It looks like Chicago is preparing to make a bid. I wonder if they’re preparing to provide bulletproof vests for all the employees.
Personally I think Amazon needs to stage a cage match between Mike Duggan and Rahm Emanuel and then move somewhere that isn’t one of the murder capitals of the US.
The Chicago murder jokes are getting tired. There are plenty of cities with a higher per capita murder rate, most of that despicable crime in Chicago is in areas far far away from any area they’d be considering. I just walked through the Loop at midnight tonight to catch the red line. My biggest problem was deciding which podcast to listen to.
There are at least two really good public universities within 2.5 hours of downtown Detroit, and several decent ones. As for culture Detroit has plenty of that. The Detroit metropolitan area is a reasonably healthy one in terms of per capita income, the problem is that the city is miserable. (Of course moving to one of the suburbs might not really help regenerate the city either).
C’mon people. Read up on what’s going on here. Amazon is not leaving Seattle. This is a duplicate HQ. It also not a Distribution Center. It’s an office building/campus. R&D. Legal. Tech services. Video production. “Labor costs” are a non factor once the building is completed.
Those saying DC, NY, Boston, etc. aren’t thinking about the absolute gridlock in traffic in those cities and the lack of space to build a huge campus. It doesn’t matter where Amazon builds, the investment banks will come to them. Hell, they probably already have big satellite offices in San Francisco and Seattle.
And BTW, Denver is nothing like SLC. It is four times as big, has good transport with light rail reaching in all directions, including a new line from the airport to downtown. It also is a destination for travelling Broadway shows (Hamilton will be there next year on it’s first national tour) in it’s huge performing arts center. SLC has pro basketball and soccer, while Denver has those plus football, baseball, hockey and is a national hub for lacrosse and rugby. SLC is strictly minor league when it comes to culture.
A couple of things I forgot. The East coast is littered with distribution centers, which are becoming more and more robotisized and more and more products are being shipped directly by the manufacturer.
Re: Denver. The Denver/Aurora metropolitan area, while full of very nice areas, also has the poorest parts of the state as well. A few years back, Boulder/Longmont was stripped from metro Denver and made it’s own metro area, along with it’s great schools, full employment, and wealthy population. Add those back in, and they’re only 30 minutes away, and Denver looks even better.
I’m not saying Orlando is a potential landing spot for Amazon. I’m saying Atlanta isn’t because it doesn’t even have as many potential employees as (relatively) tiny Orlando.
Though for the record, UCF is now harder to get into than FSU, with a slightly higher median SAT score and slightly lower high school GPA (when I went there, it was exactly what you describe, with the caveat that I didn’t want to go to UF or FSU because I’m brown and they’re in hillbilly country).
Maybe Projammer is trying to feel better about living near Little Rock, i.e. “Most Dangerous City in America” 
Anyway, I was amused to see Crain’s Chicago Business calling the Amazon deal “Chicago’s to lose”. They’ll take a stab at it and have some good stuff to offer but I can’t believe anyone is seriously that optimistic about the chances.
Here’s the first detailed Chicago proposal:
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My best bet is Toronto - Amazon already has a dev center there, there’s great talent, good nearby universities, decent transit. Cost of living is high, but not NY/SF high. But its best characteristic is that it’s not in the US. For a company that hires a lot of foreign talent in a time when US immigration policy is turning regressive, having an out-of-country (but nearby!) headquarters would be a huge plus.
Vancouver has a climate similar to Seattle and also has the advantages of being in Canada. But is it too close to Seattle?
Does the relative instability of the Canadian Dollar have an effect and work against Toronto? At the salaries that these employees would command, a drop in the Loonie could really hurt.
Bloomberg reported that Boston is the front runner for the new headquarters, although Amazon denies it. Which makes sense; why make a decision so quickly when the whole point was to see what the different cities offer.
Why not? It meets every stated criterion of Amazon’s. There are also two great, central, undeveloped locations just off the top of my head that would be perfect for a campus of the size necessary–dalej42 posted a link to a proposal for one (the Finkl & Sons site), and there’s also a big, weedy lot on Roosevelt along the river that would be quite nice as well. Also, the city has a long, rich history of giving sweetheart deals to companies who agree to plop HQs downtown.
I’ve thought of that. Even if they’ve made up their mind already, it’s in their interest to make it look like a competition to get the best deal they can.
The best reason is because Amazon obviously wants some cutthroat bidding war with buckets and buckets of incentives (free land, tax breaks until the end of time, etc) that Chicago can’t afford. Especially if they have to develop transit infrastructure on top of it all.
I think Chicago would be a great location but, unfortunately, it’s not a uniquely qualified location and I don’t think they can sweeten the pot over other qualified locations.
I can practically guarantee that Emanuel is, as I’m typing this, frantically filling buckets with incentives to send Bezos’s way. It’s almost immaterial (to them, anyway) if the city can afford the deal; Emanuel is going to try to make it, and the aldermen will rubber stamp it if it gets that far.
It’ll never happen of course but I kind of hope some of these cities balk at the shameless request for incentives from a company with a market cap of something like 474 billion and 21 billion in cash on hand. Plus a CEO who is among the richest three or four people in the world.
The transit infrastructure is no problem. The CTA had a huge funding project approved right at the end of the Obama administration.
Biggest problem with Chicago is that it is the most corrupt city in America which I doubt Amazon wants to get involved with.
As a native Midwesterner, I would love to see Ammy choose Detroit. Eventually the area will turn the corner - the location is too central for it not to - and the early bird companies will get the cheap land/tax incentives worm. Yes, there are valid concerns about attracting talented people to Detroit, but you have two huge, well-regarded state universities in the area and lots of smaller ones in or near the Detroit area. Graduates need jobs and many Michigan natives would be amenable to remaining there
Transportation systems exist, but probably need refurbishing and modernizing and thought would have to be given to the different transportation needs of Amazon from those of the automotive industry. Great Lakes shipping which was critical to automotive, for exampke, wouldn’t mean as much to Amazon, but the location of Detroit adjacent to Canada and situated on the international shipping lanes provided by the St Lawrence would no doubt be useful.
There are still favorable areas to live around Detroit, but Ammy would probably have to take an active part in developing additional areas and ensuring adequate city services and schools.
In sum, I would like to see it happen and it is doable because of low land cost, but I suspect they won’t want to put forth that type of effort and will want a situation that is much more plug-and-play than Detroit would be.