Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

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325 pointsuptown721 comments

Nice to see Toronto on the list, though game theory suggest that we're only here because having a Canadian Candidate has the potential to have all 3 levels of government involved rather than just state and city.

I'm not really sure how to go about handicapping the finalists.

Given the current political climate, Toronto is interesting because it's the only city that gives Amazon some escape form the US government.

You'd want:

- an international airport so you can get to Beijing, London, etc on a single flight. This might eliminate the smaller cities.

- a strong existing tech workforce and universities.

- land in the downtown core to build on, this might eliminate New York?

- perhaps you'd preference the cities that already have an amazon campus in them.

Toronto has all of these..

Ah, who am I kidding. its going to come down to which government gives them the most money and that eliminates Toronto.

Would be fun for someone in each city to make a list of what makes your city a good choice for the headquarters!!

According the housing crisis, there's absolutely no buildable land left anywhere in the Greater Toronto region.

Suburb region of Durham is part of the bid...there's LOTS of land left there.

Check out the Woodbine’s redevelopment plan. Hundreds of acres next to Pearson airport and on rapid transit to downtown Toronto and the rest of the tech corridor. Amazon will go to Toronto and locate there. Toronto to Waterloo corridor has the highest concentration Per Capita of tech startups and engineers after Silicon Valley. It avoids US immigration nonsense and has free healthcare that saves hundreds of millions per year.

Of course there's land. You just have to convert low-intensity use to high-intensity use. Go east on Bloor past Spadina, and you'll find plenty of two-story commercial buildings right on a subway line. Any of those blocks could be redeveloped into skyscrapers.

If Canadian cities were in serious competition I think there'd be more than one of them on the list. There are a good number of American cities smaller than Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Ottawa/Gatineau on the list, let alone Montreal and Vancouver. I suspect that Toronto is the token Canadian city and won't get serious consideration.

I don't blame them, in this era of Trump hyper-nationalism there'd be a huge blow-back for choosing a Canadian city.

Do any of those cities have good international flight options? I live in Montreal, the the options are very limited compared to Toronto.

I expect Montreal would be completely ruled out because of the language laws, incidentally. Fine for a branch office, unacceptable for a second HQ.

So, I'm not sure you're right about Toronto being a token candidate.

Do any of those cities have good international flight options? I live in Montreal, the the options are very limited compared to Toronto.

I expect Montreal would be completely ruled out because of the language laws, incidentally. Fine for a branch office, unacceptable for a second HQ.

So, I'm not sure you're right about Toronto being a token candidate. I believe it's the best candidate in Canada.

But, moving to Canada is a big choice. So big you'd really want to consider only the top candidate.

Do any of those cities have good international flight options? I live in Montreal, the the options are very limited compared to Toronto.

I expect Montreal would be completely ruled out because of the language laws, incidentally. Fine for a branch office, unacceptable for a second HQ.

So, I'm not sure you're right about Toronto being a token candidate. I believe it's the best candidate in Canada.

But, moving to Canada is a big choice. So big you'd really want to consider only the top 1-2 candidates.

I do wonder what kept Vancouver off the list though.

> I do wonder what kept Vancouver off the list though.

Housing crisis.

More likely the same thing that kept Portland off - they want more distance between HQs.

Or the fact that their employees would need to sell their organs in order to afford single-bedroom apartments.

But I'm curious, have they actually publicly stated that they want a lot of geographical distance between the old and new HQ? It's an assumption that informs a lot of what's being said here.

They haven't said it, but probably because it's not a criterion cities can do anything about.

Having HQ2 far away from Seattle reduces business risk from e.g. major earthquakes.

Having HQ2 far from Seattle also means they can pull out of a different labor pool.

Seattle is more expensive though, so if anything they might just get their Seattle employees wanting to move south to still be in the PNW.

I see this sentiment coming a lot from Portlanders.

I understand that rent is rising in your area. That is awful.

But you do realize that Portland's rent is comparable to the rent in many other US metros? In fact, it's cheaper than quite a few! With better infrastructure and poverty rates!

I'm from Chicago, and the rent in Portland is pretty comparable. You can find cheap rent in Chicago if you don't mind commuting 45-60 minutes each way and living in an (almost) literal war-zone. When was the last time you witnessed a drive by? Or had an active gang-shooter outside your house having a gun-fight with other bangers?

I see this sentiment coming a lot from Portlanders.

I understand that rent is rising in your area. That is awful.

Did you intend to post this as a reply to someone else? Someone from Portland?

And probably the fact that it's so close to Seattle. Geography matters to a company like Amazon and putting up a large hub right next to the first one isn't the best choice.

Toronto's housing isn't that far behind Vancouver. Locals on local salaries cannot afford it.

Yeah, the map of shortlisted cities has a pretty conspicuous buffer around Seattle.

Moreover, it's less than 150 miles away from Seattle

I second that about Montreal. The language laws are absurd. Getting a temporary work permit to work in Quebec is even weirder. The permanent residents of any other provinces cannot get health care in Quebec without Quebec's CSQ certificate which will take ages to get after you apply. The infrastructure is in ruins. Amazon will have a hard time getting skilled workers in Quebec than the rest of Canada.

To be clear, I'm optimistic about Quebec. It's growing rapidly, unemployment is low, and there's an increasing energy visible in the streets.

But, I think it would be crazy for an american, anglophone company to place a second HQ here. It would dramatically cut the talent pool.

Also, apologies for the triple comment on this thread. It seems each edit of my top comment added a comment.

Toronto might be the token Canadian city, but it's also the strongest contender Canada has to offer, by far. I would not rule them out.

> I don't blame them, in this era of Trump hyper-nationalism there'd be a huge blow-back for choosing a Canadian city.

Ironically, one reason a Canadian city would offer such big advantages - immigration - is also the main reason for the Trump hyper-nationalism. That tension is interesting. I don't know to what extent politics plays into this but teaching American politicians a lesson about whether they really want to continue playing to the cheap seats on immigration might be a plus for Amazon.

And under the Trump administration, I bet a lot of liberal Americans would be interested in an opportunity to work in Canada and acquire Canadian citizenship "just in case"...

Vancouver is de facto their current HQ2, no? Mostly used to funnel hires to Seattle through L-1 visas, but still.

Keep in mind Amazon is constantly looking for and hiring tons of tech workers. I live in Europe and I'd have a hard time taking their hiring events seriously if I could end up in Winnipeg (no offense). But the same is true for quite a few US cities on the list, though, and it makes me believe they probably aren't considering half of those locations seriously, like other people pointed out.

They are probably put off by hiring issues. Even if they pay over market rates it’s hard to convince people to live in Vancouver because of the high cost of living

Vancouver is right next to Seattle, and wouldn't diversify Amazon in terms of time zones or meterological/geological catastrophes. I don't know enough to say for sure, but I think Amazon has a preference for English-speaking cities which would indicate against Montreal.

Honestly, I think Toronto is a huge dark horse. It's an incredibly attractive location to relocate candidates to and isn't subject to American visa laws. I think the main reason smaller Canadian cities didn't make the cut is because Amazon doesn't really want to go that far north. Toronto is already south of Seattle, for instance.

Hasn't Google already planted their flag in NYC and Toronto for their "smart city" kiosk surveillance & advertising network?

https://www.wired.com/story/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-qua...

https://gizmodo.com/nycs-free-wifi-service-is-turning-into-a...

They already have a few thousand people working in NYC offices

NYC, yes. But counting Sidewalk Labs' project as Google "planting their flag" in Toronto seems like a stretch.

Detroit fits most of your criteria but has fallen off the list. Perhaps we already have enough rich guys in town:

http://michiganradio.org/post/who-owns-downtown-detroit

Most of the criteria != all of the criteria though

> escape form the US government.

Curious what specifically would be different between Canada and USA polices towards amazon.

Ability to hire international workers with ease would be huge.

For starters this whole immigration thing seems different.

Canada welcomes immigrant workers. Even fast-tracks their applications (within 2 weeks) to work in Canada.

This way Amazon can hire anyone, anywhere in the world (within reason) and they'll be able to move to Canada without any immigration issues.

Unless they create immigration issues.

In Canada, more than 60 percent of permanent residents are admitted via the economic class, most of them via the point-based system. Only one-quarter of permanent residents are admitted based on family ties.

In the United States, about two-thirds of permanent residents are admitted because they are closely related to a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident. Less than 15 percent of permanent residents, including accompanying dependents, are admitted on the basis of employment.

Immigrants in the United States are three times as likely as natives to have not completed high school; in Canada, immigrants and natives are equally likely to have not completed high school.

So depends on type of workers they are looking for hq2. If they need mostly high skilled then canada might be better option.

Well, obviously and critically immigration for hiring from the necessary talent pool.

The current administration in the US is actively anti-amazon. Primarily due to Bezos' ownership of the washington Post and its unflattering portrayal of Trump. If Amazon chose a Canadian city, the administration would likely go all in on attacking them. A hostile government is a tough thing to overcome even for a company as wealthy as Amazon.

Bezos sponsors research for the "10k year clock". Also, this HQ2 is going to be used for many years.

I doubt a 4 year administration worries them as much as you think.

Well, for one, you wouldn't have the leader of the country constantly saying that your company's leader is a proponent of "fake news".

I think Newark set the bar on the financial discounts: $7B [1] so far, but we just changed Governors, so we'll see. I think it meets all the other requirements you mentioned, but I think we got knocked on Infrastructure on some list a month or two ago.

[1] http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2017/12/10_reasons_for_ama...

Plus Audible is in Newark as well

Maybe they can finish the PATH connection to the airport. 2.4 miles:

http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2017/12/a_timeline_chartin...

You can already get from Newark Penn to the airport using NJ Transit. It isn't a terrible idea to bring the PATH there so there's a single seat ride from places that PATH services but NJ transit doesn't, but that doesn't apply to Newark.

Yes, I wait to transfer and pay again.

The PATH is cheaper, runs more frequently, makes several more stops in Manhattan and NJ, so it would be a better option.

If you want to go downtown, for example, the PATH goes to WTC, as well as midtown.

CNBC updated its grades: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/how-cities-rate-in-the-race-...

Given the headlines and buzz today, you'd think Amazon at this point would just create an Amazon Original reality show at this point where each week a new city gets voted off.

I'm in Dallas.

- Currently has a large Amazon distribution center in the suburbs

- Strong tech workforce and universities in the area. Other Tech companies in the area Dell(formerly EDS), ATT. Regional centers of Verizon, IBM, Microsoft, Alcatel/Lucent

- Low property values and favorable tax structures. Plenty of areas to lease locations or to build in the suburbs or downtown.

- International airport that is the hub of American Airlines

- Toyota (North America HQ) recently moved to Dallas suburbs. Google HQ2 is rumored to be looking at Dallas.

> Google HQ2 is rumored to be looking at Dallas.

Do you mean Apple?

Dallas should be a very credible option, even if it might be #2 in Texas, behind Austin.

Austin's airport makes it difficult to see that city working for Amazon.

I hope it goes anywhere but Dallas! I live in Dallas.

What's wrong with ABIA?

It's a reclaimed airforce base with new facilities and better service ratings than LAX or JFK.

Nothing's particularly wrong with it. I'm just not sure it's major enough to support Amazon.

I mean, I definitely hope it is, because Dallas doesn't need Amazon setting up shop here. But Chicago and Dallas seem like they have more infrastructure to support a major project like Amazon's HQ2.

I grew up in a small town and have a hard time understanding why it's so contentious to add another major facility in a big city like Dallas or Austin.

It makes almost no impact on things like traffic or social services at a population scale. (In reality, even a HQ1 type facility is just another +0.3% for DFW or +1% for ATX, which is equivalent to hastening net growth by a few months at most.)

That's a great observation! I'm making a few assumptions that I think are pretty safe, namely that an HQ2 would not be distributed geographically around the city in many small buildings, and that the single campus would not be built in various areas of the city that are unlikely to meet the requirements.

Because of those assumptions, I'm not thinking of an influx of employees being mixed among the millions of existing residents. I think it's much more likely that the HQ2 would be built in a northern suburb of Dallas, like Frisco. There are roughly 160k people in Frisco right now[0], and it's already dramatically driven up property values, commute times, restaurant wait times, and construction delays.

I might be letting my skepticism of the entire concept of an "HQ2" color my impressions of the economic impact of an HQ2, but a history of sports stadium construction in this country, and the various incentives cities have paid for them combined with the never-quite-what-was-promised results suggests to me whichever city ends up giving away a pile of money for Amazon's HQ2 will likely someday regret it.

[0] http://www.friscotexas.gov/578/Population-Estimates-Projecti...

Same. We have come so far culturally from the 90s that we actually have our own urban environment. I don't want to see it watered down when we are just getting something so good.

No Google. https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2018/01/09/re...

I can't see Amazon moving to Austin.

Austin is a very popular "2nd Campus" for tech companies, but it's not a great "HQ".

1) Poor airport connectivity 2) Seriously bad traffic options, with limited ability for build out 3) Not a lot of great public transit options 4) Limited ability for free land/property tax abatements/government handouts

Austin is a strong candidate because of UT Austin, but UT Austin students primarily come from Austin or Dallas (not like they are trapped on an island) unwilling to move out.

On the other hand Austin is the headquarters of Whole Foods Market which owns a lot of real estate. Until recently they built stores with cash and often owned the shopping centers their stores were built in.

Texas has no state income tax which wouldn’t be a public reason for the choice but is obviously going to be a factor.

Austin is also a good culture fit with Seattle and is a startup hub.

I'm from Texas; I live in Dallas. I think Dallas is a much stronger option than Austin.

Building a grocery store is far different than building a corporate campus. The interesting thing is that Amazon already has a presence in a lot of these cities, so they're intimately familiar with the day to day workings. There's not going to be any "sugar coating" by city officials.

1) Austin - Whole Foods 2) Newark - Audible 3) Dallas - HUGE Amazon logistics hub 4) NoVa - AWS location

and on, and on, and on.

Austin has horrible traffic issues right now - look at the other guys on this thread that are from Austin. None of them are eager to have Amazon move there. I would welcome Amazon with open arms.

I wonder if they meant the city of Dallas itself. I'm not really sure where they'd even put a large HQ campus. Frisco/Plano/etc? absolutely. But in the City of Dallas proper?

Hmmm.

Dallas proper had ~8 different sites that fit the criteria Amazon cited.

Amazon doesn't require it all be contiguous space - they have buildings all over Seattle.

Downtown has a lot of parking lots that could become buildings, Exposition Park could fit the whole thing, Victory Park submitted a proposal, and Midtown near the Galleria also submitted one, with a few others.

Valley View Mall is one option that was proposed. There are plenty of spots.

Ah. I had thought I read previously that it was going to be a sizable campus. Perhaps it will be smaller than I had originally thought.

635/DNT would probably be a decent place for it, now that I think about it...

I think you misunderstood me. Whole Foods was unusual because it would buy the land and build shopping centers for its stores. The idea was that they could be their own landlords and rent out the rest of the space to other companies that have similar products and services. That’s why you’ll often see a natural pet food store or an organic restaurant next to a Whole Foods. They attract customers to each other.

Over the years they’ve bought real estate based on the number of college graduates who live nearby. Having started in Austin decades ago they most certainly own a lot of land there in prime locations.

So, now that Amazon owns Whole Foods, it might already own a lot of the land it needs to build its new campus. If it builds elsewhere it might be much more costly.

Austin's airport is fine, if a bit small. It's got plenty of room to grow, though, and it does pale in comparison to Houston and Dallas airports. However, let's not lose the big picture: Austin is a hub of tech talent. Tech talent wants to be in tech hubs. Neither Houston nor Dallas are seen as tech hubs. Austin is. Austin has a critical mass of hardware companies (Intel, AMD, TI, NI, Dell) and software companies (Apple, Google, IBM, Oracle, Indeed, Facebook, HomeAway, Atlassian, Blizzard, etc.) all have substantial offices here. Even Amazon already has an office here. Despite the lack of great public infrastructure, Austin is a great fit for Amazon HQ2. Would love to have them here, especially if they poured money into infrastructure. Austin is the fastest growing major city in the U.S. with or without Amazon. Better to have them here and help build up the infrastructure than without them.

>Neither Houston nor Dallas are seen as tech hubs

Dallas isn't a tech hub? It's called the "Silicon Prairie". There's more tech jobs in Dallas than there are in Austin. TI? TI's headquarters are Dallas. IBM, Oracle, McAfee, HP, Intuit, Microsoft, Match.com, Nokia, RIM, Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Cisco, EMC, vmware....

Amazon has a substantial AWS office in Dallas as well.

>Austin is the fastest growing major city in the U.S

And Dallas is just behind them, 3rd fastest.

It could very well be Austin, but Dallas is actually a bigger tech hub than Austin is.

There is also an AWS office in Dallas, based on recruitment emails I have received.

> - Currently has a large Amazon distribution center in the suburbs

Amazon currently has EIGHT large distribution centers in the DFW area, actually.

And I think that they might be building a #9 and #10 within the next couple of years.

Denver appears to be the current favourite (also chosen by the NYT as the winner) but doesn't have any flights to Asia except for Tokyo[1]. But I guess being sufficiently connected within the US is enough, not sure how many flights to China they need.

[1] https://www.flightera.net/airport/Denver/KDEN

Denver has a huge airport and is a major United hub. It's just that most non-stop flights to Asia from the US leave from the West Coast (although this is less true than it used to be).

not only that, they have approved and are planning a multi-billion dollar gate expansion project so direct asia flights aren't out of the picture.

Denver's airport is one of the biggest airports[1]. When I first moved to Denver in 2014, they didn't have a flight to India. In 2015 they announced a _direct_ flight to Banglore, India. My point being not having a flight is not really a roadblock.

[1]https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/denver-inte...

Except no one in Denver wants them here except the Governor and business council. It would be a huge net loss for the community and people.

I'm in Denver and your post is not accurate.

I think that's far from truth. It'll just be another issue that splits opinion.

I don't know if opinion of residents is that strong? I live here and would welcome Amazon as would a lot of the people I work with from my conversations. But then again my circle is younger, wealthier, white etc.

If Amazon goes there, the flights will follow.

>- land in the downtown core to build on, this might eliminate New York?

They could rent out the space in One World Trade Center.

Is it fairly vacant?

How much you want to pay?

I think I'd feel subconsciously, irrationally wary of working in what could be argued is a bit terrorist bait like that

That's not nearly enough space, the whole thing is 3m square feet with 2/3 of it leased out. Amazon currently has over 8m occupied in Seattle with millions more currently being built.

> Nice to see Toronto on the list, though game theory suggest

My bet is on Toronto because they can pick up all the staff they need worldwide without the problems of trying to get US visas.

Same thought. Having 1 year to play the H1B lottery is not ideal, and they really hired lots of economists lately, most of which have this issue.

They won't do this after getting bids from numerous American cities. To choose a city in Canada would piss off too much of their customer base, including the president of the country, and would have a long term material impact on sales.

Have you seen Trump's tweets about Amazon and Bezos? He's already pissed at them. Frankly if I was in their shoes I would go with Toronto also to have some sort of hedging against the US political climate.

I think that would be too incendiary a hedge. They have much more to lose than gain.

I think you're overestimating the trumples. He has an abysmal approval rating, and the types of people who tend appprove of him (e.g. rural poor) aren't exactly big spenders/prime consumers or whatever. Trump will raise a stink about it, but I'd be very surprised if anyone normal/reasonable felt Amazon opening hq2 in Canada to be like a personal attack against America or something.

Just an aside, Trump supporters are NOT poor or the working class, this is a myth. The poor are non-voters and if they vote it's mostly Democrat by and large. Trump voters for the most part were middle class suburbanites or exburbanites.

Do you have a source for this? Historically, republican voters are both poorer and less educated (which in and of itself has class implications). However, none of those demographics are relevant if they are all located in solid red states. Given that most people seem to attribute the swing state losses to the 'we need jobs' votes coming from the manufacturing and steel industries, the swing implies it's due to jobless (poor) and/or working class voters, the exact demographic you say was not the determinant.

First link on google on poor voters going Democratic:

http://www.businessinsider.com/exit-polls-who-voted-for-trum...

Every income group over $50k voted Trump. If you scroll down you see that rural voters did indeed go for Trump, but they are much smaller proportion of the population than city folk or, the largest group, suburbanites (who went for Trump solidly as well).

I don't have a source handy for the poor being largely non-voters but I've seen hundreds over the years, it's well-established fact.

>Given that most people seem to attribute the swing state losses to the 'we need jobs' votes coming from the manufacturing and steel industries

Most people might make this attribution but it is not correct.

That article doesn't support your assertion. Those are overall exit polls, not polls of swing states. The swings states are the only meaningful measure of comparison as to "why he won". The middle class are doing very well in red states like Iowa and Nebraska, but they are just as irrelevant as a billionaire in manhattan or a welfare recipient in the bronx.

In Ohio, the state that has voted for every president to win since 1964, trump won across every level of education and every level of income except the MOST poor according to exit polls.

http://edition.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls/ohio/pres...

Okay, if you will only accept extremely specific tailored data on tiny fractions of the population you are perfectly capable of finding it yourself. I'll be happy to review it with you when you do.

The other responder to you has already done this for you, in fact, and the data there backs up my claims.

