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Amazon looking to build a second HQ in North America, will add 50k jobs
- Thread starter RastaMentality
- Start date
Suppose to be beginning of the new year.
schwabdizzle
Banned
I wish they would share the STL bid, but they won't due to non-disclosure. They actually said other cities are not supposed to be sharing their bids with the public.
Mikey Jr.
Member
Probably doesn't help we're in a different country.
Seems like an unnecessary hassle for Amazon.
Hari Seldon
Member
Yeah Toronto would certainly be a major contender if it wasn't for the issue of dealing with customs going to and from and potential tariffs and other stupid shit. If this was pre 9-11 days when you could just mosey across the border no problem I think Toronto would get it for sure. Toronto still might get it though, they have everything else going for them except this.
Mass Effect
Member
The requirement is 1 million for the metro area, which all of the cities I mentioned have. So that's not an issue.
Also, unlike Detroit, all of those cities are growing.
Mr. Wonderful
Member
Thanks for sharing.
All of these are wonderful places to work and live, and as a young professional, one would be happy relocating there. Though Springfield, IL is really questionable to me.
Neither.
Newark, NJ.
Not really.
Major international airport which is very easy to get to compared to JFK and La Guardia.
Mass transit (PATH to New York, NJ Transit to NY rest of NJ, direct AMTRAK to the airport and most of the North East).
Minutes from major highway(Garden State Parkway, Route 22, NJ Turnpike, 1 & 9 etc).
Plenty of undeveloped land.
An area that continues to grow with great restaurants and bars (Ironbound section).
Proximity to major cities 30 minutes to New York City, 2 hours to Philadelphia and 3-4 hours to Washington, DC.
QuantumZebra
Member
Well rest assured its gonna be Dallas or Atlanta (glares at Mercedes, ATT, VW, like 50 other companies).
If "Metro" area includes suburbs then yea ATL easily eclipses 1 milly.
Amazon...
I can't predict the future. I can't tell you for certain the Detroit Metro area will grow.
I do know it currently has a population of 4+ million, more than the required one million.
I do know climate change is happening.
I can say for certain, Michigan (and thus the Detroit Metro area) by sheer luck of location, is positioned well to withstand the increased frequency of natural disasters caused by climate change.
I wonder how things like record setting hurricanes year after year affect Texas' odds.
I wonder what the west and south will look like in 25 years. It's not growing now, right. Will growth in the midwest accelerate relative to other areas in a decade or two, though?
I'd bet that people will start looking at midwest cities more seriously. That doesn't default to Detroit. Chicago is the pinnacle midwest city imo. But I'm betting that Michigan will begin seeing more people in the coming decades.
Keep in mind I said "bet". I could be wrong. Looking at human history and how populations are concentrated around water, it's not an insane bet. It's also not a guarantee.
Metro Detroit is not the only area that's somewhat positioned to withstand the affects of climate change, but I keep saying this, I don't think population would be the reason to eliminate Detroit for the reasons I mentioned. There are valid reasons why other cities would be chosen, population is not one of them.
The more I think about it. Atlanta should get it on the strength of their music scene alone. Praise Jeffery Williams da gawd.
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
Read closely. What other major NE city does not have these things? Newark is too small to offer the same sort of co-location of arts, culture, food, and livability that NYC, Boston, DC, Baltimore, or Philly do though. The only thing going for Newark ahead of major NE cities would be the taxation, which frankly may be enough. Philly is only offering $1-2B of tax benefits. NJ really likes to throw those tax benefits around in insane ways. Look at Camden right now, they've already given just about $1B in business tax breaks to places locating there.
Here's Winnipeg's proposal: https://www.mayorbowman.ca/uploads/ck/files/winnipeg-proposal-amazon-oct2017-web.pdf
I'm not sure why they bothered because Winnipeg doesn't even meet the population criteria.
I'm not sure why they bothered because Winnipeg doesn't even meet the population criteria.
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
Philadelphia Delivers - Philly's pitch to Amazon.
schwabdizzle
Banned
I feel like any city west of Denver does not have a chance. I would think Amazon wants to build something decently far away from Seattle.
I'm starting to think Boston might actually get it. There's a huge vacant place right next to downtown zoned for mix use right on a subway line and right next to Logan International Airport. We've also been hot with tech the past 5-10 years. Then there's MIT, WPI, Harvard, Tuff's; the list is endless with connections to Ivy, Tech, Biotech, Healthcare. All big focuses on STEM and education.
