I suspect it won’t really be a dual headquarters; it’ll be more like Boeing leaving Seattle for another city with more visibility. It’ll have a presence in Seattle but it’ll gradually have a more visible presence elsewhere. Not sure why Seattle’s having a hard time keeping its businesses once they grow to maturity but I guess the Pacific Northwest just doesn’t have enough people or visibility.
My guess is Texas is a front-runner, though not the only one. But my mind keeps going back to the deal with Whole Foods and the desire to be more than just a gimmicky techie company and more of a company that puts stuff in your house, like Wal-Mart. Dallas/Ft. Worth seems like a logical front-runner, though I could see other cities like Austin, Houston, and Atlanta in pretty much the same position. Other cities like Boston, New York, DC (Northern Virginia) and even San Francisco Bay are also possibilities. Maybe the Times is right and Denver’s in the running, but I think other cities have advantages Denver does not. Remember, it’s not just tax advantages Amazon’s after; they want more visibility and attention than what they’re getting in Seattle. Doesn’t make sense to make from Seattle, a somewhat isolated metropolis in the Pacific NW to move to Denver, a somewhat isolated metropolis of about the same size at the edge of the Rockies. In fact, Seattle’s a better location than Denver for tech most likely. You leave Seattle to put yourself on a bigger map. You also move to have more access to financial and political nerve centers. Denver’s not it. Detroit is not it. Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Boston, SF, New York, and Washington? Yep, they’re it.
The Rust Belt city with the best chance is Pittsburgh. It’s a city that punches above its weight in terms of tech and also finance. It’s also geographically situated in relative proximity to major cities like New York, Chicago, Phila, and DC. I don’t think Pittsburgh will get it but if an old Rust Belt town does, the Burgh is the most likely and I don’t think others are even close.
No. No worse than Chicago. But no better either. Compared to Seattle though it gets cold. And winter activities are just not as appealing in either locale as they are in Denver.
And Dewey Finn, I think Bezos wants more visibility and attention for Amazon. He wants the company to be transformative as much as profitable and valuable. Setting up in Denver transforms little. In Detroit or Chicago even? Much more so.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area seems like a front-runner to me now that I think about it. Austin may be good too. Texas is growing like gangbusters and can provide anything a very large company would want including unlimited land and affordable housing. I was amazed when Toyota USA decided to relocate near my parent’s house north of Dallas. They built giant subdivisions and three brand new elementary schools within walking distance. It was spooky walking through entire neighborhoods that no one lived in yet but they are thriving communities now.
Austin has Whole Foods headquarters but it doesn’t have the DFW airport and can be quite congested. Houston is out because of hurricanes (it will take years at least to recover from Hurricane Harvey). Dallas-Fort Worth is a gigantic metropolis these days but it is still affordable and has everything that any other major city can give at a lower price.
Boston is right out. I live here and work in IT logistics. The work force is too expensive and corporate headquarters keeps trying to shut us down because of that, The only reason they can’t is because we have a seasoned workforce that is the best at what we do. It is also too far in the northeast. Amazon doesn’t need two far north locations on both coasts. It is better to aim for the center of the country.
Texas is out until they elect a state government that quits trying to pass stupid social conservative shit like bathroom bills and severe abortion restrictions. Amazon doesn’t want to be the face of a boycott.
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Well, here’s what the NYT says about those other choices:
Houston loses out because it doesn’t have the “right” labor pool (large numbers of tech workers).
SF and New York lose out because of their high cost of living, especially housing.
Dallas and Atlanta lose out because they have poor public transit and long commute times, and Amazon specifically stated that good transit was a requirement.
Washington was one of the Times’s finalists, but they think Amazon won’t be able to find land in the D.C. area that meets their requirements.
I grew up in the northwest when the only company there that anybody had heard of was Boeing. Since then, it seems to have been an amazing incubator; Microsoft, Starbucks, REI, Nordstrom, and smaller retailers like Eddie Bauer and Sur La Table. Maybe I’m just attuned to it because I’m from there, but they must be doing something right in terms of growing businesses. I’m surprised that companies that found their success there want to leave. When Boeing moved its HQ to Chicago they said they wanted to be more centrally located for better access to partners, finance, etc. I thought “if only there was some technology that could allow people to travel to distant cities cheaply and conveniently”.
I think Boston could work. It certainly has the educated workforce they’d be looking for. They have a few divisions, like robotics, already in the area. And while Boston has lots of high technology companies already, they’re all relatively small operations; there isn’t one flagship tech company associated with the city.
I don’t think the tech workers necessarily have to be in Houston, though. They could be from Austin, San Antonio, or DFW, or elsewhere in Texas. What a company like Amazon would want is the ability to hire people regionally. If Amazon recruiters see someone they like in Austin, San Antonio, or even Dallas, that’s fine because they can drive in and spend a night for an interview or even go early in the AM and drive out in the late afternoon in some cases. But that’s not possible in Seattle. Save Portland, there’s pretty much no major city around Seattle for 1000 miles.