Plus, my main claim is that Trump voters are not the poor, they are middle-class suburbanites. My source absolutely backs that claim up.

Also, I'm not sure you understand the electoral landscape very well. Iowa is one of the more purple states, it was VERY blue for Obama and almost exactly dead even on Bush both times.

The makeup of Iowa is actually very similar to nearby Wisconsin and Michigan, which were the surprise red states that took the election for Trump.

Didn't the swing states also demand IDs which democratic supporters would not have?

A lot of the swing states are controlled by Republican state governments who impose draconian racially targeted voter suppression measures yes, but this is true in every election. 2000 was won for Bush first by deep and massive illegal voter suppression in Florida (taking people who had the right to vote off the rolls because they had a black-sounding name, for example) and only second by the Supreme Court.

The Republicans have less support nationally and in states almost every election and it is getting worse for them as time goes on, voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering are the only things keeping them in office.

You also could have never guessed Trump would win the election, right? You and I are not tapped into the minds of plenty of Americans who will absolutely feel the feeling you've described. And your assertion about "trumpies" is just not true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/0...

Forget about normal/reasonable, while trump's approval rating is abysmally low going by historical standards, it's still 30 something percent - a large number in absolute terms.

Trump does not give a shit about Bezos or Amazon. The only reason he targets Bezos is because Bezos owns the Washington Post.

> Frankly if I was in their shoes I would go with Toronto also to have some sort of hedging against the US political climate.

Meh. However you feel about Trump, confidence in the US economy among businesses has been really high since his election, and even higher after the tax bill got passed. Look at what’s happening with Apple and the hundreds of other companies giving out bonuses and increasing spending in the US. Your comment might have made more sense closer to the election when everyone was making those gloom and doom predictions and nobody was sure what might really happen, but I think right now the US is more attractive to businesses than it’s probably been in a very long time.

That may be the whole point of the competition. Toronto could be the winner from before the competition even started, but holding the competition is still worthwhile. It is a way to get Toronto to cough up some goodies while simultaneously getting a way to claim that this is all Trump's fault.

I sincerely doubt the majority of their customer base cares at all, and it would almost certainly have very little impact on sales.

I sincerely doubted that Hillary would lose the election, and we know how that went. You're probably right in that the majority of their customer base wouldn't care at all. However, even if 10% care, not an unreasonable guess, that would absolutely have a large material impact on sales.

The placement of the HQ in Toronto would be branded as a betrayal of America. I think the NFL/Papa Johns case could end up being similar --> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/12/21/p...

Yeah and they already have offices all over the world so it's a nonissue.

The difference with those offices is they didn't tease 20+ US cities before building them. It's a nonissue to you, but it won't be to millions of Americans.

How many Americans are "pissed off" that their American cars are made in Canada?

They don't even know where their stuff is made any more. Toyota makes cars in Kentucky, Texas, Indiana, Alabama, West Virgina and Mississippi, but they're an "import". Ford makes vehicles in Mexico and Canada but they're "domestic".

Your point is valid, however no car factory built recently has garnered a fraction of the publicity/public interest that HQ2 has. What people don't know can't hurt them.

Nobody cares about HQ2 outside of certain tech circles.

My point is people care more about where their cars are made, and they don't even really care about that.

I wouldn’t be so sure of that. My parents, who are both in their 60s and not the least bit affiliated with technology, are both aware of Amazon’s headquarters search and brought it up with me when I was visiting over the holidays.

This is false. This whole process has been huge news. It's front page on sites like Washington Post, Philly.com, and the IndyStar and I've just checked multiple non tech forums where it's one of the busiest topics today.

A single day of news is not "news". Everyone's already moved on to the US government shutdown and more nonsense about emails and ISIS.

If nobody cares about HQ2, then why is it all over the news? You're underestimating it's reach.

Even if people wouldn't normally care, they will care now because of the publicity and bidding process that has taken place. People in cities who do not win will be upset when they lose, and people everywhere, including places that were never in the running, will be upset if they put the office in Canada. You must not have heard of the "America first" line of thinking that got trump elected, in part.

Oh, you think people read the news. You're overestimating how much that matters.

This will blow over in months and be totally forgotten.

Part of me says that if they wanted to set up shop in Toronto they would have just done it, and not gone out of their way to attract attention like they have.

But on the other hand, if they want to run a PR campaign on the basis of "we seriously considered many US cities, and Toronto was a better option", they're certainly putting in the groundwork for that.

It's probably just going through their "due diligence" so they can pull the pin on a non-US but "North American" location. If they want to hire the best in the world it's easier to get visas for working in Toronto, and the path to citizenship is pretty straightforward.

I think your analysis is a bit Amerocentric. They said they wanted a second HQ in “North America” and received several Canadian bids, all but one of which failed to make the cut.

> without the problems of trying to get US visas

This assumes that politicians eager to get Amazon are not able to speed up and fix that process which they certainly would be motivated to do. [1]

[1] This is not 'your shitty startup with 10 employees'. It's Amazon and the brass ring.

I doubt it. Congress has failed at immigration reform for years and the current administration wants even less immigration than currently occurring.

The current administration says they want less immigration occurring, but also seems confusingly willing to cut deals that completely flying in the face of the President's public statements. There's presumably room for a deal if partisanship doesn't get in the way, because it seems as if there's no will to revoke DACA for real on anybody's (even Trump's) part.

But, it's an election year, so...

NAFTA has a provision for no-visa entry as an "internal transfer". Having a Canadian office is not unheard-of to invoke this position, by stationing an employee they really want at a US office in a Canadian office and then transferring.

While politicians may be motivated, there's no indication they would be motivated more by THIS business than by ANY OTHER business, all of which have the same concerns, have had the same concerns for years, and immigration has generally been avoided.

The L1 already works like this, and it isn't just limited to Canada. So say you work for Microsoft China for a few years, you can then get an L1 to work in the USA, which is much easier than a H1 (no cap!).

You need a Canadian passport to use nafta and that takes around 5 years at least

What US companies do in Canada is often have an office where people can work on a temp visa while waiting for their status in the US

With far-right racist and anti-immigrant sentiment rising and taking power in the US, as a brown immigrant even if you can get a visa wouldn't you be concerned about moving your life here?

>>My bet is on Toronto because they can pick up all the staff they need worldwide without the problems of trying to get US visas.

But non-Canadian staff still need to obtain Canadian visas. I'm not sure how much easier (or not) that process is compared to the TN or H1B lottery.

It's pretty easy. If you're technically skilled and can speak English and/or French they pretty much rubber-stamp you.

Way easier. Canada's points system is a shining beacon of transparency in comparison to the US.

I thought I heard 40% of Amazon's employees are not US citizens. This all makes me think Toronoto is the #1 pick.

40% of tech workers in Seattle are foreign (from ~11% ~25 years ago). I saw this figure yesterday, and it might be what you are thinking of.

Given IT salaries in Canada, it would also be easier to attract Canadian engineers who don't want to move to the US.

Give your requirements, Newark would be the best candidate

- EWR close by, with public transportation connections

- Strong local universities, both in tech and business (Rutgers, NJIT, Stevens)

- Newark development is rising, downtown is still relatively sparse

- Audible is already in Newark

Skeptical it will actually happen though. Wouldn't even consider myself a fan of Newark (even though I go to school here), but it's interesting that it's the smallest city on the list population wise.

Columbia and NYU and Cornell Tech don't make the list? Newark is a borough.

Agree. I work in the area. Beyond universities, the amount of talent that goes through Newark, from NJ suburbs into NYC, every day is incredible. I would think many of those people would love to shave 20-40 minutes off their commute and stop paying city taxes.

ah but then the commute is dramatically worse for people living in LI or CT, cutting you off from that labor pool.

Not to mention Princeton is less than an hour away too.

There is a ton of space in Manhattan. It's expensive, but there.

Out of curiosity, would the exchange rate for USD to CAD be a great advantage for Amazon?

It would be an incredible advantage. Salaries are already lower when compared with the other major North American tech centers. Add the exchange rate into the mix and Amazon's money will go a long way.

Not only salaries and the exchange rate, but total compensation (of which healthcare is a big chunk) is lower for Canadian employees because healthcare is funded by the Canadian federal and provincial governments[1].

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-care-...

Why does amazon want to escape from the US govt?

What is the basis for your assumption of "- a strong existing tech workforce and universities."?

Amazon already has a strong and diverse tech force, in fact, they have so many tech workers that it has affected Seattle's housing crises.

I highly doubt HQ2 will have that many tech workers. If anything, Amazon wants to pay less for non-tech workers because they can't write off those salaries, which implies that the location for HQ2 should be favorable for non-tech roles.

From the linked page

>>We are looking for a location with strong local and regional talent—particularly in software development and related fields

I think there's a continuity of business aspect. When you're among the most valuable public companies in the world, losing your one and only headquarters to a natural disaster might not kill the company, but it would be pretty catastrophic. As such, they're probably going to try to build up a pretty comparable workforce in HQ2.

Amazon recently released Amazon Chime, a videoconferencing system. Maybe this was prioritized so that they'll have a homegrown thing when it comes time for a lot of your meetings to be with remote participants.

I like Toronto a lot but man its so freaking cold.

"a strong existing tech workforce and universities"

Hate to say it, but Northern Virginia and Raleigh have Toronto beat on this

I'm really feeling Chicago here.

Big tech workforce that's almost purely finance... but the talent is there.

Proximity to one of the largest airports in the world.

Chicago is a major city with lots of culture, food, attractions, etc.

The proposed sites are absolutely enormous and perfect for a huge mega-complex like Amazon would want to build.

Relatively short flights to both coasts, since you're smack in the center of the country.

Chicago is a major city with lots of culture, food, attractions, etc.

Personally I love Chicago, and it's one of my favorite cities to visit in the US. And that's at least in part due to the food scene: Au Cheval, Cantina Laredo, Lao Sze Chuan, Petterino's, Wishbone, Star of Siam, Sushi Pink, etc. But... personally speaking I would not want to live and work in Chicago full-time for one big reason: the weather. It's just way too damn cold there for me in the winters.

Now obviously a lot of people do choose to live there, but I can't help but think a warm weather city would be more favorable in some regards, as far as attracting talent goes. But maybe other people don't weight weather as much as I do, or just enjoy cold. Who's to say...

What an odd list of restaurants.

What an odd list of restaurants.

Oh? How so?

On a related (sad) note, at least two restaurants in Chicago that I used to love are closed now: Bombay Spice, and Dragon Ranch Moonshine & BBQ. That and the Resa's location near River North. :-(

Other than Au Cheval, they’re just all pretty average places, I guess. Chicago has the best food scene in the country, I just haven’t ever equated Petterinos, which is considered a mediocre place that has a good pre-theater show menu, with that scene.

I've never heard anybody describe Lao Sze Chuan as "average" before.

Petterino's... I like them a lot in general, but one thing in particular about them stands out to me: the Midwest Corn Chowder. Funny thing to fixate on I guess, but I fell in love with that the first time I was there.

Food taste is pretty subjective though... and also consider that while I've spent a lot of time in Chicago for work, I never lived there, and there are a lot of local restaurants there that I haven't eaten at. More than the ones I have, I'm sure. Which to me, is just more proof of just how awesome the food scene there is. :-)

I'll always try and visit Chicago when I can, and if I ever got "IPO exit rich" maybe I'd maintain a second home there. I just can't do the winters or maybe I'd consider moving permanently. :-(

The guy who started Lao is in jail for tax fraud which has really torpedoed the place. It’s not nearly as good as it used to be.

Granted, I think the Chinese food here by and large sucks.

The guy who started Lao is in jail for tax fraud which has really torpedoed the place. It’s not nearly as good as it used to be.

Oh yeah, I remember hearing they got raided and had their records seized, but I never heard what the actual outcome was. So Tony Hu went to jail huh? That's too bad. At least last time I was there (2013?) Lao Sze Chuan was amazing.

I was surprised to see Wishbone on there. I like that place.

That's just you though. If we're just considering weather, I'd take Chicago over anywhere in Texas, or Atlanta, or Raleigh, or anywhere south of Virginia really. Cold winters are normal, hot summers are terrible. :P

See there ya go... different strokes and all that. I'd never want to live anywhere where it gets any colder than it gets here in NC. :p

You might be right, I don't know everything that is in Raliegh and Virginia.

But Toronto has perennially top 25 world ranked universities, Waterloo and Toronto.

Toronto may not be the best of these 20 cities for workforce and universities but they can more than hold their own in this regard.

The Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area is pretty strong from the education and workforce point of view. Locally there are three highly rated research universities: UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, and NC State University, along with a number of smaller schools: NC Central, Shaw, St. Augustines, Meredith, William Peace, Wake Tech, Durham Tech, etc. Go just a little further out and you have Campbell, Elon, Wake Forest, UNC Greensboro, NC A&T, and the like.

And the area is already known as a strong tech hub, with companies like IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, EMC, and many others having a long-time established presence here.

I can't really compare to Toronto since I don't know much about that area, but I'd say one of the strongest reasons to consider the Triangle relates to the workforce and the education scene.

Not sure about this.

Workforce? Arguable. You may have a point.

But universities?

The Research Triangle has 2 really good schools: Duke and UNC. State is OK.

The Greater Toronto Area has the University of Toronto, Waterloo, McMaster, all of which outrank State. Waterloo and Toronto are especially strong, and beats Duke and UNC in technical disciplines.

I thought the Detroit bid was compelling because it had all of the things you listed, including the Canada connection. They were proposing a campus that stretched across the river into Windsor, with full cooperation and subsidies from the Ontario government.

I doubt that land in the downtown core is a central consideration based on the fact that Northern Virginia and Montgomery County, MD are listed in addition to Washington, DC.

Northern Virginia has a lot of land, an existing tech sector, a ton of data centers, one of the biggest Internet peering points in the world, and a big international airport (Dulles). It's not a cool place to live and work, though, the way the city is. It's family suburbs and strip malls, mostly.

> land in the downtown core to build on, this might eliminate New York?

I saw one analysis that said New York could easily handle Amazon's space requirements with existing Class A vacancies. The problem is that it's not contiguous. But then, neither are Amazon's offices in Seattle.

The problem I'd see with putting a campus in Toronto would be that the transit infrastructure is bursting at the seams. Underfunded public transportation, expensive and underfunded regional transportation, and congestion along all major routes during the day. Along with the sky-rocketing cost of living there you'd filter out a lot of candidates or force people to commute over long distances on a choked network.

YYZ is a decent airport but it doesn't compare to ATL or ORD.

> - a strong existing tech workforce and universities

I'm not saying those of us who stayed North of the border aren't great but a large portion of our talent does head South for the opportunities. Funded technology companies in Canada are hard to come by. A good 80% of the jobs here are for digital agencies. Even Google and Microsoft keep most their technology jobs mostly South of the border despite all of the incentives they're courted with.

Immigration in Canada is a lot more friendly but I don't think that's going to out-weigh the benefits of the other cities listed. My money is on ATL or ORD.

update: 80% is just a rough guess

> a large portion of our talent does head South for the opportunities.

I'm sure a large portion of that (myself included) would strongly consider coming back if there were opportunities like HQ2 in Canada.

And fwiw I'm always pleasantly surprised by the TTC when I go back to visit.

You should read about the overcrowding!

I’d like for there to be more interesting opportunities and challenges here. Doing what I can.

Toronto's not necessarily out of the running because of a smaller public purse; governments don't just throw money at companies for existing; they make investments that have to see returns, like, y'know, tax revenue.

Wages would be significantly lower in Canada and would be in Canadian dollars. That's a pretty big financial win for Amazon.

Part of me would love to have a big tech / infrastructure company like Amazon in Philly. But I take serious issue with the idea of the city paying millions or billions to bring them here, promising years of tax breaks (a free ride), and the tightening of an already very tight real estate and rental market. I don't think my fellow Philadelphians should have to pay to bring a company here that's just going to hire people who are not currently residents, while increasing their expenses and utilizing the public services that their taxes have paid for, while receiving little to no tax revenue or services in return.

> I don't think my fellow Philadelphians should have to pay to bring a company here that's just going to hire people who are not currently residents, while increasing their expenses and utilizing the public services that their taxes have paid for, while receiving little to no tax revenue or services in return.

If you applied these views at the federal level than you'd be anti-immigration.

It amazes me how people can be so protectionist towards their local communities for the above reasons and have totally different views at the national level

Immigrants pay taxes.

Sometimes new immigrants get tax breaks though

Do you have an example?

I agree with your OP, but citizens get far more tax breaks than immigrants.

Citizens don't have to pay foreigner rates for public Universities. That's a nice $50k-$100k savings for higher-education that citizens get that universities don't get, right there.

What kind of breaks do immigrants get over citizens that are worth $50k-$100k? None.

That is NOT a tax break....the immigrants and their families didn't spend years paying into the state tax base used to support the public university which the citizens presumably did and will continue to do in the future...

edit: I am using immigrant-when perhaps one should use 'international student'

A lot of public universities only have 1 year of previous in-state residency requirement to gain in-state rates.

People aren't going to pay $50k-$100k in taxes in one year to cover this benefit that citizens receive.

Because they lived in another state in the same country basically, and in theory people could just as easily move in the opposite direction.

But you're right that in practice it is taken advantage of with people renting an apartment for a year and doing the minimum necessarily to register as residents.

So overall you're still incorrect about it being a foreigner tax, implying perhaps they just hate non Americans and want to punish them.

Also same full tuition applies to non residents from other states.

Universities often base tuition on residency status that they determine.

So a foreigner living in a state could get in state tuition.

(and a citizen that only recently moved to a state might get out of state tuition)

That is incorrect. You need to be a permanent resident or citizen to be considered for in-state tuition.

For example:

https://www.suny.edu/smarttrack/residency/

Non-resident students, including undocumented students, who attend for at least two years and graduate from a New York high school may be eligible for resident tuition. See the campus Student Accounts Office (Bursar) for details and to apply for resident tuition.

https://admissions.tc.umn.edu/PDFs/ResidencyReciprocity.pdf

Nonimmigrants residing in this country or state under a temporary visa that bars them from establishing domicile in the U.S. (visas B, F, H [H4 visa holders who have graduated from a Minnesota high school should contact the Resident Classification Office on campus about their resident status.], J, O, and M) shall be classified as nonresidents. Nonimmigrants holding a valid temporary visa that does not bar them from establishing domicile in the U.S. (visas A, E, G, I or L) may be considered for residency, assuming they otherwise meet the Basic Definition of Resident Status.

An then many states seem to recognize refugee and asylum visas, which aren't the same as permanent residence (but that is more of a technicality compared to the above).

So do employees of companies: income tax and sales tax and property tax. Even if Amazon gets a fairly large tax break, but net effect is overwhelmingly positive. The main downside of increased local wealth is higher overall prices and gentrification, which isn’t an entirely bad thing as long as it’s at reasonable levels. So all these new residents come to Philly or wherever, drive up rent prices. That means the local Philadelphia landlords become wealthier. I hate high rent prices, but I feel like this is a net benefit to both local residents and newcomers who come for the job.

> while receiving little to no tax revenue or services in return.

Does Pennsylvania have no income, property or sales tax?

Philadelphia is a deeply corrupt city. It doesn't matter how much money it is given, it will never be enough.

the whole point of the amazon bidding process is to induce competition between cities to give amazon exemptions and tax breaks-Philadelphia/Pennsylvania will probably benefit on the whole if they were chosen...but the size of that benefit would depend substantially on the terms they offer amazon.

Creating jobs that don't exist for people who currently aren't residents (or don't yet exist) is the very definition of economic progress. If you don't want that then you just want nothing but the status the status quo unchanged forever. You can't have it both ways.

I'd agree with you if you removed "for people who currently aren't residents (or don't yet exist)" from the sentence, but leaving it in there means creating more inequality than economic progress.

The OP has clearly stated that their concerns are corporate welfare going to a company that most certainly doesn't need a handout and a further disruption to an existing housing problem.

And you have decided to reframe their concerns as being "against progress"?

Also please point me to this formal definition of "economic progress" you are stating.

I can absolutely expect a company not to need massive tax breaks to come to my city, and to have a plan for housing. If Amazon were to come to the Northeast part of the city and with a plan for development of housing and supporting services, that would be great. But in all likelihood, they will just crowd our downtown and popular areas even further.

If you think that attracting high numbers of highly educated and wealthy people into a moribound city is not going to increase property taxes and the existing tax base, I don't know what to say, especially since you (or anybody outside of Philly or Amazon) know what the concessions are, I don't know what to say.

If the concession was only to take 1% off the tax bill for Amazon, it'd definitely be a good idea. If it was to rescind taxes in all perpetuity and give massive development credits, it would probably be a bad idea. Now it's all down to negotiation.

In the spirit of a constructive dialog, why is this getting downvoted? @jimmywanger is making good points that address the real, positive impacts of attracting an HQ2-level project.

I believe that it's completely reasonable for governments to invest massively into public infrastructure to facilitate the success of Amazon HQ. Things like new transit lines, complete streets, public parks etc. It should be a catalyst to invest into parts of the city that have seen substantial urban decay.

It irks me however when huge tax credits are handed out to already profitable companies to move in. It's just giving free services at the expense of everyone else.

I'd see it as cities charging more taxes than they are actually willing to collect. I.e. the city is happy collecting less % of taxes already, just that most dont have bargaining power.