I have mixed feelings. Our infrastructure is not ready for 50,000 families, it's already stressed and underfunded as is.
Then again a heavy weight like Amazon will tell Become Hill to jump, and they'll have to. Sadly it'll be easier to lobby Amazon big wigs to improve public services than it currently is Beacon Hill.
My condo value will also skyrocket, which is nice.
http://www.universalhub.com/2017/boston-revere-team-pitching-amazon-suffolk-downs?nocache=1
Toronto's actually proposing that as a benefit. The political climate would make it easier for Amazon to attract and hold onto foreign talent.
Buba Big Guns
Banned
Toronto's proposal looks really good.
I wonder what Ottawa's looks like, should be really good considering the IT talent is already here.
I wonder what Ottawa's looks like, should be really good considering the IT talent is already here.
That's what I think is one of the more appealing things about Detroit. You can live in Canada or the US.
CitizenCope
Member
Hoping for Boston as I have experience in Logistics, shipping/receiving, management and most importantly I'm unemployed. I'd take the shitty commute if the pay was good.
If you were one of those foreign workers would you want to deal with the border every day?
If it's no different than driving to work in any other city then why not? http://www.dwtunnel.com/NexpressToll
I'm assuming Amazon would pay for the Nexpress card.
It's a thing that thousands of people currently do.
If you check Google Maps for a route from Windsor to downtown Detroit, the drive time is 13 minutes right now - and that's with yellow Google Maps traffic conditions. This is assuming you have a Nexpress card as Google routes through the tunnel (not the bridge).
Thankfully no walls in the foreseen future on this border.
The Albatross
Member
Boston plan was release yesterday and it's very aggressive. Uses the Suffolk Downs property, obviously. What's is missing a tax writeoff, which other New England cities like Worcester are offering.
This checks off a lot of Amazon's requirements:
- 5 Mins to an international airport
- Metropolitan city of 1m+
- Public transportation lines
http://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2017/10/20/boston-amazon-bid
I fyou have logistics experience, the Amazon distribution center that opened in Milford is having trouble with staffing. Though, I'd imagine like 95% of positions there are for warehouse floor staff. They haven't been able to fill the positions.
This checks off a lot of Amazon's requirements:
- 5 Mins to an international airport
- Metropolitan city of 1m+
- Public transportation lines
http://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2017/10/20/boston-amazon-bid
I fyou have logistics experience, the Amazon distribution center that opened in Milford is having trouble with staffing. Though, I'd imagine like 95% of positions there are for warehouse floor staff. They haven't been able to fill the positions.
perfectchaos007
Member
Austin is already the 11th largest city in the US. It literally can't leapfrog a dozen cities on that list lol
killer rin
Member
The thing is though, then what was the point of even bothering to make the contest open to every country in North America when they could have done the easy thing of just ignoring the rest of the world exists... or say "North America" but have everything in the document say "USA Only".
perfectchaos007
Member
lmao. This whole process has been pretty funny to me. I hope someone is compiling all of these proposals. Would be fun to look back on. I hear even Birmingham Alabama submitted a proposal lol.
Hello? This is Hailun!
Member
Is there an Austin bid out?
Boston plan was release yesterday and it's very aggressive. Uses the Suffolk Downs property, obviously. What's is missing a tax writeoff, which other New England cities like Worcester are offering.
This checks off a lot of Amazon's requirements:
- 5 Mins to an international airport
- Metropolitan city of 1m+
- Public transportation lines
http://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2017/10/20/boston-amazon-bid
I fyou have logistics experience, the Amazon distribution center that opened in Milford is having trouble with staffing. Though, I'd imagine like 95% of positions there are for warehouse floor staff. They haven't been able to fill the positions.
After the big dig? :/
killer rin
Member
Unless you are pulling in foreign talent. In which case they have to live in the USA side of the border because Canada isn't going to give them residency for a job in another country. Vice Versa if it's located on the Canadian side in Windsor
Exactly what Boston needed. More expensive housing and apartments and an even nastier snarl of traffic coming in and out of the city. Trains are already stuffed to capacity during work rush hours too.
And Revere Beach would never be the same; lots of small businesses in that area that would go kaput. :/
ghostofsparta
Member
no tax breaks, no deal
I have a feeling it might actually end up in my city. Some local official put in a request a while ago. We have a section of HUGE land that was cleared of like a year or two ago for a casino/ hotel plan that fell through. I remember reading that we have literally every thing that they could want. There is literally a truck stop like across the street from it.