All of that being said, I tend to agree with a previous poster that the recent hurricane might make Amazon and others think long and hard about moving there. The cleanup itself isn’t the problem – in economies boom during recovery efforts. But it’s the thought of disruption that might scare Bezos away from Houston. Why Houston when you have Dallas or even Austin further up the road and away from hazard?
As far as the lack of transit, I don’t think that is going to be a deal-breaker. They can ask cities to develop a more robust transit system by adding to an already-existing infrastructure. I rarely ever see businesses talking about public transit when they talk of bringing new facilities to an area. Sure, it’s an added bonus, but in the regressive mindset of most corporations, public infrastructure is just more stuff that businesses get taxed for, so while they’d love to have it if it’s already available, they’re not going to make a decision based on that factor. What matters is whether or not people can get to and from places with relative ease.
DFW is the epitome of urban sprawl but it has a very good network of roads and highways that keep traffic moving for the most part. It also has major interstates that can send traffic in all directions. It has a major international airport that has thousands of international passengers daily, as well as tens of thousands of domestic passengers. DFW also has what companies really want, which is a local business culture that puts the interests of businesses above pretty much everything else.
Other cities may still be in the running though. Northern Virginia might actually be a dark horse favorite in some respects. Virginia is politically moderate and generally regarded as being favorable to businesses and high-income earners. I agree with whoever said that Northern VA real estate is getting very pricey, which might be a problem. And incomes are also pretty high as well, which might be another problem. But they would have access to a rich, talented labor pool and one that is very diverse. It’s not just tech workers that HQ needs; they need financial analysts, marketing specialists, PR/media reps, lawyers, etc. This is where the advantages tilt away from cities like DFW and Atlanta and toward Boston, DC, New York, and SF.
#1 not to be too much of an ass, but I really don’t appreciate you tossing a wikipedia link at me as if I don’t know what’s going on in my own backyard, and
#2 the link Telemark posted said Amazon’s requirement is “First, Amazon asks for metropolitan areas with more than one million people.”
nothing about them having to be in the City of Detroit proper. if they’re looking to set in a place with a lot of business development there’s plenty of places in the metro area to look at. want an area where there’s a lot of business-friendly development and workers with tech skills? try Novi. want open land for a large campus? could go with Romulus, which puts you right near the airport.
unfortunately those places are pretty dense and “full” with a high cost of living.
For the record, these are the criteria Amazon said were the deciding factors that would go into their decision:
Capital and Operating costs (Business Friendliness)
Labor Force (Educated Population)
Community and Quality of Life
Logistics (Transportation)
Strong University System
To even qualify for consideration, the metro area must have at least 1,000,000 people and be within 45 minutes of a major airport. There are only 28 Metro areas (one is Seattle) that meet the basic criteria.
The website Quartz did an analysis based on hard data and Salt Lake City and Denver came in at the top. Detroit was dead last.
Why do they need a strong university system for a logistics/storage/transport business ?
Does UPS or FedEx have such a requirement ?
The giant techs, Sap, Oracle, Microsoft, Google etc. all need a steady supply of graduates, but they seem to manage recruiting them from all over America, and even outside, not just from where they are based.
It’s a whole nuther HQ, not a distribution center. They’ll need a steady supply of engineers, managers, and general staff. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to recruit locally rather than nationally. Silicon Valley and Seattle are pretty much tapped out for local graduates.
And it’s not just a logistics/storage/transport company. It’s a lot more than that. Amazon Web Services is a growing part of the business, they need programmers and even psychologists (they do a lot to manipulate the website visitor to buy stuff) to build out the Amazon.com website and then there’s the whole business of creating original movies and television shows.
BTW, here is an article and video talking about how automation is used in the distribution warehouses and how this is impacting the employment of people.
I’m sure Amazon executives don’t want their employees to worry about being assaulted, shot, stabbed, etc. on a daily basis. Would be bad for worker retention and result in high turnover. Bad for business.
Detroit may be on the top ten for crime rates, but it has one of the safest downtowns. It’s the neighborhoods; higher-than-average unemployment and lower-than-necessary social services does that. Also, once you leave the city proper, the metro area is no worse than any other part of the country. Just FYI.
Also, the more I think about it, the more I hope (as a Michigander) this doesn’t come to Michigan, and would be stunned if it actually did. Our right-wing legislators and governor have let our roads crumble, water become polluted, schools fail, public transportation options die, and the only thing they’ve got to show for it is low tax rates for businesses. Frankly, with the way we’ve let our infrastructure crumble and basic services go down the tubes in favor of a “business-friendly” right-wing utopia, I would be gobsmacked if a company like Amazon even glances in our direction.
Personally I think Salt Lake City is their best choice. Young, tech savvy population, many large universities in the area, relatively mild winters, cross roads to the west, low cost of living and many other great advantages.
He also owns the Washington Post, so that may be one reason he bought the house in DC. Also, at his level of wealth, dropping $23 million on a house really means very little. As a percentage of his net worth, it’s about the same as a person with a one million dollar net worth spending $300 on a fancy dinner.