In other words, they are able to bully individuals, but not corporations.

Correct.

It's not enough for government to sit back and assume tax dollars are going to cover economic growth. Government needs to be active in participating in growth, and that includes understanding what businesses need from their business plans and assisting them in becoming successful - from startups to large businesses.

Jobs are the goal for this competition. They're the prize.

Be thankful that governments are participating in this process. You can't make money without spending money. Don't be angry that your city paid $1 to earn $5. EVERY business has a cost-of-sales associated with it, and government is basically a really large business.

If your city wins, the local revenue from economic activity from these new employees will far exceed any costs and tax incentives given to Amazon.

Don't be the guy that thinks taxes is enough. Your own skills at business planning applies just as much to government. You got a lot of revenue via taxes, now what? How do you spend it? What causes the most tax revenue return and highest population satisfaction?

If you actually write down all of what these governments are doing in a business plan to win Amazon's headquarters, you'll find that it's as much a business plan as anything else, and that government's cost calculations are likely worth it. Business planning is never easy - it's far easier to screw it up - but nothing worthwhile is easy. Be glad that government is doing hard things, instead of easy things.

Edit: To give an idea on the kinds of business-plan data government needs to understand to determine if Amazon is worth it or not, consider that: Are Amazon R&D employees high-crime people? Do they murder other people a lot or die from opiates? Will the HQ create pollution and destroy the environment? Are there dangerous chemicals that might explode if stored unsafely? Will their operations cause birth defects?

Use this kind of data to calculate how much government services these people are going to need and to determine if their tax-incentive costs are worth it?

I would really like to know why this is getting downvoted... The reasoning here is sound - jobs create economic growth. These governments are forgoing a portion of the tax income that currently does not exist but would be gained by Amazon's arrival in exchange for getting Amazon to come in the first place. This is not an Olympic Games or a sports stadium that benefits very few individuals economically. This is a project that will dramatically shape the city chosen for the better (economically).

I didn't downvote it, but you omit an import issue: Amazon coming will also increase expenses for the city -- police, fire protection, sewers, etc. Tax revenue exists to pay for these things. It is not unreasonable to worry about whether the net effect of giving big tax breaks and bringing in a company like Amazon will be negative.

Half of Philadelphia's General Fund revenue comes from wage taxes. That ends up being 1/6th of the budget of Philadelphia and 2/7 of the revenue for the city.

While it isn't unreasonable to worry that the net effect of lowering the business income and real estate taxes applied to Amazon would result in a negative tax/expense ratio, when applied holistically and including the other taxes, it's also not unreasonable to think the city revenue will increase, particularly when you add in related businesses.

population of philadelphia: 1.56 million

supposed HQ2 employees: 50,000

I suspect that the sewers won't overflow, new crime waves, extra fires, etc. There may be impact on transit in a few specific areas, but in terms of total population impact it's difficult to believe that it would noticeably impact the budget in any particular city service. Except for transit.

The problem is that government expenses go up with Amazon's arrival as well. If we assume the taxes paid by other businesses fairly represent their load, then Amazon will be a burden overall by avoiding those taxes. That growth from other businesses will be needing services as well, and the tax from that growth won't cover everybody.

That's balanced by the increase in tax base from 50,000 jobs and investment of billions in the local community.

No it's not balanced, that was my whole point. Yes there will be an increase in tax base, but it won't cover the increase in expenses. If it does then it implies that the current businesses are overtaxed.

>If it does then it implies that the current businesses are overtaxed.

The "implication" is not obvious to the casual observer.

Not if the average salary and usage taxes per Amazon employee are higher than normal for the city, which seems likely.

It will cover any increase in expense. Not all jobs are equal, and Amazon R&D jobs are the most rewarding. They don’t have crime like non-college working class, they don’t die of opiuates like restaurant and other service workers. They don’t have cancer or birth defects like factory workers.

Some context that might further illustrate OP concerns:

-Philadelphia already has major funding issues despite several unpopular taxes like the wage tax and soda tax

-Recently went through a huge gentrification cycle spurred in part by a 10 year tax abatement given to new construction or rehabs

-The city has already given huge tax incentives to another major corporation, Comcast.

What you have is a city that recently had to close many libraries, firehouses, and public schools due to budget issues potentially giving another gift basket to a huge corporation.

Thanks for providing the context. I can see how people in Philly would be lukewarm on the idea of paying to bring Amazon to town.

Do you think the city would be better off without Comcast employees there?

This is where more subtle analysis makes all the difference.

Comcast doesn't seem like it would be a high-end workforce. I doubt they do any R&D there.

While not all of Comcast's R&D is here, they do have quite a few teams in Philly doing R&D (I know people on them)

Yeah but does this actual help the people of Philly? http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=COMCAST&job=&city=PHILADELP...

Not really a good argument to use when the overall topic is Amazon.

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Amazon+Corporate+Llc&job=&c...

I do have a number of friends working as devs for Comcast, and I've recently been approached for a role doing dev work there as well. This is the HQ, so this is where I'd expect the bulk of technical work to happen.

Whereas if they offered Philly a package including a Bezos Free Library system, Kindle FireHouses, and SchoolsByAmazon across the metro area, they could own the city for decades.

Your comment reminds me sports stadiums being built millions spent for rich professional sports teams. I'm not into sports at all it seems unusual to build what to me seems like a church for worshippers of team X.

I'm all for being active but professional sports these days seems like they are a religion.

Agreed. My thing is, if a sports stadium is gonna be built with public money, it should belong to the public and the team owner should have to pay rent and/or revenue share. Otherwise, why should a billionaire (or group of wealthy people) get a taxpayer-funded stadium for them to print money with?

Stadiums generate a lot of construction jobs, a lot of billable attorney hours, operational revenue to the locality and state/federal dollars for infrastructure.

At worst, political people and relatives are members of LLCs that are owning real estate.

Basically, it lets politicians be gold-givers. That means political capital, which is as important as cash is to a billionaire.

Oh come on, Philadelphia has plenty of other projects like roads and schools that it can spend that money on that also generate those jobs.

Stadium subsidies have repeatedly been shown to be one of the worst development deals local governments can make. Or get snookered into. While deals tend to vary, with some being less bad than others, local governments almost always lose in the long run: subsidies stadiums don't generate the expected economic gains, and the opportunity cost means subsidy funds can't be spent on infrastructure investments that would have a stronger, more immediate economic benefit. The perceived rational for stadium subsidies tends to focus on two main benefits: construction jobs, and a multiplier effect that's tied to tourism as well as local sports spending. One analysis, for example:

> In our forthcoming Brookings book, Sports, Jobs, and Taxes, we and 15 collaborators examine the local economic development argument from all angles: case studies of the effect of specific facilities, as well as comparisons among cities and even neighborhoods that have and have not sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into sports development. In every case, the conclusions are the same. A new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment. No recent facility appears to have earned anything approaching a reasonable return on investment. No recent facility has been self-financing in terms of its impact on net tax revenues. Regardless of whether the unit of analysis is a local neighborhood, a city, or an entire metropolitan area, the economic benefits of sports facilities are de minimus.[0]

Multiple surveys of economists have shown a strong consensus against stadium and professional sports subsidies: one survey indicated that 86 percent agreed "local and state governments in the U.S. should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises" while another from 2017 showed "Providing state and local subsidies to build stadiums for professional sports teams is likely to cost the relevant taxpayers more than any local economic benefits that are generated."[1][2] Michael Leeds, a sports economist, put it this way: "If every sports team in Chicago were to suddenly disappear, the impact on the Chicago economy would be a fraction of 1 percent...A baseball team has about the same impact on a community as a midsize department store."[3]

But people love their teams, and the simple threat of moving is often more than enough to push subsidy deals past any roadblocks even when a move is highly unlikely. Plus, they're stuck with an old, empty stadium afterwards: when Rams left St. Louis for LA, the city was still carrying >$100 million in bonds from the old stadium's construction in 1995.[4] Plus another ~$17 million spent on developing a new stadium plan in the two years before the move. No wonder the city tried to sue.

Stadium subsidies are bad deals sold with irrational projections with fans' emotions used to grease the deal the rest of the way. The only thing worse than a city declaring victory with a stadium deal is a city actually winning an Olympic bid.[5] Apologies for the length; I got a bit carried away :).

0. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sports-jobs-taxes-are-new...

1. https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2017...

2. https://people.uwec.edu/jamelsem/fte/fte/efl/teacher_stuff/a...

3. https://www.marketplace.org/2015/03/19/business/are-pro-spor...

4. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rams-los-angeles-st-lou...

5. https://astro.temple.edu/~mleeds/documents/CEP.pdf

Why do you think they wouldn't hire current residents? Isn't this supposed to be a whole new HQ? I thought they had said it would be 50,000 NEW jobs.

Philadelphia has a 6% unemployment rate. Don't you think HQ2 might drive that down some?

Here in Dallas, there has been a stream of companies moving headquarters in from out of state. Even though they are bringing their people with them, they wind up scouring the landscape for new workers. Toyota relocated and brought 3200 people along but they are still hiring 1000 locals.

> Philadelphia has a 6% unemployment rate. Don't you think HQ2 might drive that down some?

It might drive it up, if the tax incentives and other provisions required to secure it mean it's not paying for it's fair share of shared infrastructure, so that either overall infrastructure crumbles or is paid for by others (through higher overall taxes), either of which can drive other businesses away.

I'm sorry, but this is economically faulty reasoning... Intensification of development creates external growth. More people making more money on new jobs and spending it into the economy boosts everyone else.

You are conflating concerns about infrastructure (which is a government expenditure) with job growth. HQ2 in Philly (or anywhere else) would add to government coffers, both directly (from wage tax, etc.) and indirectly (from property taxes, wage tax from non-Amazon business growth, etc.). The only way infrastructure would "crumble" is if the government doesn't properly direct some of its windfall towards maintaining it.

> HQ2 in Philly (or anywhere else) would add to government coffers

Only necessarily true if you assume there are no government costs in attracting it; but, yes, it's probably at least a slight net gain in tax revenue because the incentives alone probably don't directly outweigh the revenue.

They might, however, when you add in the induced capital (for utility extensions, roads, etc.) and maintenance (for both the new and existing facilities induced by increased utilization from the HQ).

And if that's the case, there are either reduced expenditures relative to the level of need or increased taxes as a result of the incentives to Amazon, and those absolutely can drive away other businesses.

Philly doesn't have 50,000 skilled, but unemployed, residents waiting around for Amazon.

Sure, some locals will quit their jobs and work for Amazon. And some may come off the unemployment list. But, the majority will need to be brought into the area, which causes congestion, drives up real estate values and rent, etc.

It also increases the money available for restaurants and entertainment, local purchases and shopping - creating local jobs for less skilled and unemployed people.

Unless Amazon is going to be paying $0 in tax or will be given tax credits in excess of any tax it will pay, neither of which I gather is the case, then how would this fail to deliver a net increase in tax revenue for the city? The 1000s of employees are not getting any tax breaks either so that'd also have to factor into the calculation. I don't think cities are acting against their own self interest in these negotiations.

Not to mention, those thousands of highly paid employees are going to be buying houses, renting apartments, buying cars, groceries, haircuts, etc

Which will drive up the cost of life for people who currently live in Philadelphia and won't work for Amazon. It will, however, vastly enrich their landlords.

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. This is exactly what's happened to Seattle. http://www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/article/What-does-it-re...

This is an interesting position that I am quite conflicted about. From the conclusion of the original post it seems like he/she would prefer company that brings in high salary jobs not to relocate to the area if the company itself would not be employing people that originated from the area for those high salary jobs. This is because he/she perceived that there is no benefit to the economy since the local does not get those salary, and the local would have to suffer the consequence of rising living cost.

But my concern would be how would a city ever improve its living condition if it lack funds to maintain schools and community and the resident themselves are unwilling to bring in these company?

Even if amazon doesn't pay taxes, the employees that work there will (through buying stuff and living there), doesn't that give the city an opportunity to reinvigorate the city with new tax revenue and potentially provide a better community and education for the next generation?

"The Times reported in July that 74 projects were under construction in downtown Seattle. Two-thirds of the buildings will be residential towers, with most being apartments for rent, not condos...Seattle has gone from one of the most affordable West Coast cities to one of the least, Aaron Terrazas, a senior economist at Zillow, told CNN Money. The city and developers have tried to alleviate that by building tons of apartments. Downtown has added 20,000 units in the past decade, with another 27,000 on the way...But nearly all the buildings are considered luxury real estate, with rents 40% higher than in older buildings. The dueling 41-story Insignia towers include amenities like a "sky retreat," an indoor lap pool and sauna, and a screening room...From 2005 to 2015, Seattle's median rent jumped by three times as much as the national figure did. In downtown Seattle, average rent has climbed to $2,400 a month, meaning you'd need to make about $96,000 to afford it."

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-hq-photo-tour-seattle-...

And another article: http://gawker.com/how-amazon-swallowed-seattle-1724795265

I acknowledge the problem, but at the same time I am not sure what is the solution. Should Amazon relocate to a brand new city where it is not possible to gentrified people or should amazon just relocate to other country and cause problem there? I would think both is not optimal since Amazon does provide a net positive impact on the local economy. And I would even argue that the city could take advantage of this new tax source to improve education and perhaps output engineer talents that is much in demand now and in the foreseeable future

The problem is that average rent increasing isn't actually a good metric on how it is affecting the cost of living for people that previously lived there. This sounds unintuitive at first, but turns out to be fairly simple.

The first thing to consider is that the density on new construction for these is significantly higher - a lot of land that had 80 units before might now have now have an additional 640. Most of these apartment buildings downtown are building up significantly higher than previous places. Going from 4 stories to 30+. Some seriously tall high rises.

And then it's a good thing that these are targeted as luxury accommodations, because they're making the high income newcomers their targets - that means there are fewer of these newcomers targeting the existing housing increasing that price.

Now, you have luxury housing that exists in much higher quantities than the previous housing - this has a disproportionate impact on the city average, but doesn't say anything about the impact on the majority of existing housing outside of these new constructions.

That isn't to say it hasn't gone up as well, but you have to look at how much the supply of this existing housing has contracted and if that contraction has pushed the demand up enough that those prices have significantly increased as well. This isn't captured in looking at the average rent price of the city.

> Even if amazon doesn't pay taxes

I think this is being overstated. Amazon may get a very generous tax break for something like twenty years, but they will almost certainly still be paying more net tax yearly than all but the very largest employers in the area.

That's the cost of being economically successful. That's because there is more competition for workers which drives up salaries, and for living spaces which drives up their cost. So even if you don't work for Amazon you're likely to benefit from the more competitive marketplace.

> That's the cost of being economically successful.

This is a cost disproportionately borne by low-income renters currently living in a city. If they have a choice, why should they pay it?

> That's because there is more competition for workers which drives up salaries, and for living spaces which drives up their cost.

Amazon workers will always outbid locals for housing. Unless 50,000 housing units will be built in the next few years (Contrary to the interests of property owners), this will reduce the quality of life for people not working for Amazon. They'll get to enjoy higher rents, longer commutes, and smaller disposable incomes.

People getting gentrified out where they live rarely benefit from the more competitive marketplace, or from coffee shops selling $14 avocado toast.

Adding jobs to an economically depressed area, with a surplus of housing benefits most people living in it. Adding jobs to an economically vibrant area, with a shortage of housing harms most people living in it. An Amazon office in Detroit would be great for the city. An Amazon office in San Francisco... Not so much.

Disclaimer: I don't live in Philadelphia, so I don't know where it is on the spectrii of 'economically vibrant' and 'housing shortage.'

I'm not seeing the point that you're trying to make. Are you suggesting that Philadelphia (or any major metropolis) would not benefit from the sudden windfall infusion of 50,000+ high-paying jobs? I think every small business owner in Philly is probably drooling at the prospect of Amazon dumping tens of thousands of people with disposable incomes at their front door.

Small business owners are definitely not drooling at that prospect. They usually have very slim margins and their rent will sky rocket as the landlords get greedy. Only a select few will remain usually due to being hip local places that already have high foot traffic that can successful raise the prices of their 'famous' cheesesteaks or opening the property. But for the average small business owner running the typical depressed looking establishment they'll see their repeat customers disappear one by one. They won't have the necessary capital to reinvigorate their image or pay their tremendously higher rent when the landlord decides they want to attract Starbucks to that location. Look at Bleeker street, the lower east side, Chinatown, the east village all in NYC. All places I've seen personally change rapidly over the years. I've talked to many owners, the story is always the same, we're being forced out of our lease. Being in tech I'm certainly part of the problem. And to be honest most of the new places that come in, particularly restaurants, are often better than what was there before. But let's not say the existing small business owners are drooling, they're almost certainly filled with dread at the prospect.

Philly is economically vibrant and has an affordable housing shortage (although with the number of units currently being built, this might change in a year). The closer you are to jobs, the less affordable. Wages here are depressed compared to other US cities, however.

Amazon and those workers will still consume city services. City's don't make a profit on average, so while those workers may make above average wages it's unlikely to make up for the overall lost revenue.

Picturing 1000's of workers is overblown. Amazon does employ a lot of people, but in a highly distributed fashion and their expansion is not going to be huge. On top of that these are all large city's where +/- a few thousand workers is not that big a deal.

> Amazon and those workers will still consume city services. City's don't make a profit on average

I'd be very surprised if an Amazon worker making, say, $160k consumes more in government services than the sales/property/income taxes they are paying.

Amazon workers in Philly aren't going to make 160k. Tech salaries are much lower here than on the west coast, much lower than NY and Boston as well.

If +/- a few thousand workers isn't a big deal then why is it being made a big deal by all these comments? Obviously it's going to make an impact. My point is that the corporation and workers and associated economic multipliers will be adding a net positive to city revenue. If it wasn't going to do that I doubt hundreds of cities would be competing for it.

Direct employment numbers are direct revenues are easily, concretely associated with the deal, indirect infrastructure impacts are less in peoples minds, harder to concretely attribute and easier to cloud, and take a longer time to be palpable. Politicians overweight the former kind of measured (because they have more effect on political careers) and devalue the latter (for the opposite reason.)

Cities aren't actors, they are just abstractions; politicians are the actors pursuing Amazon.

The RFP quotes up to 50,0000 employees in 15 years. Any sane incentive package should have hooks in it to make sure most of those jobs do materialize.

Would be better if there was national coordination and the cities had all simply said 'No - you want to come here, you pay tax'.

Seattle native who feels the exact same way about Seattle as you do about Philadelphia.

I totally see your point here. On the other hand, I left Philly in 2014 after getting laid off from a remote job. I could not get a job in town that utilized my skill set and paid me enough to maintain my family's costs.

From my perspective, there were only 2 games in town for people with specialized tech skills - Penn or Comcast. I'm sure that's not entirely true. But that's what it looked like to me.

The only place I could get hired (and maintain income) - Google. But Google doesn't do remote work, so here I am in the Bay Area. If Amazon comes to Philly, short term there will be costs if the city doesn't negotiate things properly. But long term, Amazon being here will mean other tech companies will come to poach labor. It's what happens in Seattle, Boston, the Bay Area in general.

The fact of the matter is that cities in the U.S., with respect to each other, are in a race to the bottom. There is nothing they can do about it: the Constitution mandates an unrestricted internal market with no barriers to the free flow of goods and capital between states. That means that companies will go wherever they can get the best deal, and there is no way for state and local governments to restrict that movement.

Cities that aren't named New York or San Francisco can either get with the program, as the southern states have been doing, and benefit from the growth, or they can resign themselves to moribund economies and irrelevancy. If they're smart, they'll do what places like Ireland and Switzerland have done, which is offer low corporate taxes and recover the difference with higher taxes on individuals.

That's just evidence the southern states suck as business locations. They can only get companies to move there by bribing them.

Contrast with San Francisco and New York City, where they have tons of taxes and no shortage of companies wanting to be there.

> That's just evidence the southern states suck as business locations

New York and San Francisco didn't do anything to be New York and San Francisco. Their market power is the product of happenstance. In any event, that's irrelevant. If you're Acer, you can't pursue the same business model that works for Apple. All you can do is internalize reality and do the best you can for your stakeholders with what you've got to work with.

Actually, they did. Times Square was not some place you wanted to take your kids to as late as the mid 80's. Cleaning up the city was a big campaign promise for several successive mayors. And San Francisco is NOT in Silicon Valley, it's 50 miles north of the actual valley. All of the major tech companies were setting up shop in the South Bay and peninsula 15-20 years ago. Successive SF mayors have lured tech companies north with various incentives.

That's incorrect about the Constitution. While it does not lay down specifics, it does give Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. Known as the Commerce Clause, it's Article I, Section 8, Clause 3: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"

The Commerce Clause precludes states from erecting trade barriers between each other. While Congress could in theory do so, (1) it's never to my knowledge ever used its Commerce Clause powers in that way, and (2) provisions like the Privileges and Immunities Clause creates independent prohibitions on erecting barriers between states.

Yet... alcohol can not be freely moved between states. There are clearly cases where interstate trade is prohibited.

There is a narrow exception for public health, e.g. plant quarantine laws. But the usual tools countries use: tariffs, immigration controls, capital controls, etc., are unavailable.

That's oversimplistic. It is also depends on the quality of the city. Companies want to locate their best people in cities that are safe, have good airports, good schools, and reliable transportation where people want to live. This requires investment by the city, which must be paid for somehow.