Fake Edit: Found the article, I hope this works out for us. I'd really like for my mother to get a job with them so she can leave her shit job at Comcast.
http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/news/ci_31389894/hey-amazon-this-is-prime
Fake Edit: Found the article, I hope this works out for us. I'd really like for my mother to get a job with them so she can leave her shit job at Comcast.
http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/news/ci_31389894/hey-amazon-this-is-prime
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
It's interesting that the Boston proposal is outside of the core of the city. Do they not have parcels large enough to support it?
Philly's proposal is on top of the transit hub, literally next door to UPenn, and inside the center of the city, and less than 15 minutes to the Airport.
You know, the best part of this entire process is that it's given cities impetus to create these business plans that they can use to attract OTHER companies, even if they don't land Amazon.
Mass should threaten to put up $5 tolls again on all the borders of NH.
I love NH, but their leaders are a bunch of pricks trying to have their cake and eat it too. NH is West Virginia without MA/ME/VT, were a regional economy and we work together.
Razgriz-Specter
Member
Birmingham is a great location but most other points are not so much.
The Albatross
Member
Yeah, New Hampshire suffers from the same problems central/metrowest Massachusetts does in their bid. Like Worcester is making a bid, and one of Amazon's requirements is a 1m+ metropolitan area, and Worcester and Manchester get to those numbers by completely fudging them. Worcester's bid includes Worcester (~190,000), all of Worcester County (+700,000), and then part of Providence (~170,000), and part of Hampden County (~400,000) to come to a million. Likewise, Manchester ends up including like Portland ME, NOrthern Massachusetts, Northern Worcester County, etc., to get close.
I'd like Amazon HQ2 to be located outside of Boston, especially outside of East Boston, only because there's such an imbalance in tech in Massachusetts and New England, where virtually every company is within the 128 semi-circle... That you have this insane tech growth right in Boston, but it's not spreading out. Especially with companies like EMC being bought, which were companies that scattered business around metro-west, Worcester COunty, and up towards Burlignton, Nashua, etc., now you're getting this over-centralization of tech talent in a 6mile radius in Boston proper.
The Albatross
Member
No, Boston doesn't. 15 years ago they would have proposed the Seaport District, but that's been built up in the last 5-10 years, and GE took one of the last truly developable sites in a desirable section for their global HQ.. but even GE's will be just a couple thousand seats. 15 Years ago, Seaport was literally a floating pile of dirt ... and Harpoon brewery. And now it's the fastest growing area of Boston, but there's no room for 50,000 seats there. Heck, there's not parking for 10,000 seats, let alone 50,000 actual seats.
There is no room in downtown Boston at all for 50,000 seats, but East Boston is still Boston, it's just not the metropolitan center of the city. It's about 4miles from the city center of Boston, but there's no developable land there for 50,000 seats.
yeah, this is my hope/thought as well. That... sure, you probably won't land amazon, but this motivated city councils to get serious about attracting tech talent and considering how they can revitalize their cities.
Sorry, I meant metro area, which is a more meaningful measurement.
Lazy vs Crazy
Member
Manchester does make a bunch of sense with the airport right there. Best airport I've ever used.
I'm totally laughing at the Leominster bid though. They don't have the infrastructure, airports are over an hour away, and it is completely unattractive location for employees to move to.
Step 1.) Amazon moves HQ to Detroit
Step 2.) Matthew Stafford and the Detroit Lions win a Super Bowl
Step 3.) ????
Step 4.) Prosperity in Detroit and Michigan forever
The Albatross
Member
Hahaha, i know I love shit like that though. Like someone a few posts up was laughing about Birmingham Alabama making a push... Well, this is Leominster:
What's kinda sad though is that 30 years ago, a place like Leominster could have been an option for major technology and industry companies. Like, Digital (now HP), EMC (now Dell), IBM, GE, and all of these other house hold technology companies used to open campuses around the region, while Boston was strictly financial companies. You actually had occupational diversity around the region, and a city like Marlborough (EMC, HP) or Natick (Biogen, TJX, MathWorks, Boston Scientific) would open relatively large technology companies.
And I know today's workforce wants to be centrally located, but there's a give and take with that. Like someone else said, East Boston is already expensive to live in even though it's one of the cheapest sections of Boston, if 50,000 seats go into East Boston, with salaries in the $90,000+ range, they're not goign to be hiring local kids from East Boston or Bunker Hill Community College, and the last few remaining relatively affordable neighborhoods are going to be priced out even faster (as fast as they already have been priced out)
No tech people are trying to move to Detroit.
