Wonder if basically having the DMV on there thrice is tipping their hand or trying to start a bidding war. I'm torn between Bezos wanting to establish good relationships in Washington vs. wanting to stay out of regulators' ways.
Hmm...DC, Montgomery County MD and Northern VA. In addition to the Washington Post, doesn’t Bezos own the largest house in DC?
Rooting for MoCo if Bezos could somehow convince WMATA to connect Orange and red directly. Would make my commute significantly easier.
I'm totally making this shit up but If I had to pick a likely top 5 it would probably be this, mostly by process of elimination: 1. Boston 2. DC 3. Atlanta 4. Denver 5. Toronto Both Texas cities are contenders but are too remote from anything other than other places in Texas. Land is cheap but there's not the "downtown feel" they say they want, or the transportation options. Cities like Columbus and Raleigh may not be able to afford the ridiculous subsidies, or else will need support from their suburbs/neighbor cities. I'm counting L.A. out because I'd be surprised if they stayed West Coast Chicago, Philly, and Miami seem like interesting choices but I don't see huge opportunities there. They're pretty well-established cities but don't have that "it" factor that distinguishes them. Of course, New York fits in this category too but its hard to ever count NYC out. Pittsburgh, Nashville and Indy seem like interesting choices but I don't think Amazon really wants to go somewhere to spark a city, they're going to want somewhere more established and predictable. Again, completely making this up.
purple line would be maryland and thats light rail right? not WMATA sponsored. I'm talking orange on the NoVa side across the potomac, so I can avoid the Legion bridge everyday
I haven’t read Columbus’ package but I’d imagine the state is throwing in some incentives as well. I’m basing that off Kasich handing my company a huge tax break as well a few years back Agree with your list, though.
Columbus’s tax proposal wasn’t very lucrative It was more along the lines of “600 people a week move here, it’d be real nice if you came here too Amazon but we’re doing ok” Surprised they made the list at all
Pittsburgh is already established. Uber and Google amongst others have offices there and Carnegie Mellon has the best computer science program in the country. It's basically becoming a mini-San Francisco (politics aside).
I wonder which of the Northern Virginia proposals they're considering. The one out by Dulles is shit other than being close to the AWS facilities, but the Crystal City proposal is a winner imo.
Dallas has more of a downtown feel and a better public transit system than Atlanta Will also have subway system and expanded trolley lines by the time this happens
Some details on the DC bid https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2018/01/17/d-c-reveals-part-of-amazon-hq2-bid.html
I lived in Atlanta and have two very good friends who live in Dallas, I've been there three times in the past 5 years, the most recent in 2016. I stayed in Uptown and worked from my company's offices Downtown. Uptown is great (shout out Nodding Donkey, one of my favorite bars ever) and there's a ton of construction going on Downtown. The same can be said for Atlanta though, which has three entirely separate downtown areas, one of which is mostly vacant and begging to be occupied by something like Amazon. I didn't find Dallas' downtown very walkable. I think we're really just disagreeing because of our respective familiarities with Atlanta and Dallas.
Just worked from our downtown dallas office last week. It still sucks, even our Dallas guys weren't a fan. Honestly, that could be a plus for Amazon for all we know.
Most likely. And I’m considering uptown as part of downtown after the park was built and has made that entire surrounding area much more accessible. The east side of downtown between it and Deep Ellum is prime for a company like Amazon to move in. The city just approved a billion dollar fund to improve all transportation in the city, so that should see a huge impact on the area with or without amazon
I'm rooting for Atlanta, even though I don't live there anymore, but I hope that, if they get passed over, it's the wake up call the city needs to invest in improved public transportation.
So Amazon is basically your average 17 year old high level high school football player. Denver's incentive package was also not very lucrative. This is a good thing IMO. Offer some incentives but don't go crazy with it.
Ill give you thay you're committed to building future rail...but Atl has about twice the daily riders as Dallas. That's for both Bus and rail. The new CDC/Emory line will probably drastically increase ridership. Then add additional street car and the beltline that's supposed to be done by 2030 and we'll pretty much the entire midtown/downtown fully connected
We have cities doing all sorts of publicity stunts around our buildings. I’m hopeful that will stop now.
Yeah. People are acting like there's no reason for it other than attention. Seems to be plenty of reason