You're saying two entirely conflicting things here. You're saying "cities in the U.S., with respect to each other, are in a race to the bottom" (not that being well-run and having low taxes is a bad thing in my opinion...), and then you said New York and San Francisco don't have to play along, presumably since they're competing on value rather than price. I think it's obvious that Amazon's not looking solely for the cheapest possible city to locate in. I suspect they were never going to choose Gary, Indiana no matter how sweet the tax incentives were.

It's like with PCs. HP/Lenovo/Dell/Acer sit between Apple on one hand, and unlabeled Chinese products on the other. But almost nothing differentiates them from each other. Customers don't necessarily want the cheapest product, but for everyone looking at the mid-range product, nobody is going to pay more for HP versus Dell. And that's reflected in these companies razor-thin profit margins.

Cities are the same way. Between New York and San Francisco on one hand, and Gary on the other, there are dozens of perfectly fine cities and the only reason to pick one versus the other is how good of a tax deal you can get. Nobody is going to pay a significant tax premium to be in Columbus versus Raleigh.

> There is nothing they can do about it: the Constitution mandates an unrestricted internal market with no barriers to the free flow of goods and capital between states. That means that companies will go wherever they can get the best deal, and there is no way for state and local governments to restrict that movement.

Sure there is--DON'T GIVE COMPANIES TAX BREAKS.

This isn't that hard. Tax breaks mean that you lose whatever benefits a company would bring to your area--so you're better off not bringing them in anyway.

Lobby to help nurture your local businesses. If you use the same resources and manage to double the employment at all your local small businesses, you've FAR exceeded anything a big company tax credit will do.

Besides, Amazon's HQ2 just isn't going to employ that many people and is going to be the political rejects unless Bezos actually moves there. Anybody with real ambition knows that they're going to have to go to Seattle, anyway.

It's just going to be an outpost of software slaves where they try to suppress the wages they're having to pay on the West Coast.

As such, this thing is going into where software wages are cheapest and they can extract a big tax break. I would posit Pittsburgh/Columbus/Nashville/Indianapolis. Everything else is a smoke screen.

Interestingly, I'm starting to see resistance mounting against tax breaks in Pittsburgh. Good on them.

The idea that Amazon is contemplating anything in a populated East Coast city near the Boston-Washington corridor is laughable.

I would love to see Philly land it but let's be honest: They are going to put it in a better run city with less inherent corruption.

ok, using corruption as a premise, lets see who that eliminates. New York Chicago Newark Philadelphia Washington DC for sure Miami LA?

I agree with your assessment, yes.

I moved from Philly to Seattle last year. I would also like to see a bigger tech firm in Philly. There is a great startup scene. The meetup scene is great, and the techie awards of best places to work were awesome. With University City providing good graduates. I mean Drexel, Upenn, Temple, Villanova, and just south University of Delaware. Then transit there was amazing. Philadelphia really feels like it has all the tools to be a great tech hub.

http://www.techinmotionevents.com/blog/post/2017/05/04/the-2...

That being said, I do not like what Amazon has done to Seattle. The culture, infrastructure housing, etc, etc. I have been hoping that they don't end up in Philadelphia. I feel one other big player, then more startups would be good. I guess put another way some new blood. As the east coast feels a bit old blood at times.

As noted with the tax breaks to Comcast the other resident tech giant. The city needs more investment, not more tax cuts. There were issues with septa, schooling, public services, etc.

I did a few stints at Comcast. It was a good place to work, but they weren't pushing the boundaries generally. There were some internal teams that were pushing tech. Contributions to OpenStack was very large. Some video encoding stuff, but I think that team was largely located elsewhere. To get to the more technically advanced stuff you needed several rounds there.

Comcast in the meetup scene though was great. A number of directors and seniors presented at software as craft, devops, various code katas. I also knew a number of comcast employees going to the open philly code meetups. See for the cities open source stuff.

https://github.com/CityOfPhiladelphia

There was a definite real estate boon when I left. With a number of areas being built up. But there was also gentrification issue as well. I lived down in Grey's Ferry area for a bit. The post office had been closed, and the local grocery store I think path mark as well. It went from a nice little area to a bunch of bodegas and boarded up houses. It was very hostile trying to force the people to leave to make room for improvement/rebuilding. I think something was going on around temple university. With subsidies being ended or modified.

The city has it's problems for sure, but it's still a great place.

> That being said, I do not like what Amazon has done to Seattle. The culture, infrastructure housing, etc, etc.

I'm a Seattle transplant and I've heard this point before. Can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by the culture changes brought by tech transplants?

Amazon would have the greatest impact in Atlanta. You could argue that Atlanta is the economic, cultural, and geographical center of the Southeastern United States. It has the busiest airport in the world and is a major rail hub. There are already dozens of major corporations headquaratered in Atlanta. There is no shortage of talent, with a top-5 engineering school in Georgia Tech. Yet there are things missing which are preventing Atlanta from becoming a modern powerhouse; strong mass transit is probably the most obvious, and progressive policies another. This kind of investment by Amazon could be exactly what Atlanta needs to bring it back to the world stage. The only other city I could possibly see as being close would be Raleigh, for similar reasons.

I remember the initial thread[1] with the announcement had many good things to say about Atlanta too.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15192930

From what I’ve heard, there’s a bunch of mostly unused land south of the football stadium that has been slowly being bought up over the last year or so. Obvious speculation is that it’s either Amazon or someone betting that Amazon will want to buy a big chunk of land near downtown...

The "Gulch":

http://www.myajc.com/business/new-filings-for-huge-project-a...

http://atlantaintownpaper.com/2017/11/gulch-become-amazons-n...

Would be a pretty big slap in the face for all other "contestants" if it turns out that Amazon intended to move to Atlanta all along and this whole thing was only for publicity and leverage.

The thing about real estate on that scale is, to not get ripped off you have to time it carefully.

It probably would cost amazon less to buy 10 potential properties and resell 9 of them, than to announce their intentions and then attempt to buy their chosen property.

In Atlanta, we already learned that lesson by announcing the BeltLine (mixed use alternative transit development corridor around the city) before acquiring any of the land. A decade later, after court battles involving the city purchasing land via the Board of Education in order to prevent further price gouging, we still don't have all the land needed, and only ~10% of the project is completed.

20 "finalists" are there to make the legitimate candidates become hyper-competitive. It's the way to extract the most incentives from the levels of government involved.

Maybe the lesson there is that cities should not prostrate themselves every time a big corporation says they might create create some jobs there.

There are a few other places if the Gulch for some reason fails; each with many more problems (but likely more room to expand)

- Westside (superfund site from concrete operations)

- Jail/Aarons Amp

- Union city area.

Mass transit is NOT needed. Flat land without rivers blocking flow of traffic is all thats needed

Well Amazon said it was needed in the RFP... "Direct access to rail, train, subway/metro, bus routes"

It was a very specific need listed by Amazon.

When I saw Atlanta on the list, I felt that it's over. The rail system is far superior to what exists in Seattle & should support reasonable suburban commutes. Georgia Tech's talent supply makes it interesting, but I get the impression that Amazon hires people with more experience than just straight out of college.

Amazon hires plenty people of both classes, recent grads and experienced hires. But from my impression I think they hire more recent grads than any other tech company.

> The rail system is far superior to what exists in Seattle & should support reasonable suburban commutes

Atlanta has a relatively poor transit system compared to many other cities on the list. The bus system isn't great and MARTA (trains) is quite limited. I left before the beltline was built out, so maybe things are getting better.

Only the more expensive ones (Chicago, DC, NYC, and Boston), and Philadelphia. If transit is important, Atlanta is actually in a better position than the closer competition (Austin or Raleigh).

Beltline is taking its time getting completed, but what is done is fantastic!

I ride my bike on it almost everyday and there are tons of new restaurants, apartments, and fun things to do.

Amazon is one of the biggest new-college-grad hirers. This was true when I was one a few years ago, and it's very true now.

georgia tech grad here, was offered a vacation to seattle to interview.

Atlanta, Raleigh and Dallas are all in states whose statewide electorate makes them a governor's veto away from passing "religious freedom" laws that would make hiring difficult. Maybe it would be good for Atlanta, but I don't think Amazon would risk it.

I thought "religious freedom" laws made it so the employer could legally refuse to hire, say, homosexuals. That probably won't pose a risk to Amazon, the hiring company.

Are you thinking the second order effects would come into play, like spouses not being able to find work? Or am I wrong about the definition of rf laws?

They don't just affect employers, they also affect lots of service providers. As a result, people who would be likely to be subject to discrimination under those laws (whether currently living in the area or not) may view living and working in the affected areas as less attractive, making hiring more difficult for employers in the affected areas.

This may, of course, be somewhat offset by attracting people supportive of the discrimination thus enabled, making it easier to hire those people.

I'm not the OP but I assume "laws that would make hiring difficult" include laws that would shock the conscience of the sort of people you would want to hire if you were Amazon, not to mention the existing employees. Bathroom laws, etc.

Imagine if a state had a law making it legal to discriminate against women. You might argue that would give the hiring company valuable hiring and firing flexibility. But it's probably obvious that, aside from the ethical issue, it would be bad for business to seek such jurisdictions out. Skilled workers (both women and men) wouldn't want to work there, and the PR impact would be negative.

Many corporations have been extremely vocal in their opposition to these laws in lobbying. They're bad for business because they make hiring harder, and it's bad PR.

Georgia has some of, if not the most, employer-friendly right-to-work laws in the country.

you can essentially hire and fire anyone you like for no cause with no notice.

Isn’t that something Georgia should be proud of! /s

I’ve never understood why people in those sorts of places are so excited about such regressive laws.

But Raleigh, NC is in the Research Triangle?

The other way around, RTP is inside Raleigh, it sits between Raleigh and Durham

RTP doesn't sit within Raleigh. Addresses that sit within the park (like GSK, or IBM) are within the cities of Durham, maybe some in Morrisville, and some simply "Research Triangle Park." The Triangle as a whole (including the Raleigh, Durham, & the Park) put in a bid to Amazon, so presumably by "Raleigh" they really mean the whole Raleigh-Durham/Triangle region

Do you have sources for the claim that ATL is the busiest airport in the world? Just curious because I've never heard this before.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-busiest-airports-in-th...

Thanks!

Only for the last 20 years - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports

Awesome thanks, I had no idea!

Nice try, Atlanta city council. We're onto you

I'll take Atlanta and you can have the other 19 also-rans.

Just visited Pittsburgh. There is indeed a renaissance happing in that town. The restaurant scene alone is phenomenal. And the addition of a FANG level HQ could cement its burgeoning international reputation as a destination.

The idea is that CMU spits out about 200+ world class CS grads a year. If even 5% decide to stay in the area to start their own ventures. There would be potential for massive growth.

the other data points that shocked me is that the population of Greater Austin, Texas is now 2.5M souls! I still think of it as a sleepy southern college town like Athens, GA ;) And that Denver is experiencing a net influx of 10K people per day!

Denver isn't gaining 10K people a day - that would be insane!

This article says 13K people in a year to Denver city & county: https://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/28/denvers-growth-spurt-s...

It looks like Colorado's population is around 5.7 million with an annual growth rate of 1.4% - so about 80K people per year for the state.

http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/colorado-population/

Do you know why is housing in Denver so expensive ?

It seems to have good density. Even small towns in Colorado look expensive.

Colorado has grown increasingly affluent. It has a GDP per capita above Australia, Sweden and Denmark. It's a very desirable location to move to. Simultaneously like a lot of the US, they haven't been building up new housing inventory very aggressively since the great recession.

Partly because most of the builders went under during & after the great recession. They don't quite need decades to come back, but it definitely leaves a ripple.

Nice small mountain towns, especially those near ski areas, are expensive. But towns and cities on the plains (e.g., Ft. Morgan) are pretty inexpensive. And southern Colorado cities like Pueblo and Colorado Springs are also a lot more inexpensive. Denver and Boulder are quite expensive.

Uh, there's nothing out in the eastern part of Colorado that qualifies as a city. Sterling, is like 10k people, if that. But anything east of Greeley is still relatively affordable.

Anything along the Front Range, Colorado Springs, and north, all the way up to Fort Collins, have seen huge increases in housing costs in the last 5 years. Denver and Boulder are expensive, yes, but the commuter (bedroom) communities, like Fort Collins, Longmont, Brighton, etc, have seen huge spikes in housing costs. Rentals in these areas, throughout my college career, were more than manageable. My rent TRIPLED when I moved out of my last college apartment. I moved from Greeley, to Fort Collins, which is consistently rated as like the best place to raise a family too. These communities have been relatively affordable until the last few years, when things have suddenly gotten a little out of control.

There's not enough new development, a huge demand for single family homes, and an influx of population has driven the housing market up and up. The Oil and Gas industry seemingly started the trend back in 2013-2014, but now, all sorts of businesses are opening up, there's just more demand. It's unfortunate for those of us just getting started in our careers, and definitely creates disdain for all the new-comers.

> Uh, there's nothing out in the eastern part of Colorado that qualifies as a city. Sterling, is like 10k people, if that.

You realize that both Ft. Morgan and Sterling call themselves cities? But I get your point. They are small in population compared to Front Range municipalities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_and_towns_in_Co...

I didn't realize that. I thought the term City was used mostly for places with larger populations. Thanks for the insight!

Foreign Investment is driving this.

The money got sucked out of the US economy (foreign manufacturing, high oil prices back in the '00's) - and now that wealth is consolidated, and they're investing in property all over the place; especially in US suburbs (and Canada), and it's jacking up demand so bad, that even very high-paying white-collar jobs can't realistically finance a house anymore. Oh- people can BUY the homes. They will have to stretch to pay for maintenance, save for kids' college, and their own retirement.

Only people who bought before the last bubble are really able to afford these homes. Or Doctors and Lawyers and executives.

The only way to beat this game, seems to be; if you're a rock-star, and can work out a remote gig, you can live in a cheap area, and still make "expensive area" money.

(and if you go for a company that's expanding to an area of low housing demand: they'll pay you less. AND. In 5-10 years when the economy hits a low spot, they'll shut your site down and lay you off. In any case, the GOOD projects, the kind that will boost your career, are not going to come to your backwater site. You would need to relocate to their main headquarters. Territorial battles are a real thing)

I've read about the foreign investors, but really want to believe that's only happening in places like CA, but I know that's not true.

Housing in Colorado isn't necessarily un-affordable, yet, it's just way over priced. Plus the demand continues to go up, causing pricing to rise. I know that in Northern Colorado, it sort of peaked back in 2016, and the rate at which prices are going up are slower than they were, but housing still isn't cheap.

(Luckily, I am fortunate enough to work in a developer role for a company, in an industry that is pretty rock solid, so I think getting laid off isn't a huge threat. I got laid off last year from HPE and managed to land on my feet. I have been working with a mortgage broker to try and buy something instead of paying sky high rents, but being a twenty-something, even with a decently high salary still makes this way harder than it would have been a few years earlier, even with a lower salary. )

FANG = Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google? (Just based on https://www.acronymfinder.com/FANG.html - I hadn't heard that one before)

Yes though A is Amazon. It’s been used by the investing media to describe their ezcellent stock performance in recent years. Sometimes it’s FAANG to include Apple.

Google kind of ruined it by rename the parent company Alphabet though!

Yeah, FAAAN doesn't have quite the same ring to it :)

Try imagining William Shatner shouting it.

South Koreans are especially wary of that, due to FAAAN death.

This. You also have Pitt which has a pretty decent CS degree. People are friendly. Sports is great. I believe Apple and Google already have fairly significant offices in Pittsburgh.

If I was more liquid I'd be buying property in Pittsburgh.

Eh, as a Pitt graduate I can't really vouch for our CS degree. Most people I've talked to about it think it's actually getting worse recently, as we've hired more teaching professors who aren't good at teaching and not had too many upper-level electives. The program is also stuck in the Arts & Sciences school which puts a bit of a limit on how many CS classes you get to take. Where we really shine is biotechnology/medical devices.

Sports have been good, but the Pirates won't be anything to watch now that McCutchen's gone.

I love Pittsburgh and now is really a great time to invest in real estate here. Lots of places just outside downtown are really sprucing up like uptown, the North side, and Lawrenceville/Bloomfield.

Serious question: is 200 top level CS grads really all that significant? Seems like a pretty small number, given what is possible at larger state schools.

Even at a larger state school, only the top few percent would be comparable to CMU CS grads.

But CMU has been producing world class CS grads for decades now, and some % do stay to start their own ventures, and yet Pittsburgh is not (yet) in the same league as even the "Next Silicon Valley" list cities. (Seattle, LA, etc)

First, there will never be another "Silicon Valley". It's one of a kind.

Second, categorizing Seattle or LA as some kind of "up and coming" business area is disingenuous. Seattle has always had Microsoft, now also Amazon, and I'm sure many companies spun off from former employees of those.

LA is the second biggest city in the US, with all kinds of businesses and industries there. It's not trying to be the "Next Silicon Valley", it has it's own firmly established identity.

I note that all three points you make:

1. I agree with and 2. Don't contradict anything I said

The question at hand is whether there is reason to believe that Pittsburgh's future growth will outperform its past growth because of CMU's output.

> Amazon will work with each of the candidate locations to dive deeper into their proposals

Breaking the process into stages like this will create a bidding war where Amazon can then go to each city government and extract more benefits. I'm usually against tax payers funding things like this (ie:stadiums) but I still selfishly want the location to be somewhere in the NYC/Philly/DC corridor.

Its basically most of the major metro areas in North America >500 miles away from Seattle. Doesn't seem to be cutting it down much.

I agree it's a massive list to have said they've whittled it down much, but I can see some misses. St Louis isn't there, Detroit isn't there, Tampa and Orlando aren't there, Milwaukee isn't there, Phoenix isn't there, Houston isn't there, Minneapolis isn't there, Baltimore isn't there.

They put out far too big of a list of candidates, but they have apparently ruled out just as many major metro areas.

> Houston isn't there,

I had that somber realization too. Houston has more problems on its mind than bankrolling Amazon's real estate deals.

I'm fairly certain that given Target already has a hold of Minneapolis, there's no way they'd allow Amazon to move in on their turf.

It was a major consideration from the standpoint of local and state government here. With both Target and Best Buy headquartered here, it would have ruffled a lot of feathers if Amazon would have received a bunch of handouts that homegrown companies weren't getting, especially since Amazon is completely dominating them both. There are also statutory limits on what incentives the MN state government can provide, on the order of 7 figures and maybe some limited tax breaks; I'm sure it didn't move the needle at all.

Those limits didn't matter when Mayo called in 2013[1]. There's one reason Amazon didn't get any worthwhile tax breaks. The governor's sons own a bunch of Target shares.

Amazon was offered $100 per employee. The total package was smaller than St. Paul offered Cray to move 200 employees. And much smaller than the $12k per employee Best Buy got for their HQ.

[1] http://www.startribune.com/rochester-mayo-clinic-celebrate-5...

Unless Amazon buys Target. Then they've got a whole corporate infrastructure already in place.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/02/amazon-will-buy-target-in-20...

The governor's father co-founded Target and his sons still own a large share. The subsidy per Amazon employee in the Minneapolis HQ2 bid was $100 compared to $12,000 when the Best Buy HQ was built and $150,000 when the new Vikings stadium was built.

My guess is that Amazon isn't _seriously_ considering all 20 cities equally.

Instead, they privately already have 2 or 3 particular cities in mind and the other 18 cities are just there for negotiating leverage for the 2 they really want. The problem is that the cities themselves don't know if they're "really in contention" or just "disposable chess pieces".

Again, that's just my guess.

Yeah, there's funny concentration of options right by - and including - Washington D.C.

That's just because the DC area is so spread out. You don't really have to be in DC "proper" to get the benefits of the area. Which I think is different than a lot of other major metro areas. You see the same thing with New York paired with Newark.

An Amazon HQ2 in Northern Virginia would cripple the already strained road infrastructure, especially given Metro's existing difficulties. Dulles seems like an obvious choice given the tech corridor and proximity to IA but 28 and the toll road are incredibly crowded as it is.

Theres 3 different local / state governments to entice competition from with that setup, and montgomery county just lost Discovery which was a huge employer who they were wooing with a serious comp package. So you throw a spender like that into a competitive situation and you might get some insane offer.

Yep, this will start yet another bidding war on our area. For the last couple years we've had a constant back and forth of each region trying to claim the new FBI headquarters.

They probably decided way before announcing the RFP process.

I agree. Nobody seriously thinks they are going to pick Miami.

I'd be willing to bet that Miami is a favorite amongst at least a couple of people actually making the decision. Miami is the capitol of and gateway to Latin America, and Latin America has enormous potential for growth of ecommerce.

plus direct access to ports on the atlantic..

With the added bonus of it being completely underwater within 50 years!

Meh, the Dutch solved that problem hundreds of years ago.

They also have a completely different mentality about the environment.

The Dutch didn't have to worry about living over porous limestone that floods directly out of the ground (sea walls or not).

And direct exposure to hurricanes for the parts that are not underwater!

Previous employer had an office in St. Pete's. Hurricane shutdowns are a non-zero cost.

That's why I find it surprising that Miami is even on the list at all. Most other cities immediately have an advantage over them because they don't have to contend with hurricanes and tropical storms on a regular basis.