Nobody cares about your one new skyscraper, all they imagine when they hear Detroit is:
Same goes for any "industrial revolution-esque" cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St. Louis, whatever.
This is dead wrong.
I don't live in Michigan, but as a person in software, Detroit is a city I'd consider moving to if I were to relocate:
a) Good property value
b) A ton of opportunity
c) A city rebuilding itself with new industry
People might have thought that way about Detroit 10 years ago, but not anymore... It's a city with a downtown currently being reborn, and has been an attractive place for artists and young people for 5 years, who are always the trend setters for new growth.
Is that a statement of fact or what you think? I'm legitimately unsure. The Detroit is bid is actually a Detroit-WIndsor bid - they worked together. Two cities in different countries working together to submit a bid that would bring 50,000+ jobs to an area seems unprecedented. Perhaps Canada would allow foreign talent in this situation? How do you know that wasn't part of the bid? I don't know if it was, but it's fairly plausible.
Why would Windsor partner with Detroit if what you're saying is accurate?
Why wouldn't Canada want high paid tech workers to contribute to their economy? They'd buy houses there. They'd shop there. They'd pay taxes there.
Don't forget Pistons winning the championship in the inaugural LCA season!
Any proposal in the city core is going to drive prices way up for Amazon. I don't know the Philly parcel, but if there's already stuff there and it's on top of a transit hub / businesses already, that's super expensive to convert.
Boston could do that, that's the seaport proposal that has some land left but would require top dollar on Amazons part and working with more developers. Widet Circle is another option, but the land there would be just as expensive and would require a build out over the highway (something that's a long term plan).
Suffolk Downs is basically ready to go, a very short trip from downtown, and can be transformed into exactly the campus they want cheaply and quickly. The only issue would be car traffic and how they mitigate it. I guess you could argue it's not as sexy a location as GE got, but the size and numbers of what Amazon wants is basically creating a new town from scratch and the place Boston is offering allows them a blank canvas to build it without any strings while meeting their criteria.
Big Chungus
Member
saskatoon saskatchewan please
Zoe
Member
Yes, the Chamber of Commerce submitted the bid on Wednesday. It's supposed to be a collaboration from the entire metro.
Austin is being oddly secretive though, and they haven't released the proposal publicly.
killer rin
Member
Is that a statement of fact or what you think? I'm legitimately unsure. The Detroit is bid is actually a Detroit-WIndsor bid - they worked together. Two cities in different countries working together to submit a bid that would bring 50,000+ jobs to an area seems unprecedented. Perhaps Canada would allow foreign talent in this situation? How do you know that wasn't part of the bid? I don't know if it was, but it's fairly plausible.
Why would Windsor partner with Detroit if what you're saying is accurate?
Why wouldn't Canada want high paid tech workers to contribute to their economy? They'd buy houses there. They'd shop there. They'd pay taxes there.
Don't forget Pistons winning the championship in the inaugural LCA season!
Because thats how immigration laws work. To live in Canada you need to be a Canadian Citizen/Permanent Resident/Visa Holder. Of the three, foreign talent will be coming in through Visas. Of which to qualify for a Canadian Visa requires you to be employed by a company in Canada. If Amazon is located in Detroit, which is in the USA. Canada will not give Americans visas just so they can live in Canada and work in the USA. Canada will not give Foreign talent Visas for the same reason. If they did, you would see millions of Americans already doing it today just so they could get access to our social programs.
In addition, if located in Detroit, Amazon would pay American Taxes. Amazon would support the local Detroit Economy. Services will pop up in Detroit to service Amazon. Windsor would get none of that. The only benefit for Windsor would be existing Canadians moving to Windsor to play the NAFTA game to work in the USA while living in Canada. But this would only be for existing Canadian Citizens and would make the person entirely dependent on the fluid rules of NAFTA visas not changing
When everybody performs in Camden at the BBT Pavilion its Philadelphia just like all the games at East Rutherford are in New York, you know that how it rolls. Newark is functionally New York in this case.
Amazon has a presence in Vancouver and Toronto. Does that satisfy "employed by a company in Canada"?
It seems less black and white than you're implying.
What if a foreign worker got a job at one of Amazon's current Canadian buildings? Would they not be able to transfer to a Detroit office if it were to exist? Would transferring result in revocation of their Visa?