC/NOVA logistically. (The Pentagon, for example, has 23K employees.)
Pittsburgh already did this hence why of a mid tier city if it was gonna go to one in the mid west I think Pitt > Detroit.
I don't think Minneapolis has the infrastructure to support a huge company like Amazon. The roads and traffic are awful enough as it is.
But isn't that Target HQ?
It is going to go to whatever local government can promise the most free shit. We should be ranking cities by how corruptible the local governments are, not by any other category lol.
Spoken like someone who hasn't been to Detroit lately. The city center has undergone a huge comeback over the last few years partially thanks to an influx of tech companies and has become a very desirable living destination for young professionals. You literally can not turn around downtown without bumping into new construction of upscale luxury condos and studio apartments. If you venture slightly outside of the downtown core there are many neighborhoods that are on the verge of revitalization full of the DIY crowd that could benefit from something like this. At the very least, people could commute to the suburbs. There are any number of "cool cities" that pepper the borders of Detroit.
seattle got very expensive.
I don't think Minneapolis has the infrastructure to support a huge company like Amazon. The roads and traffic are awful enough as it is.
MD - MarylandI guess my thing is semantics. What's considered DC and what's NOVA? I got family that live up there and IDK where one starts and stops.
I guess my thing is semantics. What's considered DC and what's NOVA? I got family that live up there and IDK where one starts and stops.
... You dont have to be corrupt to use tax incentives to better the local economy.
I'm not saying it isn't the smart thing to do, but I'm saying that giving away free shit to a corporation is from a high level pretty shitty. At least 50,000 jobs is a way better deal than the snake oil sports stadium horseshit.
MD - Maryland
DC - Literally DC
NOVA- Northern VA.
Amazon has a large warehouse and a cloud server farm out in the Dulles area, but it's not clear if there's enough transportation infrastructure out that way to make an HQ work.
Yeah, it's the auto traffic part I'm worried about, 28/66 is a traffic jamthey are in the middle of building a *gigantic* metro line and plan to be done by 2019. My guess a few pages back was northern virginia becuase of everything going in the area. High talent pool, public transportation, cheapish land, and the space to expand.
The problem with rust belt and cold cities is that yes, while on paper there's a good cost/quality ratio, in reality young 20-40 year old IT and software engineers don't want to move there. If you're trying to add 50k employees, you need a city that younger talent wants to move to.
The most plausible of the cost/labor sweet spots that's cold is Chicago. But taxes there are much higher than other candidates.
Yeah I didn't get why people are saying Toronto doesn't have a chance. In fact, with UK turning to shit for young foreigners, Toronto has a once in a lifetime opportunity to become a bigger deal in tech and finance. I just left Brooklyn for here and im wowed at how much the city has grown and can still grow. We just need to plan for that increase.dropping T-Dot facts
Yeah I didn't get why people are saying Toronto doesn't have a chance. In fact, with UK turning to shit for young foreigners, Toronto has a once in a lifetime opportunity to become a bigger deal in tech and finance. I just left Brooklyn for here and im wowed at how much the city has grown and can still grow. We just need to plan for that increase.
+1 for Buffalo especially if it comes with software dev positions
Spoken like someone who hasn't been to Detroit lately. The city center has undergone a huge comeback over the last few years partially thanks to an influx of tech companies and has become a very desirable living destination for young professionals. You literally can not turn around downtown without bumping into new construction of upscale luxury condos and studio apartments. If you venture slightly outside of the downtown core there are many neighborhoods that are on the verge of revitalization full of the DIY crowd that could benefit from something like this. At the very least, people could commute to the suburbs. There are any number of "cool cities" that pepper the borders of Detroit.
Amazon is in the process of opening two distribution centers in the area and already has an office downtown. Google and Microsoft have offices here. There are a number of startup incubators downtown. The tech industry is slowly migrating to a city that is ready and willing to diversify from a manufacturing town. Detroit may not be the first city on the list, it may not be the second city on the list. But its silly to write it off because "nobody wants to live there"