The thing about software is that you don't have to be physically near the markets you serve. Writing software in Miami would provide zero advantage for serving this market.

The thing about Amazon is that they do a hell of a lot more than just write software.

But they need logistics centers in those areas, NOT a headquarters.

They also need product managers, vendor managers, inventory managers, analysts, planners, forecasters, operations managers, customer service agents, human resources, legal, research scientists, security, marketing, IT, financial operations, as well as the world's most overweight and useless middle management layer ever seen.

Even in Seattle, programmers make up well less than half of Amazon's personnel.

You sound like you have absolutely no clue how Amazon is run, but really don't like them so you go threw in some unfriendly, unfounded assumptions on top of your ignorance.

Partially correct; I don't like them, but it is precisely because I know too much about how Amazon is run.

Judging by your recent comments, you've been working there for about a couple of weeks at best. Get back to me when you've been around long enough for your RSUs to vest.

My favorite part of the Miami story is the argument that Miami has affordable housing. Amazon is pretty much infamous for sending rents near their offices soaring through the roof.

Got affordable housing in your metro? Amazon can fix that!

Or you could add more supply.

The amount of money flowing through Amazon in an already-densely built city would quickly swamp any possible expansion. Prices will rise.

In larger cities, even amazon money wouldn't have too much an effect.

Seattle is a pretty large city. It definitely had an extremely large effect.

As I understand it from stories people told me when I lived there for a few years, South Lake Union was a lower-rent district near the lake where younger single people lived that weren't attracted to the lifestyle on Capitol Hill but didn't make enough to live downtown proper or on Queen Anne or Magnolia hills. Now those people commute 45 minutes on the train from Everett or wait in traffic coming south on the heavily congested I-5 or west across the heavily congested Lake Washington Bridges.

Seattle metro is a little larger than the city of Chicago. It is not a large city by any metric.

Seattle is large by the metric of population (it's the 18th most populous city in the US). San Francisco actually has smaller land area, and higher population - but I definitely consider San Francisco to be a large city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Which city under consideration is densely built?

Agree. I lived in Miami and the tech scene there is a joke. Unless they want to make some Latin America play there is nothing to gain from there. The fact it’s even on the list makes me suspect that is something they are looking to do.

Jeff Bezos grew up in Miami, and his dad is Cuban. Miami has the largest Cuban (and Cuban-descent) community. If Bezos wants to give back to the place that made him who he is today, Miami is a solid contender. I know you don't drive a business with emotions and nostalgia, oh wait... He's already doing it with Blue Origin, we love you Bezos!

(note to Bezos: Miami building should be on stilts)

He also spent years in Houston. He's moved around a lot.

Not sure if any of his childhood stomping grounds are going to get much favoritism.

I'm pretty sure this process was something like 'hey Alexa, what are the 20 largest metropolitan areas more then 500 miles from Seattle.' followed by an email to each one asking how much they would pay for Amazon to come to town.

But that's why I'm not in public relations. :-)

I totally support this move by Amazon and Apple. My hope is Microsoft/Google/Facebook would follow. There is a desperate need for larger tech companies to move away from Bay Area/Seattle and expand into other cities which actually may have cheaper housing and where life may not feel such a challenge, specially for folks with dependents and families.

That's why I hope they don't go to the obvious cities that already have high rents (New York, Austin, Chicago). They could make an enormous, positive impact on many smaller cities, or could do damage to already expensive ones.

> cities that already have high rents (New York, Austin, Chicago)

I was curious about this. I live in Austin, and don't think the rent is particularly high there. I just wanted some data. Looking at rent prices on one website in particular (https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Austin) and using Austin as the baseline:

Less expensive candidate cities:

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 43.54% higher than in Columbus, OH

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 40.87% higher than in Indianapolis, IN

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 34.51% higher than in Raleigh, NC

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 26.93% higher than in Pittsburgh, PA

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 24.66% higher than in Newark, NJ

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 18.86% higher than in Dallas, TX

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 9.24% higher than in Atlanta, GA

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 7.51% higher than in Toronto

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 5.29% higher than in Nashville, TN

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 4.49% higher than in Philadelphia, PA

More expensive candidate cities:

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 6.64% lower than in Denver, CO

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 10.82% lower than in Chicago, IL

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 20.41% lower than in Miami, FL

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 26.91% lower than in Los Angeles, CA

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 31.45% lower than in Washington, DC

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 36.17% lower than in Boston, MA

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 49.78% lower than in New York, NY

- Rent Prices in Austin, TX are 56.44% lower than in San Francisco, CA

Here's a sortable table of various indexes: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region_rankings.jsp?ti...

And TX lacks a state income tax, meaning disposable income will actually be higher in Austin than the numbers above imply.

When a state doesn't have an income tax, doesn't that imply that they're getting those tax dollars from elsewhere?

Yeah usually from taxes around home ownership. People who rent have this hit them less.

> Yeah usually from taxes around home ownership.

Real property in general, not just homes (and even moreso, not just owner occupied homes.)

But also can be sales taxes.

> People who rent have this hit them less.

Wrong. Property taxes (even those limited to residential property) hit renters at least as much as people living in homes they own. Sure, the landlord gets the tax bill, but that immediately goes into setting rent.

Depending on circumstances, landlords may eat tax increases in the short term.

> Wrong. Property taxes (even those limited to residential property) hit renters at least as much as people living in homes they own. Sure, the landlord gets the tax bill, but that immediately goes into setting rent.

To a degree; see the argument for land value tax which is close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Efficiency

If the supply of homes are relatively inelastic, the landlords are already maximizing the rent the market will pay. So they can't pass tax increases on to renters -- as they are already charging the maximum renters would pay!

(This starts to break down only if new housing is no longer built due to lower returns or owners devalue their housing to cut taxes)

Ask for Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area to build better transportation, and that's the pick

100% agree with you here.

+1. Proximity to Duke/UNC/NCSU/WFU means there are plenty of local new grads, MBAs, and Ph.D's. Already a pipeline of foreign talent immigrating to the Research Triangle. Good weather. Beach is three hours one way and the mountains are three hours the other. Local government will throw themselves at Amazon.

That's a multi-decade project. They should get started now and will be competitive for whatever the Amazon of 2040 is.

The first step is a backbone rail line that starts in Chapel Hill, runs up to Duke, then through Durham to RTP, to the Airport, and from there to and through Raleigh. Then add spurs and spokes to cover the region and funnel people to the backbone.

Good luck getting the legislature to authorize, much less fund that.

The Chapel Hill-Durham section of that is already in planning: http://ourtransitfuture.com/projects/lrt/

The current airport authority will sadly fight rail at the airport tooth and nail. I believe they make more money off parking fees than the flight ops.

Moreover, the strongest / largest municipality in the region (Wake/Raleigh) seems to be the least interested in serious non-road public transport projects, as they just withdrew from their chunk of the light rail connection with Durham / CH.

How did we ever manage to get where we are today without all that? Pretty much every major company has a presence here, not sure why Amazon alone warrants all that infrastructure.

Not really sure what’s wrong with it in the first place. There’s traffic but it’s nothing like other major cities.

I grew up in Raleigh and go to NC State. I'm very skeptical that RDU is a better location than Newark (NJIT, Stephens, Rutgers, Columbia, NYU) or Atlanta (GTech, UGA).

The talent is here at UNC and Duke but airport and local public transit is the weakest point.

With that said, I'd love for them to come here as long as they maintain salary parity.

Theres little-to-no traffic and land is cheap, public transit isn't needed.

The population density is probably higher on average in New Jersey than in metro Raleigh..

"little-to-no traffic"

As someone who lives in Durham and frequently commutes to Chapel Hill and Raleigh, the existing infrastructure would NOT support a big increase in commuters. During morning and afternoon rush hours, the highways are just BARELY large enough to prevent total gridlock. If you add just 10000 more cars commuting to Raleigh from Durham or Chapel Hill, you have a traffic nightmare in the making.

Triangle resident here, and we don't have anywhere near the density to actually make general-purpose light rail work, economically.

That said, I do think we're somewhat competitive for this, even though I don't want to see Amazon move in. The housing stock availability is a huge liability for the locals...we're already in a seller's market right now.

I think (hope) North Carolina's history with the 'Bathroom Law' and the general lack of democracy at the state level makes Raleigh a hard sell.

Something about this just makes my stomach sick... A massive corporation is pitting governments against each other for its own gain, often to no benefit of the local population.

I'm scared to see the numbers of "incentives" that local politicians try and hand out to Amazon. There's little evidence that the public money used/lost will ever be recouped. One of the worst cases of this happening so far is the Foxconn deal in Wisconsin that will cost taxpayers around $4.5B [1], and I feel that numbers for Amazon will dwarf those Foxconn numbers.

The US is far removed from the days of trust busting [2], and keeping massive corporations (monopolies and oligopolies) and their market distorting effects in check, for the long-term benefit of the entire economy and the people. There seems to be a lot of similarities between now and the late 1800s and early 1900s. We live in a strange time. I get the feeling there will be a strong resurgence of antitrust cases and similar progressive policies. I'm curious to see where the near future takes us.

1: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/mem... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Theodore_Rooseve...

With regards to your first point - it's not really costing taxpayers in Wisconsin $4.5B . At least for the tax credits portion, those are taxes that would not have been paid in Wisconsin otherwise.

I guess I also don't need to pay taxes anymore, because if I don't pay taxes those are just taxes that wouldn't have been paid otherwise.

Are you paying 5+ digits tax and in the process of moving ? Then yes you can get the same special treatment while paying fraction of what you used to pay.

If you are outside of a tax jurisdiction, then yes, you shouldn't pay taxes inside that jurisdiction, because those are just taxes that wouldn't have been paid otherwise.

They are refundable tax credits so WI could be paying money they wouldn't have.

Kinda, but if no one offered such incentives, than Foxconn would've presumably still built its factory, and someone (maybe even Wisconsin) would've collected those taxes. So while for any particular state you can say that those taxes wouldn't have been collected, the general system of States competing for large businesses means someone somewhere won't collect taxes from Foxconn that they otherwise would've.

Plus, the taxes exist for a reason. Companies rely on public goods like roads, schools, etc for their business. So if Foxconn never came to Wisconsin, Wisconsin wouldn't have had to pay those taxes, but they also wouldn't have to pay for whatever extra public goods are consumed by the factory.

Of course, in reality, someone somewhere is going to pay for Wisconsin's schools, police, etc. So what really will happen is that Foxconn shareholders (who presumably don't, generally, live in WI) will have their share price subsidized, while other companies, or Wisconsin workers, or property holders or some combination thereof will make up the difference.

Why do you think that it will be to no benefit of the local population? I'm uncomfortable with this process too, but isn't it gonna be great for the city that gets chosen?

I think this sort of thing results in a net loss for the public. Politicians love talking about creating jobs, but not about at what cost. Whatever city wins will be handing out subsidies and tax breaks to the point where only Amazon shareholders benefit.

One can imagine if the bid process is sufficiently competitive & transparent, if HQ2 brings $10b in economic good, cities might bid eachother down asymptotically to offer $10b in incentives, which in net would result in nearly zero economic good for the winning city or the parent country, and transfer all that value to Amazon & it's shareholders.

There's also the concern that negative impacts are being ignored, such as increased demand on infrastructure, ala the Olympics, wherein by most accounts the winning city actually winds up economically worse-off.

>I'm scared to see the numbers of "incentives" that local politicians try and hand out to Amazon. There's little evidence that the public money used/lost will ever be recouped.

It is a classic example of the winner's curse[1]. If Amazon is auctioning off the HQ for tax breaks, the government that wins is likely going to overestimate the value that winning the bid will provide. Those odds greatly increase when you throw in the fact that governments have misaligned incentives. Most politicians will choose the continuation of their career over the good of the people they govern. "Winning the Amazon bid" might be enough to get a politician elected to a higher position long before any economic reprecussions are felt. You see this same scenario play out all the time when public money is used to build sports stadia.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner%27s_curse

If that's the case, then perhaps we should lay (some of the) blame on the people who would chose to 'continue' the career of the said politician, no? Lets not deny agency the people have in making informed decisions.

Yep, this is a common case with everyone's favorite repeat offender: Which city gets to host the Olympics?

And that has been shown, time and again, to be a huge money loser and not at all something that invigorates the economy or somehow makes a city "more legit" in the global sphere. It is, at best, symbolic and at worst, charitable [on the part of the host city].

Calgary made money on the olympics; our HQ2 bid isn't shortlisted though

While that's generally been true on a global level, the olympics have generally been profitable endeavors for American host cities. the 1984, '96 and '02 all turned a profit for host cities.[1] Further, if olympic upgrades are done responsibly the games can act as a subsidy for local improvements to mass transit, universities and other civic spaces even if the city doesn't turn a profit.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_the_Olympic_Games

I agree, and this is a problem of government. Amazon is exploiting it. Good for them. The ones that have to get their act to gether are local govs.

Seattle and San Francisco already screwed it up big time. I am hopeful some city will lean heavily towards land value taxes instead of income and prop taxes, and then companies like amazon would go there naturally and economic propserity is relatively assured as rents go up.

> often to no benefit of the local population

Not true. My first thought when hearing that a town not far from where I am made the 20 list was 'where can I buy property so that I can rent it to others that come as a result of the economic development and new desirability of the area'. Property values will increase and property tax will go up vacancies will be reduced.

This would not happen for a smaller company that nobody cares about either.

This is perhaps similar (not for sure but could be) to when Disney decided to locate in Orlando Florida and bought up land in secret but also cut many deals to allow them benefits that others do not get.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_Distri...

No net benefit of the local population. I forgot to include that one word, net. I admit it does make a difference, but perhaps not to the point where people will fixate on that and ignore everything else.

I understand what you are saying, but these things can be quantified and accounted for in economic models. We can wave hands all day about "I think the economy would do this" but that is often the enemy of applied economics (heavily mathematical) and progress. There is a point when the incentives for the company can turn negative for the community. There is also the consideration in the community that those taxpayers (and voters) do not want to subsidize a massive corporation's shareholders.

Politicians can be aware of this point, but with a massive corporation trying to pit them all against each other for its own gain, competition will erode those profits to or even past the point of neutral cost-benefit to the community. As Peter Thiel likes to point out "Competition is for losers."

I am aware of what you are saying. However living in a place that is 'moving and grooving' because there is economic activity has benefits that simply can't be measured. For example you can live in a nowhere ghost town with little restaurants and nobody around and think you have it great. But just the same people with any ambition will move out of that area and leave it even more isolated. Empty main street.

If you try to quantify you will often come up short. And w/o knowing the exact numbers who knows. But much of it is for tax (credits) which they wouldn't get anyway. The places in many areas that are being offered have been vacant for years. So we are not talking about Manhattan when you look at Navy Yard in Philly. It has land because nobody wants that land. And it could take forever to get it occupied.

Economic activity where there is little currently and no prospects is all around good. In the case of where I live (within 20 miles of one of the sites) I am thinking 'wow if they locate there people will end up buying used houses where I am and property values will increase and then people will spend money and they will build more restaurants and things will all around be good. So maybe I will stay in this area and not move in that case'.

By the way Amazon has not invented this process. It's currently being done where counties compete against other counties for lesser known prizes. Very common you just never hear about it. In many cases the company moving has no intention of moving either. Welcome to the world of business and how it works.

> often to no benefit of the local population.

Considering they'll be hiring a lot of locals, and property values will most likely rise, and the associated peripheral startups will start flourishing due to Amazon expats, I don't see what your point is.

It's not like they're building a NFL stadium, which is almost always a huge boondoggle. Would you rather have Amazon HQ, a football stadium, or watch your city fade into irrelevance?

50,000 new non-McJobs as well as the follow on service jobs is no benefit to the local population? Tell that to all the non-silicon valley mini-tech hubs like Austin, Seattle, Miami, Dallas, etc. If amazons foothold is the seed for a new techhub to emerge, that's a true net boon for that city and its people / culture.

It's beneficial in an overall sense, but it sucks for the many individuals and families who will be gentrified out of the city, because they don't have the skill/background/age/race/gender to partake in the new orgy.

<< skill/background/age/race/gender to partake in the new orgy.

The word for that is injustice.

When attempting to counter an un-alloyed good like "50k new high-paid jobs" with potential negatives, can you please be clearer about the alternative outcome you desire? I can't tell from your objection whether you:

1) Support the 50k jobs, but want extra effort to be taken to support existing populations/communities

2) Prohibit the 50k jobs so things can stay the same

3) Let the 50k jobs go elsewhere so they're not a local problem

4) Something else entirely that I'm missing

> Something about this just makes my stomach sick...

Ditto. I just don't know what you can do about it though short of some sort of federal law that makes it illegal.

It is terrifying how this power is being wielded. Cities try to compete to see who can be more obsequious and subservient to corporate interests in the hope that they win some "victory" -- the company moving to their town -- which in the end does very little for the actual city or the people in it. It is just an impressive line item on the mayor's resume when they try to move up in politics, "I got Amazon!"

Seattle hates Amazon and what it has done to the city. They provide nothing for the city, do nothing to help ameliorate the problems they create, they overcrowd every area with ultrawealthy out of towners who push actual Seattleites out of the neighborhoods they've lived in for generations, replacing local culture with bland silicon valley tech-ennui. And the jobs they offer aren't even good. They create new white-collar sweatshops in their office buildings to mirror their blue-collar sweatshops in the warehouses.

If they are paying attention, people in all of these cities should be praying to god that Amazon doesn't choose their city. If they can, they should protest, riot, refuse to let it happen.

If you want a left-wing prospective on this general issue (which is called "lotteryism") there's a great podcast that does media analysis on this and issues like it. As it turns out, for example, reporting describing the supposed 'benefits' Amazon could bring to a city are literally copied without attribution or further investigation from Amazon press releases. There is a reason Jeff Bezos bought a huge newspaper, and it's not charity.

https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/lotteryism-part-i-how...

TIL software engineers aren’t actual residents of the places we live.

TIL software engineers think it's okay to participate in the economic and social destruction of neighborhoods in which people have lived for decades.

If you've been on HN for any extended period of time, this should not come as a surprise to you.

Sadly, it's not!

Young adults necessarily occupy space in a way that hasn’t yet been legitimized by the passage of much time. Populations that need to work for a living must go where there is work. Many of the consequences of this set of facts are dire and inhumane, and responsible public policy manages their impacts as best it can. A world with no new households is one that has stopped reproducing. A world where people are confined to their economically depressed birth cities is another kind of dystopian hellhole.

Half of this wouldn’t even matter if we let housing become a positive-sum game.

You could always refuse to participate in the social and economic destruction of communities by simply not working at places that have a disproportionate impact on the surrounding community.

Yes, it's that easy!

<< A world where people are forced to leave their community of origin because rich tech workers can outbid them for housing is another kind of dystopian hellhole.

Fixed that for you.

The size of your employer has nothing to do with your contribution to housing demand. A million employees of two-person startups have the same effect as a million Googlers, assuming similar budgets.

Interesting argument strategy. You pose something that will never happen in Seattle (a million employees of two-person startups) with something that actually has happened (Amazon).

If you're a transplant who works for Amazon, then it's because of a choice. You came from somewhere where you lived in a community with people you knew and who knew you. You don't need to be in Seattle.

People who are from Seattle need to live in Seattle. A lot of us don't want to leave our families or watch while our communities (or surrounding) communities are destroyed by waves of outsiders who know nothing about the area and who are only here for career/money.

Is that so hard to understand? How much should we have to accommodate? How many people? Should we sit idly by while people drive us out of our own neighborhoods?

Sorry, that's not going to happen.

>You came from somewhere where you lived in a community with people you knew and who knew you

Sure. College, which ends. After that, returning to your hometown is only possible if you're privileged enough to be born somewhere with a decent local economy, and even then, chances are you'll be moving from family-oriented suburbs to an "up-and-coming" urban neighborhood with other young adults... same set of issues. Or you got priced out of the Bay Area, or your hometown's economy finally shrank to below the level where it can sustain you, etc.

> A lot of us don't want to leave our families or watch while our communities (or surrounding) communities are destroyed by waves of outsiders who know nothing about the area and who are only here for career/money.

There is nothing an American city can do to privilege its natives relative to other Americans. Privileges and Immunities Clause. What you can do is rent control + plan and zone for growth so that it's an increase in population, instead of a displacement.

TIL that people own the neighborhoods they live in by virtue of being there first, without any form of payment, deed, title, or record of ownership.

I should point out that the arguments against gentrification are identical to the arguments white ethnic urban neighborhoods made against blacks moving into their neighborhoods in the mid 20th century.

"They are ruining the character of our city! We were here first!"

Losers.

Gentrification disproportionately affects communities of color. This is quite exactly what's happening in Seattle.

<< TIL that people own the neighborhoods they live in by virtue of being there first, without any form of payment, deed, title, or record of ownership.

I hear this argument a lot and it's really like saying "only people who own property should be allowed to vote". You're saying that only property owners belong in the community.

That's just sad and wrong - not to mention racist in the context of this discussion - and it truly exemplifies the attitude that myself and many other natives are pushing back against.

This attitude, which I see in so many tech workers, is why Amazon has gotten such a cold reception from many people in Seattle.

No, I'm saying that nobody is entitled to anything. I love how you bring up the race card.

Please explain to me the system of who gets to suddenly stop a city from changing, and when? Your attitude is based on emotion and illogic. So if I'm talking about South Boston, where it is white Irish Americans being booted out by a much more racially diverse professional class, am I bigoted against whites?

Again, you have an emotional argument and nothing else. Take that same argument, apply it at a national level, and you are in anti immigration territory. If Trump ran for mayor of Seattle and said he'd build a wall to keep newcomers out, it would help your agenda.

People who have been in an area for a long time have every right to fight back against overwhelming changes that have incredibly serious long-term implications for their quality of life.

It's a sign of your argument's inherent weakness that you equate people's heartfelt sentiments about feeling overwhelmed by cost-of-living increases, and the resulting destruction of their communities, with Donald Trump's agenda.

The reverse side of the incumbent and established having unlimited rights to protect their quality of life is that the young have none.

The young are also feeling overwhelmed by the cost of living, and are starting to question whether tenure really confers a special moral status that makes the most superficial elements of your quality of life (perception of crowding, architectural taste, ease of parking) more important than the fundamentals of ours (access to employment, housing cost burden, ability to start families).

Socioeconomic vulnerability justifies additional protection, sure, but any community against any change? Come on.

I know, I know, kids these days are entitled. It would be fine to arrange housing as a delayed-gratification, wait-your-turn sort of thing. But the economic cards are stacked in my favor about as well as they can be, and I don't see any such path. So excuse me, but I'm going to fight for a world in which my generation plausibly gets jobs and shelter at the same time.

This isn't about age, and I'm not sure why you're even framing it that way.

The crowding, costs, and congestion in Seattle have increased very significantly with Amazon. There have been very ugly social side effects as well.

Amazon's employees, most of whom are out-of-towners, don't need to live in Seattle as much as the people whom they're displacing. Basically, a lot of the Amazon transplants could work remotely or find jobs in other cities.

This was all entirely avoidable.

The reasons this sort of thing happens are the reasons humans organize themselves into cities at all. Turning off the growth spigot while maintaining everything else in working order isn't a lever that policymakers have.

What they do have are ways of dealing with population growth that lead to drastically less displacement.

Sure, no out-of-towner needs to live in Seattle specifically. New entrants to the workforce do need to live in a city with job growth in their industries, and all of those (for software development) are having this conversation. Could change if remote work becomes more available.

It’s a cycle. Tenants need more rights => the economics for landlords are less attractive => the supply of rental housing dwindles => tenants need more rights.

Rearranging the deck chairs can only get us so far in the face of scarcity. The experiment in a distributed and suburban country is over. The population is urbanizing, as it has throughout human history. Whether it wants to or not, that's where jobs are going. That presssure will always show up in some form or another unless the housing supply grows to meet it.

Whether it’s the market or the government, someone needed to be building on a massive scale, yesterday. That’s not incompatible with protecting long term renters, but when we make it less lucrative to build we must also give more of a push to build anyway.

Are you a software engineer in one of these cities struggling to find a job?

Would you take one at Amazon, knowing that it's one of the worst software jobs out there because of horrible working conditions?

Would you last significantly longer than the average 1 year turnover rate at Amazon?

If you said yes to all these questions, your response makes sense. Congratulations, you are the .25% of the population that my argument doesn't apply to and I'll gladly note you as an exception and admit my argument was a generalization, though a reasonable one.

edit: It's also worth noting that I don't blame Amazonian transplants to Seattle themselves, I find them wholly sympathetic and I think it's sad these people are blamed for the state of affairs: rather, the company, that draws so many from outside, makes no effort to acclimate them to local culture, works them to the bone so they have no time to do so themselves, and provides nothing for the city to aid in the overcrowding, traffic, and housing crises they have created is to blame.

>Would you take one at Amazon, knowing that it's one of the worst software jobs out there because of horrible working conditions?

Source? It is consistently ranked as one of the better places for software engineers to work, despite NYT hit pieces.

>Would you last significantly longer than the average 1 year turnover rate at Amazon?

Amazon's turnover is almost indistinguishable from Google's. It's an industry issue (at the highest tier, at least), not an Amazon one.

> It is consistently ranked as one of the better places for software engineers to work

Where? By whom? I looked for a while and I couldn't find a single source to suggest this. There are plenty of lists of good software workplaces, Amazon shows up on none of them.

People like working there because it is a great resume-booster. Work a couple years at Amazon, kill yourself for work, then move on to a real company with that on your CV.

>despite NYT hit pieces

Or as everyone else in the world knows it, "accurate reporting".

Here's a quote from an article from an employee that I think captures it: “Amazon is a culture of self-driven workaholics”

If you join the cult and agree it's a good idea to work yourself to death, it's a good place to do that. It's not a good place to go if you want to be a Seattleite, participate in a community or have a life at the same time.

>Where? By whom?

LinkedIn, for one.

>Here's a quote from an article from an employee that I think captures it: “Amazon is a culture of self-driven workaholics”

You are quoting a subjective statement from an article, in support of the article's veracity? That makes absolutely no sense.

Amazon employs tens of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands have worked there over the past 20 years. The NYT article was a collection of anecdotes.

"Accurate reporting"? Lol, I for one am shocked that out of the hundreds of thousands of current and former employees they were able to find a handful that had bad experiences. I mean, what are the odds? Amazon must be the worst.

"Accurate reporting"? From what I remember, not a single individual references worked in software development, they were exclusively in marketing and bureaucratic levels.

>If you join the cult and agree it's a good idea to work yourself to death, it's a good place to do that

Again, based on a few anecdotes you've reached the conclusion that it is a cult? It's really obvious that you've decided Amazon is evil a priori, and are using circular logic to rationalize this, because your evidence so far is anecdotal (from an article based on anecdotes).

>It's not a good place to go if you want to be a Seattleite, participate in a community or have a life at the same time.

I work 40 hours a week, average. So does nearly every engineer I know here. I love Seattle and my work-life balance is awesome.

Thanks for posting this. I remain horrified at the changes that Amazon has pushed on Seattle.

Just to make sure it's clear that this is not a universal opinion:

I am a non-Amazon Seattle resident, and I'm thrilled with what the economic growth has done to the area. Some examples:

- Converted an un-safe warehouse district into prime, central real estate and a thriving neighborhood (South Lake Union)

- Grown a progressive, thriving economy that has in turn supported development of mass transit (ST2, ST3 - citywide light rail)

- Pushed the median household income up 13% over the last decade

Seattle ain't perfect, but there is no question in my mind that we'd be worse off without the thriving local tech economy.

>Converted an un-safe warehouse district into prime, central real estate and a thriving neighborhood (South Lake Union)

SLU was not un-safe. The idea that there is a seriously unsafe neighborhood in the city of Seattle is laughable. I remember SLU before Amazon. It has become extremely expensive and gentrified, that's it.

>Grown a progressive, thriving economy that has in turn supported development of mass transit (ST2, ST3 - citywide light rail)

Has massively inflated the population with wealthy transplants over a short period of time, pushing non-tech workers into the suburbs and requiring the citizens to pay for the added infrastructure costs due to Amazon-caused overcrowding without chipping in to help the city.

>Pushed the median household income up 13% over the last decade

You don't actually believe this is due to Amazon? I'm sure they helped a little.. mostly by pushing the poors out...

>Seattle ain't perfect, but there is no question in my mind that we'd be worse off without the thriving local tech economy.

Agreed, and Seattle has always been home to a thriving tech sector which is great. But other companies behave better with respect to their local community. Microsoft set up shop across the water, with a big campus so that employees could head into Seattle but didn't invade it and has adopted the culture of the area fairly well. Employees are treated well.

You act like the highly paid people you are whining about dont pay taxes. They do. You are also acting like you and the other "actual Seattleites" have an ancestral claim to the region. Are you a Native American? Doubtful. Your ancestors stole the land and now you act like your entitled to say who gets to live there?

What a hypocritical, provincial attitude to have. And honestly, greedy as well.

My family came to this country in the 1600s. If I had your attitude, I would hate everyone. But I'm not entitled enough to think that my earlier arrival means I earned privileges.

Welcome to America, where effort and talent win over "I was here first"

<< Welcome to America, where effort and talent win over "I was here first"

This is an utterly vacuous and false statement. There are mountains of empirical evidence to prove it if you could spend a few minutes in your favorite search engine.

It's not greedy to protect the area you're from; it's human nature. I'm sorry, but Amazon's tens of thousands of out-of-town employees don't need to live in Seattle. Most of them could work remotely or find jobs at other companies.

NYT walked through a process of elimination and concluded it will be Denver.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/09/upshot/where-...

Interesting, I would have still guessed Massachusetts due to the education system. If there goal is to make high paying jobs an educated population makes it much easier to find talent.

Amazon is already building a pretty big facility (about 5K employees as I recall). The upside is certainly the universities and the fact that Massachusetts is already a significant tech hub, albeit in a somewhat different vein from Silicon Valley. The downside is land and CoL in the city is very expensive and traffic/transit congestion is already pretty bad.

As a Colorado resident, I'd love for them to pick anywhere BUT Denver. We already have major issues with homelessness, and rapidly rising cost of living. Our highways and infrastructure are beyond congested already, and our public transit is pretty half assed. If Amazon is going to build HQ2 here, they better help contribute to improving public transit, creating affordable housing, and help improve the highways to handle the influx of more new people, which I doubt they'll do. So please, pick somewhere else.

Considering that's a very accurate description of Seattle, I'd say your doubts are well founded.

Thank you, and I'm sorry, if you're a Seattle resident.

If only there was a system in place where the money paid to the 50K employees could be taxed by the state and city..... We could call it an income tax. Perhaps these people could even spend their money in their new home with local businesses too? Then this income tax could further apply to the people that paid.

Just imagine the possibilities.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but I'm routinely shocked by the lack of basic economic knowledge on HN.

I live in Denver and don't drive. I would love more infill and higher density! Perhaps if the campus took over the Elitch Garden's space I would hope that a lot of the new workers would stay downtown and hopefully many would be without car.

I was happy to see that Denver pitched Amazon with talent and not tax incentives [1]. I think most in Colorado would be perfectly happy if Denver didn't win and would be very unhappy if Denver won by giving tax breaks.

- [1] https://www.denverpost.com/2017/10/18/amazon-headquarters-co...

I live in CO but not front range and the front range population impacts the entire state from natural resources to transportation and recreation. When it comes down to it I would be OK if Denver didn't win though at the same time feel as if that's squandering growth and cool things for my own personal gains. Ultimately if Amazon adds 25-50K population to the front range that's a drop in the bucket of the already ~4.4M citizens living there.

When you deliberately choose not to live in a city and that city has impacts both near and far that affect you it's tough to want them to grow much especially considering their already large problems.

> Ultimately if Amazon adds 25-50K population to the front range

I think that if Amazon moved out here, the ultimate increase in population would be a lot more than the 50k potential hires that Amazon is advertising on the tin. That also creates a ton of jobs in the surrounding areas for the various amenities that people working at Amazon can afford, and you need people to work those jobs.

I live inbetween Boulder and Denver -- that's my sentiment. I really don't want Amazon to move in, and I'd be even more unhappy with it if we do ultimately give some terrible incentives (terrible for CO residents).

Which is exactly why I think that we're a front-runner. Just like the winter Olympics all over again...

The south Denver/Tech Center area was imagined with something like this in mind, maybe a big chunk of land out east along the southern part of e-470.. It's really all the other stuff that kind of stinks, all the extra traffic, all the extra people on the ski slopes, etc..

My money is on one of Nashville, Indianapolis or Columbus with Pittsburgh as a dark horse.

Amazon is going to be looking to build a major campus (say 5-10 big buildings) right in the center of town (as they've done here in Seattle) and that's just not feasible in expensive cities like LA, Boston, NYC, Chicago or DC. Denver is too far west, Miami, Atlanta and Raleigh too far southeast. Newark and Philadelphia don't have a sufficiently developed tech scene and as satellites of NYC have a price premium. There's no way Seattle and Dallas are going to form a family, Austin looks great on paper but I doubt they're hungry enough to offer sufficient incentives. Don't know why Montgomery County or Northern Virginia are even on this list.

>There's no way Seattle and Dallas are going to form a family

What does that mean? My top five (unordered) guesses are Raleigh, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Toronto and Columbus.

I also am curious what he meant by that? I have 4 friends in Dallas from Seattle, they love it and have no intention of moving back.

Boeing contemplated it but decided on Chicago instead. I think it's a cultural thing, the cities have very different and not particularly compatible personalities. Anecdotally in I've never known anyone choose to leave Seattle for Dallas, and Amazon is going to have to convince hundreds if not thousands to do just that.

>the cities have very different and not particularly compatible personalities

That was my read of the GP post as well, but it strikes me as odd. I have lived in both cities, and while I agree they have differences, I don't see that being fatal flaw to a business having a headquarters in each?

One could make same "different personality from Seattle" point for about half of the cities on the list. Consequently my interpretation is that it is one of the factors they are looking for, not one they are avoiding.

Nashville makes the most sense to me. Centrally located for the midwest and Atlantic seaboard. Great central roadway hub. Airline flights can be increased easily with demand. Relatively low-cost of living, cheap land and cheap labor. Moderate weather. Very low likelihood of terrorist attack.

Northern Virgina has quite a few areas including Tysons that would 'fit' (it is HQ to "Intelsat, Gannett, Hilton Worldwide, Freddie Mac, Capital One and Booz Allen Hamilton") [1]. Montgomery County, on the other hand, is definitely a weird choice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tysons,_Virginia

Too far southeast?

There really has been some prejudiced undertones in this thread that belittle the southeast.

Texas is one bad election from making it legal to discriminate against LGBT communities and racial minorities. North Carolina is already there.

That's a nonstarter.

Your comment is ignorant of both the past and future trajectories of the voting populations for both Texas and North Carolina. NC has only become "far right" since 2010. Prior to that it's legislature was controlled by democrats since 1990. Increases in hispanic and latino populations within Texas could turn it blue within the next 20 years.

It is very short sighted thinking to think this won't change.

I know plenty well about Southern politics, having worked as a staffer on multiple Southern campaigns.

As an alternative, Amazon can choose states that don't currently discriminate against potential employees.

Both of those states have positive trajectories (as well as Georgia!) But one bird in the hand is worth... Well, one bird in the bush.

And I live here and it's clear you're extremely ignorant on what the culture is actually like in the Raleigh-Durham region.

Question: do you even recognize that the bathroom law is offensive and discriminatory?

If you don't, we are simply not going to see eye to eye on this.

Of course I do. I consider myself liberal.

An increasing Hispanic and Latino population won't turn Texas blue all by itself. The turnout among that population at the voting booth is really low in Texas. This was also true in California until proposition 187 gave a lot of motivation for people to starting getting in the habit of using their vote. Without a precipitating event of the Texas GOP shooting itself in the foot with an equivalent to proposition 187, its going to take longer than 20 years. Old caucasian people are very reliable voters and as we saw in the recent special election in Alabama, will the vast majority of the them vote GOP no matter what candidate. https://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/latinos-wont-turn-te...

I'm guessing this will be a significant issue because of travel to/from Seattle. With 5+ hour flight times and a 3 hour timezone shift it will be nearly impossible to get from Seattle to the southeast on the day of a meeting, whereas you can be in Nashville by 2PM.

I don't think Amazon is going to pick Chicago, but there are underdeveloped areas in/near the center of the city in Chicago. There are parts of Chicago that are quite expensive (like West Loop, where McDonalds is moving its campus), but Chicago is really big.

Why not? It ticks all the boxes: tax breaks, good airport, transit, large metropolitan area, good schools, talent pool, etc.

My suspicion is that Amazon has known all along where they want to put HQ2, and that this whole exercise is a negotiating tactic. Illinois would be a particularly rough choice, due to state finances.

Nashville does not stand a chance. It is growing rapidly, but the infrastructure is not keeping up. It is a car-centric city with almost nonexistent public transportation. As a result there is a citywide gridlock twice a day during rush hours. And not a single alternative. "It's a village that grew too big" is what my SO says about Nashville.

From wsj.com:

"...some site-selection experts to speculate Mr. Bezos may choose a location where an influx of workers could help promote political change..."

Playing with that notion.

Premise: 50k tech workers would have more impact on US politics if: 1) added to U.S. cities; 2) added to cities in states with smaller populations. (Debatable premise(s), but just go with it).

Below is trimmed down version of the original list of 20 with that in mind, sorted by lowest population. Cities in states where 50k would be < 0.40% of the population were cut (eg. 50k in florida would only be 0.25%).

  Place:  50k/State Pop (as %)
  ------------------------------------------

  Denver: 1.00%
  Nashville: 0.77%
  Northern Virginia: 0.63%
  Atlanta: 0.50%
  Raleigh: 0.50%
  Columbus: 0.45%

(50k would be about 7.35% of Washington DC, which I edited out, but put back in after seeing a reply to this post)

(list of cities and quote above from https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-narrows-choices-for-seco...)

Electorally DC is less relevant to national politics than any house district (I was replying as you trimmed DC from your list).

Which would be the next unit to analyze, as the statewide population doesn't impact house elections all that much.

Sorry about that. Put it back in the post under the list.

I wasn't bothered about it, your comment was new still, adding that was the laziest way of making the sentence still make sense.

Please please pick Toronto. My immigrant future in the US is still uncertain after being here for 12 years. Would be great if Canadian tech ecosystem gets a boost so that I and countless others in my position have options

This could also be great for immigration in the US, as it is an obvious economic argument for the importance of reform.

I'm surprised to see Miami make the list, since they're going to have so much work to do over the next 50 years to deal with rising sea levels. I'm not at all sure that the city will still exist in its modern form in 2050, and surely Amazon is planning that far out too.

Maybe they see an opportunity to be the first major tech company with a headquarters powered by tidal generation.

Miami I think is going to have a big future. At current growth rates it will be #6 biggest city by population, still cheap, nice quality of life. Also as far away as you can get from Seattle in every way, so probably not a great pick for HQ2, but we'll hear more from this city I think.

Unfortunately, Miami's tech scene is really small, especially for it's size. Ft. Lauderdale has a bigger one, but still not very impressive. Amazon would be hard pressed to find enough qualified engineers here that I think it's not viable. I could see a smaller office opening for Latin America though, as we have communities from essentially every country in the region.

I'm surprised to see it as well, and assume it will be one of the first to get crossed off. I worked near Ft Lauderdale/Miami for awhile and its just too small of an area and very expensive already.

Oof unfortunate that Detroit missed the cut, wonder why that happened; they seemed reasonably competitive from an outsider's perspective.

I think rfp asked for a stable and growing economy. Detroit is still stumbling in this respect.

I assume Detroit has a lot of the same problems that St Louis has, they are both great little cities with an up and coming tech industry but hiring skilled talent and conniving them to move to the area is a nightmare.

Oakland county to the north of Detroit and Washtenaw county to the west of Detroit are two of the wealthiest, most highly educated counties in the country.

And the cities surrounding Detroit have a lot less problems than the city itself.

I think the parent's point still probably stands. Wherever they end up, assuming there really is a 50K HQ2 in the end, they have to convince a lot of people to relocate. And a lot of people would be: 1.) Detroit, no thanks or 2.) I can live with Detroit but when I end up leaving Amazon after 2 years like so many people do, I'd have to find a job in a different location. I imagine the talent question at least factored in--schools in the general area notwithstanding.

My point is that the problem is largely one of perception.

The hundreds of thousands of people in the area with technical educations aren't working at McDonald's.

"My point is that the problem is largely one of perception."

That very well might be true, but that's Detroit's problem to fix, not Amazon's. Amazon doesn't want to have to deal with that; they want a place that they can get people to come to day 1.

Of course. Note that my first comment is literally pushback against the poor perception...

So, where are they working?

Detroit is shifting fast in this regard. It still has problems, but it's not the city it was 10 years ago, which is what I think a lot of the perception still is.

The Detroit bid put together by Dan Gilbert and team highlighted the fact that almost 50 million people live within a 5 hour drive of the city, with a huge collection of major research universities. Another big push or two like Amazon HQ2 can provide, and I think the city and metro area become highly attractive as an economic destination like Chicago dominates today in the same region.

That is sad, indeed. Amazon has the scale where they could have essentially created the social infrastructure they want.

Amazon can't create social infrastructure. They can create buildings and jobs, but the social infrastructure of a city are things like government policies and quality, existing tech worker base, etc. They have little to no ability to move the needle on those things on any kind of reasonable timescale.

No employee wants to move there.

Given Detroit's public transportation, I'm not surprised.

If you haven't seen this yet, this gambling site has Atlanta, GA / Boston, MA / Austin, TX as the top three choices for HQ2.

http://www.paddypower.com/bet?action=go_type&ev_type_id=2271...

It also has Portland and Cleveland as the next most likely and they have been eliminated. Gambling sites are not useful for decisions like this which are made by a small group of people. Gambling sites are useful for things like elections where you want to sample a small part of the large population.

>not useful for decisions like this which are made by a small group of people

I'm not sure that's quite true. For example, a Wisdom of the Crowds consensus approach can do really well in picking Academy Awards winners for example.

It's not immediately obvious that you can't take the same approach here. The bigger issue is probably that, while with the Academy Awards experienced pickers can bring a fair amount of historical perspective about the types of things that win, precursor awards, etc. in this case:

- There's no track record to look at

- No one outside of the people involved know what's going on behind the scenes

- No one knows how Bezos & company are really thinking about this, what they really value, etc.

So in the end, the crowd has so little real information to go on, any Wisdom of the crowds is going to be incredibly noisy. The wisdom of the crowds assumes everyone is not just throwing a random dart at a map.

The cumulative odds on this site add up to larger than 100%.

We're already at greater than 100% (106.5%). And there are 13 more cities with >= ~5% chance. It's pretty tough to have any faith in this site or their odds.

Could've been an interesting data point to look at though.

Yes, that's standard and it's called overrounding. If the odds were to sum to 100% then the bookmaker would make no profit. Betting exchanges such Betfair have books closer to 100%.

Bookies have to eat. They are never going to give perfectly fair odds because then they don't make any money.

Also NB: The odds don't reflect the bookie's opinion of what the real outcome will be. They reflect the bookie's opinion of gamblers' willingness to bet on each option. The bookie is trying to get the odds-adjusted amount bet on each option to be as close to equal as they can manage. That way, no matter what the outcome is, they can just take the money paid by the losers give some of it to the winners and then keep what is leftover for themselves.

If it doesn’t end up somewhere on the silver line in northern Virginia, I’ll eat my hat.

Plenty of housing, transit straight to the city or an international airport, convenient access to the nations capital for lobbying, in the middle of us-east-1, a large population of tech workers, lots of local universities, right in the middle of the east coast...

I wonder if this is more or less likely to make that a reality.

Amazon Web Services to set up East Coast corporate campus in Fairfax County https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2017/06/08/amazo...

And Jeff Bezos recently bought a $23M home in DC.

CEO residence location is a strong predictor of where businesses set up shop.

I also think it's telling that 3 of the 20 listed cities are DC + DC suburbs.

TIL about the Silver Line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Line_(Washington_Metro)

Three candidate cities are in the same metro area (DC).

* Montgomery county, MD

* Northern Virginia

* Washington DC

Same metro area.. totally different politics, rules, and regulations.

And there you have it. Northern Virginia will win this hands down if it's up against neighboring Montgomery County (which is where I live). Northern VA wins in infrastructure, existing tech culture, housing, and transportation options. But, the primary reason is that Montgomery County politics will never bend to accommodate Amazon in a competitive situation like this, and it's been that way for 30 years.

I live in Rockville, MD and I couldn't agree more with the county politics.

I don't see DC happening though. Not enough land to build. Traffic is a mess.

But wouldn't be surprised if they pick NoVA.

Not sure much about MD, I think VA traditionally had a more favorable tax structure.

I believe that one of these is the most likely winner.

If they’re strategically trying to eat IBM’s and Oracle’s lunch, then a DC presence would be a good choice.

I think this is politically smart and that one of these 3 will end up being the winner. The current US administration is very anti amazon. It is a little tougher for politicians and staff to publicly bash a company when 50k of their employees live and work in the same zip code.

This logic doesn't hold up. Trump bashes us Washingtonians/Marylanders all the time. And the feeling is mutual back at him with a large large majority of the population.

Philadelphia made the list, but they also pitched three separate locations [1] within the city. It is not clear if all 3 are under consideration or if one or more of the locations has been ruled out.

[1] http://www.philly.com/philly/business/real_estate/commercial...

Navy Yard makes sense since then there is also property that is cheap across the river in Camden and Southern NJ. Easy to get there over the bridge as well and there is public transit should people decide to live across the river.

Please, not Austin. Austin is full. Not enough water for the current population. At least one local park requires a waiting list to get in, and you can only spend a half day there. Mass transit is a joke. Commutes are terrible. Go away.

It's interesting how little culture figures in to this conversation. It seems to me that the North and the South (Canada aside) are drastically different in ways that will really matter to a lot of people. I don't work at Amazon, but my family and I would not feel fully safe or comfortable living in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia or North Carolina.

> my family and I would not feel fully safe or comfortable living in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia or North Carolina

I'm a little surprised by this. You wouldn't feel safe? Why not?

The fear of other or whatever one wants to call it is pretty strong in rural areas, regardless of state, there just happen to be a lot more rural people in those states as reflected in the state legislative/executive results - anti gay, anti trans gender, anti immigrant laws in most of those states made the news the past few years. Those type of laws don't affect me, but I can see how if someone were affected by them or knew someone affected by them they would see those laws as announcements of intolerance for them or their loved ones. On the other hand if one is in favor of those type of laws, that might be an incentive to move there.

All these locations are major cities, bright blue on the electoral map (or at least purple) and cosmopolitan. Get your FUD out of here - the South isn't a bunch of hicks and white supremacists.

I'm from the vicinity of one of those cities, and my spouse is from another one. The idea that a "blue" place isn't subject to the larger culture of its state and region is, sadly, completely disconnected from reality. I'm not speculating, I'm describing a lived experience of visiting the south after moving away as an adult.

The cities in these states are not that different from cities anywhere else. I would be very surprised if you faced any additional discrimination in Nashville or Dallas than you would wherever you are feeling is a safe place. By the same token, rural New York and California are extremely conservative and have much of the same issues you seem to be worried about with the South.

The rural/urban divide is present as you describe in every state, but the difference is in some of the states listed as undesirable for minorities, the rural people outnumber the urban people and filled the state legislature and executive political offices with bigots based on the anti-other laws/regulations and anti-urban regulations(preventing urban regions from making anti-bigot rules) that made national news from Texas and North Carolina. That sets the tone for the conversation, not how urban/rural areas are alike across the north/south.

Texas did not pass the bill I believe you are referring to.

R's from blue states are just as capable of introducing such bills, and have in the past.

Texas thought it was so important though they had a special session just for that bathroom bill. The state congressman who was standing in the way retired - he was going to be primaried by the Tea Party that is taking over anyway.

Texas state government is pretty bad about trying to undo any progress the urban areas want to make.

Can't limit fracking within city limits https://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-politics/2015/05/04/bi... Cities can't declare themselves sanctuary cities: https://www.texastribune.org/2017/05/07/abbott-signs-sanctua... Cities can't limit work for hire or rental apps like uber and airbnb due to similar laws the state legislature passed.

No matter if you live in an urban area with a majority of like minded people, they are going to try to over rule your elected officials with the majority the rural areas hold in the state legislature in these states.

My money is on Vriginia particularly Loudoun county. Amazon AWS data centers are already there. Many other data center vendors are moving in hords. Land is cheap and in abundance there. VA allows easy access to eastern and southern states. People who want to work for Amazon would move eventually. Major metro-city is not going to happen.

UPDATE: Spelling mistake

Columbus definitely seems like an underdog here but it could be one of the best options on this list. Great talent pool coming out of Ohio State, young people are already moving here, the local economy is doing great, and real estate is still very cheap compared to the national average and many other cities on this list.

It seems like the lack of nonstop flights to Seattle is the only real downside to it. But that's something I would think could almost certainly be fixed before the new campus was even finished.

I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon has accounts with every major airline. If Amazon wants a daily flight between Seattle and wherever, I'd imagine that some airlines would trip over themselves. I think flights are among the easiest issues to fix.

It seems interesting that Amazon is not terribly concerned with the cost of labor. Several cities and states on that list have very high labor costs (Boston, New Jersey, etc.)

Good to see they are more concerned with talent and infrastructure rather than just bottom line costs.

Maybe there are just there as a bluff to create arms race among the rest.

It's already known what Amazon pays. I don't care where I'm located, they had better be paying me at least that well.

That’s not how labor markets work. Amazon engineers in Boston and Seattle will certainly be paid more on average than engineers from Pittsburgh or Atlanta.

Why not? I mean, if they can't get people to work for less wages, they have to offer higher ones.

There is less competition for talent in smaller markets like Pittsburg, so they get paid less. Also an engineer in Pittsburg, for example, would usually be okay getting paid less, because housing is cheaper by a factor of 5 than Silicon Valley and his or her overall cost of living will be much lower.

It is supply and demand. People in highly competitive labor markets like Silicon Valley or Seattle will get a geographic differential. People in less competitive markets will get paid, but also enjoy a lower cost of living.

If you live in one of those less competitive areas and asked to be paid like someone in Silicon Valley, you better be rock star, nine times out of ten it will not happen.

Please don't come to Austin. There are enough of us new people here.

Would love to have Amazon here but Austin badly needs infrastructure.

I would hate to have amazon here. I don't need my rent to go up or my commute to get longer.

Same for the northern Dallas suburb area, we don't need more people and company HQs. Now Fort Worth? That's another story...

It would go downtown Dallas if it came to Dallas. Either the Victory Park proposal or the area just south of city hall/Cedars. Plenty of land, plenty of infrastructure to support it, and plenty of tech talent there already/accessible by light rail to major suburbs.

I think it'll be Dallas or Atlanta though.

It amuses me to think of what will happen to Amazon’s neurotic overworking culture if their other HQ in Miami or Denver.

I can’t see amazon casting a big enough cultural shadow to change those cities instead of those cities changing them.

Seattle has (had?) to be similar enough to Denver in that regard and everything I've heard about Miami is work hard play hard so I guess I don't see why they'd have a problem fitting in either of those.

Hm. I have always thought of Seattle and Denver having equally blue-leaning, outdoorsy, marijuana-legalizing, progressively-led cities. What are the cultural differences between them that you're thinking of?

Colorado has a more laid back lifestyle than Seattle in my experience. When people say "work life balance" here, they actually mean it.

When I go to coffee or happy hour in Seattle people seem to be just talking more shop. In Colorado we talk about skiing, biking, etc. Everyone.

The outdoors are extremely accessible here in Denver. The culture here is very strongly in favor work/life balance since everyone hauls ass out into the mountains every Friday afternoon.

That's basically how it is in Seattle.

I'm disappointed that Detroit isn't on the list. My money is on Nashville or Denver. Hm... I wonder if how hard it would be to set up a decentralized blockchain pool to wager on the winner...

The Metro-Detroit area voted down a public transit system a year or two ago. Public transit was one of the requirements that Amazon laid out.

I'm already not disappointed that we didn't get Amazon's HQ but I'm still disappointed about the Regional Transit vote. Luckily it might be on the ballot again in 2018.

A more progressive Amazon would build public transit. The robber-baron companies used to wholesale reshape society to fit their vision. It's almost disappointing Amazon doesn't try.

As a resident, I think Nashville would be a really interesting choice. Nashville only recently approved a big transit plan though and it would destroy commute times in the city if the HQ was built here before the new transit system was completed. Traffic is already at unacceptable levels as is.

What's the point of announcing your candidate cities? Seems like it's only there so that the two or three cities they're really considering have to throw loads of tax breaks at them.

Well, yes. Your answer to your question is correct I think, and a good reason to do it this way.

Probably a "Dear John" letter.

That is probably the entire point of making it a competition. Make the cities compete against one another. Perhaps once a city is a finalist it’s leaders get together and say “we’ve made it this far. What can we do to close the deal?”

So the leadership in all the cities falls over themselves to bend over the most for Amazon? Amazon will play them off each other use the offers to leverage the city or cities they "really" want.

I think folks are expecting too much from Amazon.

The cities are hoping for an influx of taxpayers with big incomes, but what will really happen is that Amazon will simply build a campus, the bulk of the "tech workers" will live in a wide swath of exburbs around the city. The commuters will stress the transportation infrastructure of the city and the "tax breaks" will greatly limit the actual benefits the cities see.

Of course even that is contingent on the whims of Amazon. They're soliciting solemn proposals that fork over a lot of benefits and promises. Whereas on the Amazon side, they could change their minds before even building the facility-- or just build a much smaller facility, or build several much much smaller facilities in several cities, all of which leverage the "highest bidder" benefits.

I don't believe them and I don't believe the "50000" jobs number. It is too round a number that seems like it was dreamed up by a PR goon. And what is the point of an HQ2 anyway? Isn't ONE HQ enough? How many HQ's does a company need in one country?

I theorize that Bezos is using this as a way to make cities compete on infrastructure and states to not pass "religious liberty" bills.

I could swear I read that the EU does not allow this kind of bidding war for tax reduction by companies, but I can't find it online. The US certainly allows it, which I think is a bad idea.

Why?

Assuming Amazon is going to create an HQ somewhere in America, consider the two situations: 1) Current situation, they will eventually get a very large tax cut from wherever they select. 2) Hypothetical situation: local tax breaks are not allowed, Amazon selects a location and pays the local taxes that it avoided in situation #1.

Only looking at tax revenue and not the overall impact of 50,000 new non-McJobs and a potential new techhub catalyst is pretty myopic.

You think small governments (states, or cities being 'small') having autonomy over how they tax themselves is a bad thing?

There are more than two situations, or you're over-simplifying the effect of a massive company like Amazon moving to a city.

A 'tax cut' does not mean they are contributing $0 to the local economy. I would guess (I'm not a city planner or anything like that) the overall economic impact of such a move vastly offsets any tax breaks offered (even if that means there are less taxes being given directly to those governing bodies).

The European mindset to everything seems to be regulate, regulate and regulate some more.

Is having high taxes an inherently good thing we want to create incentives to encourage? In private industry, governments try to break up cartels because they're thought to be bad for consumers (residents of the cities in this case).

I remember reading an article earlier in the year talking about how (1) No city is going to have every characteristic Amazon was asking for so (2) this is really about how much the city is willing to work with Amazon in long-term development plans.

From that perspective, some of the cities isn't surprising. For example, I grew up in Columbus, OH and I know that one of the AWS regions is located in the greater Columbus area. The airport is international but it is is not a major hub like Atlanta. When I lived in Seattle, I remember locals there complaining about the transit system -- yet it is way better than what Columbus has.

I do know that, Columbus is probably willing to change things about its city to accomodate Amazon. Not just in terms of tax credits, but likely extending all the way out to municipal and regional planning.

The same could be said about the other cities -- Austin, Newark, etc.

Austin has one rail line and buses - what solution could they come up for mass transit?

Columbus has zero rail lines and busing is anemic.

It is a rust-belt metropolis with some world-class research facilities, (OSU, Ohio Supercomputing Center, Battelle, Chemical Abstracts), a lot of banking (Bank One had its headquarters there before Chicago First bought them out, and there is still a huge IT presence). Columbus is often a test market to try new product lines -- it is large enough and _boring_ enough.

Amazon coming in with an HQ would inflect the whole metropolitan area. Everything in Columbus right now pivots around the Ohio State University and the network of research centers, but that center of gravity will probably shift to Amazon if they come in. That is, Amazon would have a huge say in how they want the city to be developed.

As for rail: One thing from Atlanta's playbook: create greenspaces out of old rail right-of-way. Some of those may be converted into light rail. Columbus's High St. (the central corridor running down the spine of the city) used to host a trolley line. It's been the target of gentrification, from the Downtown core, through the Short North, and into the OSU campus area. Restoring a light rail line there is not out of the picture, particularly if it is extended to the airport.

I only know all of this because I grew up there, and my 6th grade social studies course was on Ohio history. That is local knowledge.

I don't know whether Austin can do anything, but I'm pretty sure there are some unique local features that can be just as much of an advantage, things that the locals know but is not so apparent for anyone else.

I still think it has a lot more to do with how willing the city is to have their development plan influenced by Amazon more than anything.

I feel as though there are too many cities. I'd be curious to know what the top 5 are. My picks, in no particular order:

- Boston

- Dallas

- Atlanta

- Chicago

- Denver

In all likelihood it'll be Boston or Denver.

Are these dev jobs? If so, time zone coverage = less hours on call

Are what dev jobs? HQ2 should have a pretty large mix of roles, similar to HQ1.

Rephrased: will this new HQ be hiring primarily developers? I’m not familiar with HQ1.

My understanding is that it's literally another HQ. So they'd be hiring all roles -- developers, marketing professionals, sales, etc.

I'd love Amazon to come to Boston, although admittedly it would not help our existing transportation and housing problems. Maybe Bezos could strong arm the state into actually fixing the T XD

These are 5 of the most likely but who is giving the biggest tax breaks?

Knowing how Bezos works, I guarantee he has a team who are creating spreadsheet after spreadsheet, and the winning city will be chosen by some algorithm which saves them the most money over time.

The location the Boston group has proposed for Amazon is the Suffolk Downs race track site on the East Boston - Revere town line. Perhaps with all the Amazon building the area would improve, but the place feels like a wasteland right now.

It's on the other side of Logan airport so there's a lot of airport service infrastructure around. There is a huge field of fuel tanks, big box stores and highways. It's also very cut-off from the city proper. There's no way to get to downtown Boston without going through the harbor tunnel and dealing with the associated airport traffic.

If might be interesting if they could build some sort of bridge directly over the Chelsea River into Chelsea.

The prospect of traffic and rent in that area can be a bit dismal, if they are to make the move....

East Boston, Revere, Chelsea. That whole swath north of the airport up the coast is sort of a combination of industrial sites and working class neighborhoods (until you reach the swanky areas of the North Shore which are very swanky). It's technically connected to the city and has a T link but you're right that it's not "in the city." I think you can walk to Winthrop from there though so it's not a total wasteland but it is sort of disconnected from the city proper.

I just don't see why Boston is in that all likelihood...

The apartment rent in Boston is already hiking towards the level of Manhattan while the living condition in many places is old and antique; and the traffic there can be as slow as 10-15 miles/hour in the area around I-95 crossing I-90 between 3pm to 6pm...The subway system is well confined within the Boston proper;and outside the Boston proper, the public buses and trains come to a stop once each hour...

The current population in the city is roughly 670,000; a 50,000 growth would be an increase of 7.5% (approximately)...and if we take account of their partners and kids, the increase would be more than 10%...

I really feel that, at least for the Boston proper, the trend of gentrification has already been pricing out many residents with regular income; and the capacity is quite saturated to accommodate another large corporation with 50,000 employees...

Don't overlook Nashville. It has an educated workforce; it's a transportation hub, Fed Ex is right down the road in Memphis. It has the 3rd fastest growing economy in the country. The tech scene is booming. There is plenty of developable land downtown. It's a low tax state with a permissive business environment, and both state and local governments in TN have shown they are willing to play ball to attract large employers.

Based on what Amazon has listed as it's own criteria I would say the top 5 are probably:

- Nashville - Atlanta - Raleigh - Dallas - Denver

Also in no particular order.

With how bad traffic/congestion is right now (in spite of our light rail/bus infrastructure) I'm surprised Denver is in the top 20. Especially since last by my understanding the city was offering a less rich incentive package than a lot of the other cities.

I'd say the congestion in Denver is less than Atlanta, DC, and Boston. Those cities are all front runners as well.

Having not lived in those areas I can't say. The important question is how capable are they of alleviating the issues? Denver right now has a massive problem where they can't really seem to do much to lower congestion.

I'm hoping it'll be northern Virginia or Washington, D.C. We already have Amazon stuff here and plenty of tech companies in Tysons Corner, Reston, Herndon, etc. and plenty of universities in close proximity so it wouldn't be a huge stretch.

Used to live there. Inflated salaries courtesy of Federal govt and contractors, and talent pool looks bigger on paper than reality. Govt contracting incentivizes overstaffed projects with slow pace and awful tech. Who wants to work at Amazon for 90k when you can have an easy govt contracting job for 150k that is strictly 9 to 5?

Plus, northern VA has awful traffic and high cost of living. Traffic jam on Saturday morning is a thing in the burbs there.

I was hoping the Twin cities would get a nod. Maybe it could still happen if Amazon buys Target. Denver makes a lot of sense. It's a nice place for executives to live, not far from ski resorts which makes the winter bearable. Los Angeles would be great too but traffic is a nightmare. It might make sense for them to be close to Hollywood as well. You'd want to be in the South bay since anyone with money will want to live near the beach.

> Maybe it could still happen if Amazon buys Target.

I was going to say that I could never see that happening but then I remembered they bought Whole Foods.

Bombardier is selling 152 hectare Aircraft manufacturing facility [1] in Toronto with a brand new transit station adjacent to the property.

Amazon could build quite the campus on that much land.

[1] http://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/bombardie...

Direct connection from RDU to SEA as of 2015: https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2015/10/01/alaska-...

For Amazon's decision, NC politics probably take points away, but right to work probably adds points in favor.

I'm so glad Kansas City wasted all that time pandering [1] to them. I bet Sly really thought he'd make a dent. Absolutely not surprised though.

Oh well, same old same old. Look at all the dots on the edges.

[1] http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article180878701.htm...

Oooh... the cringe is strong. (EDIT: this refers to Mayor Sly's actions in your link, not to your comment!) Realistically, KC doesn't have an international airport. It's a fine national airport, because it's easy to get close to your gate really quickly, and there's a pretty complete set of connections to the West and many parts of the East. To fly internationally, however, requires a layover at O'Hare. One doesn't see KC competing for something like this without being a bit more connected to the world.

Hey, but we've got some deal in the works for nonstops to Iceland! (tongue-in-cheek). [1]

I really didn't intend to get high and mighty on my Midwest horse.

Also, I don't know how well you know the airport situation, but they're really, really trying to work on it. [2] Honestly I'm not sure where they're at in the process though, there's been some hiccups.

[1] https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2018/01/09/kansa...

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/...

I'm disappointed how few midwest cities there were. Minneapolis and St Louis would be excellent cities that have great tech scenes and plenty of room for growth. I do think that Austin and Nashville are great choices as well, but most of the rest seem silly to me.

MCI is sort of a drive for me, but then again all airports are. I'm roughly equidistant from STL, SGF, and COU, with MCI slightly farther away. Icelandair seems like it could be a great way to get to Europe? I'm actually a little bummed out by the terminal plans, since they're likely to throw away the quick-in/quick-out convenience that exists currently. Flying was so much better in the 1990s, and MCI right now is sort of a throwback to that time. However, the current design makes connecting flights through KCI sort of impossible, so I can see why the airlines don't like it.

I think travel between HQ and HQ2 has to be a nonstop flight for it to be viable.

The cities sorted by number of nonstops to Seattle per day:

Los Angeles 23 Denver 18 Chicago 14 Dallas 12 Washington, D.C. 7 Atlanta 6 Newark 6 New York 6 Boston 5 Austin 3 Nashville 2 Philadelphia 2 Raleigh, N.C. 2 Indianapolis 1 Toronto, Canada 1 Miami 1 Columbus 0 Pittsburgh 0 Montgomery County, Md. ? Northern Virginia ?

Pittsburgh has flights to Seattle. https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/...

Also, Northern Virginia is the location of Dulles. Montgomery county would also use Dulles or BWI which has 3 flights per day. Interestingly, with traffic, Washington D.C. is not within 45 minutes of Dulles so Washington D.C. is probably just looking at Reagan which has 1 flight per day to Seattle.

The silver line will to IAD will be open by the time HQ2 is being built. That puts it ~35mins by Metro when leaving the city. IAD is a huge international airport as well and has much smoother infrastructure than National Airport.

There may be some chances for an improvement at Pittsburgh airport with the announcement of $1.1bn in major renovations being funded: http://www.post-gazette.com/business/development/2017/09/12/...

I could see Southwest adding a PIT -> Seattle non-stop in a hurry if needed.

If this were true, why would cities that don’t have this even be on the list?

If necessary, it wouldn't be too expensive for Amazon to partner with an airline to sponsor/subsidize more frequent flights between Seattle and their HQ2 city - for airlines the difference between an axed money losing route and a money making route can be in the low five figures or even less. Airlines have done these kinds of deals before.

Getting a new route or two added is a lot easier than finding a good location to build. Especially with Delta expanding its Seattle presence so much.

Of all the issues to be considered, this is the easiest one to fix and so should be the least important consideration at this stage.

A fairly busy airport already exists in every case, so all they have to do is provide a revenue guarantee for one daily nonstop flight to Seattle. This is very common in the industry to entice airlines to open new routes.

This requires no new infrastructure, and would only be needed prior to HQ2 being fully operational. At that point, the airline would be selling enough tickets that the revenue guarantee wouldn't be needed anymore.

Amazon could only benefit from having multiple state and municipal governments in competition within any general metro area that they are seriously considering. I think it's a bit telling that Washington, D.C., Montgomery County in Maryland and "Northern Virginia" are all on the list, as well as both Newark and New York City.

Imagine if Amazon single handedly turned Staten Island into Brooklyn

on realpolitik grounds, Indianapolis would be a fascinating choice.

I was going to say that Indianapolis is probably a good choice simply because its airport is an international freight hub, as well.

Proximity to an international airport that can easily handle Amazon's shipments has got to count for something, right?

Depends on if they're building a tech headquarters or a distribution center. For an office building, freight isn't nearly as much of a concern.

Amazon already has a couple warehouses here as well!

Why would that be? I live in Indy, and it just seems like the only thing we have going for us is an abundance of Amazon warehouses.

Cost of living / housing prices, available space for new buildings, tax incentives, etc, etc.

The main problem with some of these cities, Indianapolis in particular, is that it might be hard to attract software developers to go live there. Even though the dollar goes farther in Indianapolis, after adjusting for cost of living, you would still need to add a bonus to entice developers to live there rather than Seattle. I grew up near Indianapolis and I certainly would not live there over Seattle, for political/cultural preferences that in my experience most developers share with me

It depends. It would be a beacon for all software developers from the midwest. Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana all have solid state schools with some of the better CS programs (top 25) in the nation.

For all the home-grown developers, many would prefer to stay close to home than have to move to the mad-house of the coasts. In other words, I question that most developers would think the same way you do.

They all go to Chicago, though, and I think they would prefer to continue doing so.

Net income adjusted for cost of living for software developers in Indianapolis is one of the highest in the country. Infosys and Salesforce are planning on adding thousands of jobs here over the next few years too, so it's likely those salaries will continue to rise.

I also grew up in Indianapolis and still live here. There are only a few tech companies that will pay engineers 150k+ but they do exist, and 150k+ in the suburbs here (Hamilton County) buys a very nice life for somebody wanting to raise a family.

I grew up in Hamilton county / Indy. There has been lots of growth just within the last 5 years after Salesforce and some other companies moved in. There's a rapidly growing population of younger people and new attractions to meet the demand created by these businesses.

I'm not sure how we would scale for HQ2, however, but I believe it could be done.

As a software engineer in Indy, a lot of us have the opposite opinion.

I'm kind of surprised none of the old upstate NY tech cities are on this list. Syracuse or Rochester, maybe?

Yeah - I was bummed/surprised about this. Untapped pools of well educated (and loyal) tech workers, low cost of living, no significant infrastructure issues, easy driving access to major cities - there is a lot Amazon could have taken advantage of here...

I wonder if New York is just New York City, or New York Metropolitan region. I guess including Newark makes the latter unlikely, but with IBM shuttering a chunk of its operations here, the Hudson Valley is full of empty IBM office parks and desperate local governments, while close to infrastructure.

It's pretty far from a decent airport. HPN and SWF have flights to only a few destinations and the only mass transit that services them are buses. Poughkeepsie to EWR is no less than 2.5 hours on public transportation and 1.5 hours by car. About the same for JFK. Newburgh and Fishkill are even worse.

Yeah, I'm real curious how much that factors into things.

I think the "no mass transit" problem isn't really a real problem; most American cities don't have mass transit that is good enough for people visiting from another office to use. I've tried visiting Mountain View with and without renting a car, and it's technically possible, but I gave up on not. Buses are perfectly cromulent forms of mass transit, but tend to be too scary for visitors to use (buses can go anywhere, and it is very confusing/stressful to try to figure out if you are at the right stop and if the bus that just stopped is the right bus, when you are unfamiliar with the system).

I can see the objection to not being a hub airport from both ends. As a normal traveler, SWF is great: easy to get to, park, and navigate, not too expensive, and pretty much anywhere I'm going is one connection away.

From the perspective of a company, yeah, I can see it being a bigger negative. The VPs may not personally want to take non-direct flights, the costs might be more noticeable, and if your destinations are also second-tier airports, you're now talking probably two connections. Especially for what's supposed to be their #2 office, a hub airport may just be a hard constraint.

The upper Hudson Valley probably is too far from New York to really mooch off of its infrastructure, but the lower Hudson Valley (Peekskill, Croton Harmon) probably isn't; however, not coincidentally, you've got a lot more empty office parks in the upper HV cities you mentioned.

How far is Newark from the old Bell labs. Didn't that building just undergo renovations and is starting to house some tech companies?

As much as I'd like to see Toronto happen, if I was being on the decision panel for that, the old Bell labs building would be mighty tempting for completely selfish reasons.

Not sure which Bell Labs. Newark is ~30 min both by car and train during Rush from Murray Hill... which is in the Middle of some of the nicest suburbs in the state. The other you might be talking about is Holmdel. Thats at least an hour down the GSP and I think train would be at least that.

Sorry, I meant Holmdel. Interesting, thanks.

After reading these comments it makes me realize just how limiting transportation is and how big of a drag it is. Austin/Boston/DC/Atlanta/Denver/others are all great locations with transportation issues. Even some of the more rural locations such as RDU would quickly fill up with 50k new tech workers join the existing the two-lane highways. It seems like the best solution currently is the Apple/Google wifi buse with 90 minute 1-way commute part of your workday.

The highway system itself is an innovation from the 50's and (In My Humble Opinion) lack of continued innovation on the US transport system since has significantly contributed to the loss of US technical/economic leadership since then.

This is why I'm hoping it doesn't end up in Boston proper. Traffic is already unbearable for a large chunk of the state during rush hours.

Even for driving in for the evening, i.e. a reverse commute, Boston/Cambridge traffic has gotten sufficiently worse that I don't go in as much any longer. And the commuter rail I take on the sometimes occasions that I go in for a work day was standing room only starting at Waltham, 30 minutes outside the city, the last time I took it.

There's already the GE Headquarters and a large Amazon building going into the Seaport and building continues in Kendall Square. And this is a city that has a relatively good public transit system.

I'm not even sure how Boston wound up in the running.

I love the city, but it's experiencing a biotech boom and already has crazy expensive real estate, issues with crowding/traffic, all that jazz. The city would HATE it, even more than Seattle did. And let me tell you, the ostracization in Seattle is extremely painful. I don't think it would turn out to be a good working environment.

I guess it has a lot of educational institutions, but honestly, in its position, I'd sort of expect a company like Amazon to want to start getting more involved in educational outreach themselves.

The plot of land they are offering in Boston is Suffolk downs. So its outside of Boston proper, has a ton of space, is right on the T, and has easy access to Logan airport. Plus its proximity to schools you pointed out and its tech scene make it appealing.

I actually think Boston has a decent chance, along with Denver, Atlanta, and DC.

Huh, cool - I don't know much about their bid, so I guess I was sort of talking out my ass.

I still probably wouldn't move back if they got it, having experienced and possibly been broken by Seattle. But...I dunno, it'd probably be a net good for the area, so good luck to them.

Ah right. I don't live in the city so I hadn't really kept up with developments after the bid for a casino location there was rejected a few years ago. Presumably, if that was a legitimate bid at least someone thought you could move a lot of people in and out of the area. Traffic still isn't great around there but, yeah, you're right on the Blue Line (which is... OK I guess) and you're practically next door to the airport.

If it happened, good luck if you've been living in East Boston because it's relatively cheap, albeit somewhat gentrifying.

>I hadn't really kept up with developments after the bid for a casino location there was rejected a few years ago

That casino is actually now under active construction, and has been for about a year (if not longer). Though it's much further south in Everett.

Yeah, I meant the Suffolk Downs location bid, not the casino project overall. (Unfortunately.)

In Atlanta, we now (because of the Amazon rfp) have a hope of the state funding our mass transit system (currently only funded by 3 counties and 1 city).

It's too bad they dropped the Detroit area off the list. Hardly any traffic compared to these other cities. Fantastic airport with many direct flights to Europe and Asia. I am kind of glad though. We don't need the stress on our infrastructure or the rapid rise in real estate and salaries Amazon will bring.

Yeah, I was really hoping for Detroit. It's got a lot of really underutilized infrastructure at this point and could be really revitalized by a large tech company expanding its footprint there. Real estate prices would be relatively low, too.

I'm surprised to see a place like Boston on the list. Having lived there for ~15 years, I just can't imagine adding an additional 50,000 well paid tech workers and their families to that area. It's already densely populated and expensive.

No big surprises here, but I'm glad to see Philly is still in the running.

Los Angeles (i.e. Hollywood) could be a strategic move given Amazon's massive push in original series and programming via Amazon Studios. Also, shares a coast with Seattle.

I'm thinking more mid-city/mid-Wilshire area. Still close to Hollywood/WestLA/DTLA but much much cheaper and less dense.

And LAX has good flights to Asia, which is important for sourcing goods.

El Segundo would probably make the most sense....exact proximity to LAX, friendly business climate, lot's of warehouse space being converted into offices already.

They would also have a monopoly on CS grads in the LA area ([0] among the highest number of grads in the country) which is experiencing a serious brain drain of talent to the Bay Area, NYC, and Seattle.

[0] https://www.ocregister.com/2017/07/24/is-southern-california...

I'm surprised that LA is experiencing such a brain drain, anecdotally, it seemed there were quite a few LA/SD area jobs in last month's job listing.

My gut tells me the job market is worst for junior devs in SoCal. Junior level openings aren't growing nearly as fast as the number of students trying to break into the workforce. A total of 0 of my friends at USC who were CS grads stayed in LA.

Theres several reasons why LA is a good choice. As you mentioned Hollywood and Amazon's push into original content. Amazon is also pushing heavily into gaming, and So Cal is one the best areas for this. Amazon's biggest fulfillment centers is in So Cal. Access to ports along the coast. LA is dumping billions into public infrastructure with the Olympics and measure M. LA has a lot of good schools in the area, USC, UCLA, Cal tech. LA is very forward in terms of govt policy, look at Elon's Boring Company as an example. If Amazon ever wants to get serious about Drone delivery I imagine LA would be perfect for this. On top of the other reasons of its proximity to Seattle and Asia.

I feel like Columbus is going to be a strong contender based on Amazon's plans to use CVG as their hub for Amazon Air and wanting to have some proximity to that.

I was surprised at the goofy map they used here - the bottom third of the country seems vertically compressed (see the angle of Florida's peninsula, or how squashed the bottom of Texas is). Also... Raleigh is south of Nashville (not north the way their map has it) and Nashville is 100 + miles east of where they've got it (based on Louisiana). Just surprising that so little time apparently went into it, maybe maps are harder than I think?

My money is on the three targets clustered around Washington, DC. If there are three cities that are so promising so close together, it seems like a good place to land.

Since Bezos owns the Post it would also be convenient.

Anyone else think Amazon released a list of twenty cities to create a substantially higher buzz factor, rather than a much shorter list would?

This whole shtick reminds me of a time when one of employers was getting a new office. Lot of places were proposed so that people had to travel less. But it all came down to BCP or business continuity plan. The plan stated both offices needed to be at least 9.5 miles or 15 kms apart. In case of service disruption atleast one office should be up and running.

Atlanta is right in the middle of many of the world's flight paths (there's a city outside the airport!), has lots of fiber, and the state already showed a willingness to work at all levels to get a big, logistics-dependent business with the Caterpillar plant. The latter point is probably the most important.

>(there's a city outside the airport!)

You say that, but my experience is that there's a traffic jam outside the airport, and then an hour and a half later you get to Alpharetta ;)

The proposed locations are on MARTA (the main one is 15 minutes from the airport by direct rail), and certainly not all the way up in Alpharetta.

What a circus.

They missed a great opportunity to do this as a game show. Pit the mayors against each other Survivor-style and vote one off each week - they could've even staged it in the Amazon.

But yeah in all seriousness this is obnoxious.

Oh yeah, but as a new season of Takeshi's castle! That would be amazing!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshi's_Castle

The page keeps crashing on iOS about 80% of the way through, can someone post the actual list?

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/Anything...

Atlanta

Austin, Tex.

Boston

Chicago

Columbus, Ohio

Dallas

Denver

Indianapolis

Los Angeles

Miami

Montgomery County, Md.

Nashville

Newark

New York

Northern Virginia

Phladelphia

Pittsburgh

Raleigh, N.C.

Toronto, Canada

Washington, D.C.

The whole west coast seems to be ruled out, so clearly geography is coming into play.

Except for Los Angeles, that is.

Bezos has a house there. So we should rank these by where the CEO has a house.

Wow, he has way more houses than I imagined. Two each in Medina, Wa and Beverly Hills, Ca. 30000 acres in Van Horn, Tx (not actually anywhere near Austin or Dallas despite being in Texas). Also, the single largest house in DC and a mere three condos in New York City (right next to Central Park).

http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-owns-five-massive-...

I can't imagine Los Angeles being a serious contender.

- Land is expensive and not particularly abundant. Mid-Wilshire is relatively cheap has great proximity to everything (airport, downtown, west LA, Hollywood) if Amazon is willing to invest in the gentrification of the area.

- Labor cost is within 10% of Bay/Seattle/NYC

- Mass transit is currently effectively non-existent.

- One of the highest taxed cities in the nation.

On the plus side, there's:

+ A very well connected international airport

+ A lot of top tier universities nearby (CalTech, UCLA, USC, UCSB, UCSD, UCI, Pepperdine); any one of which can single handedly supply a workforce comparable to the other candidate cities.

It's a lot easier moving people and airplanes to the other cities than it is creating cheap well connected land in LA.

They would have a monopoly on LA universities since the LA area is experiencing a serious brain drain of talent to the Bay Area, Seattle, and NYC.

https://www.ocregister.com/2017/07/24/is-southern-california...

Take a look at what’s happened to Seattle and you’re liable to say “no, thank you.” The gentrification, the homelessness. The overall wealth inequality.

I mean, sure, Amazon invested billions in Seattle, but those billions went to people who lead end of days capitalist lifestyles oriented around giving that money right back megacorporations like... Amazon. Suggesting the Amazon’s investment will be meaningfully local is kind of comical. It’s a multinational, and the people who get that money will give it right back to multinationals. That’s how those people spend their income.

Amazon isn’t trying to promote ways of life that don’t revolve around cheap foreign goods, soul crushing work, and an isolated, lonely existence. The lucky place that lands HQ2 will have more of all these things, and a lot less humanity. It’s good for business.

Some days I feel disgusted by even participating in the job market for those reasons. I feel there's a very superficial aspect to some lifestyles in Seattle (including my own) that I didn't expect to become so... unavoidable

My stomach feels sick reading the HQ2 updates. It seems so good on paper, and surely it would create jobs and promote infrastructure growth, but... there is something very dystopian about it that makes me want to run away.

> William Whyte‘s rule: Virtually all corporate relocations involve a move to a location which is closer to the CEO’s home than the old location.

Of course, it's hard to pick any location farther than Seattle from DC.

They really should just go to Honolulu. Who wouldn't want to work there?

Cost of living is bad, and it takes an entire day to get back to the mainland.

If they come to Boston, I'll be leaving ASAP.

Please don't ruin Austin either...

I highly doubt they could ruin boston, the city is big enough to absorb this.

Maybe they could get Amazon to rig up a new signaling system for the T. The current one has really mediocre uptime at peak hours.

For the companies/individuals that hold the keys to the real state in the winning city, it is like winning the lottery. Even if they have no knowledge whatsoever of software or technology.

Kind of funny most of them have airports. Really makes you realize how much the traveling salesmen problem(route optimization) is embedded in everything they do.

I think Miami would be good strategically for Amazons future warm-water port.

Joking aside, What sort of hoops do they expect these city and state governments jump through?

Given how southern Florida is at risk of going under-water, this is a strange thing to see on the list.

Interesting that they're all far from Seattle.

I wish i could live in North America. You guys have it so exciting out there ;).

Hopefully it goes to a region that kinda needs it and can grow further.

I guarantee someone in North America has said the exact same thing about your country :)

Everyone wants to be somewhere else.

Mmmm, you might be surprised. Much like there's a romantic view of the US from other countries, there's a romantic view of India for some Americans. India is an absolutely massive, diverse country with a lot to offer.

The Beatles spent a lot of time in India and came back very different people. That's enough to draw some level of interest from folks looking for a spiritual journey, not to mention the history of their (to many Americans) mysterious, exotic, and ancient religions.

But from that guy's post history, I'm guessing he's from Central or Eastern Europe, which does hold a far more massive draw for many Americans.

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, North America (America and Canada at least) is a world class economic dynamo.

Newark?

Easy access to three airports, the Turnpike, New York City, lots of college educated people from surrounding areas and tons of universities within a thirty mile radius. They also already have offices there for Audible, and a huge distribution center in southern, NJ.

It is possible, but I think unlikely. For all those good points, you can get them in other cities with lower cost of labor, lower taxes, etc. Though taxes might not count for much given the wheeling and dealing states are willing to do to get the business.

Los Angeles would probably service it best with Silicon Beach, great airport connections, great diversity

knowing my luck, it'll be Atlanta

This shows how unsuitable most American cities are for opening a large high-tech office. Ideally, Amazon should be searching for a city according to their existing tax laws. Exceptions should not be needed. In fact, if a city gives breaks to Amazon, they should amend their laws so that the same deal is available to every citizen.

Oh so every large city that is business friendly and that is a decision?

I dont see the list of 20 HQ2 candidates. Does anyone know?

if it is a tech HQ they want to at least move to the east coast so they don’t compete in talent.

No Ottawa, very disappointing.

this is still so bizarre

Please Amazon, stay away from Boston. We don’t need or want you here.

No New Orleans, Detroit, or Memphis.

I really wished they considered a majority African American community that has the capacity to grow. This is just going to increase inequality. Sad really.

Let's hope for Atlanta.

They can always move for work just like most people already do if they end up working for Amazon now in Seattle. There's also likely going to a serious spike in living costs within any reasonable commute around the headquarters, so the net impact on the statistically poorer African Americans population in these cities would be pretty unlikely to be a positive one.

No Laredo, Brownsville, or El Paso.

I really wished they considered a majority Hispanic community that has the capacity to grow. This is just going to increase in-quality. Sad really.

Let's hope for Miami.

Or maybe let's not turn every corporate decision into a race war.

>I really wished they considered a majority African American community that has the capacity to grow

Philadelphia and Newark are on the list

All the Mayors of these cities will now engage in a hunger games style competition at Jeff Bezos' estate for the privilege.

If Amazon were streaming that show, I'd pay for it. Hell, I'd pay $29.99 to see it in HD!

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

Thank god my city is not on this list. Amazon will kill the culture where they go and raise cost of living.

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