Amazon seeks a new Headquarters

[Mr Saturn64 742]

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-hq2-top-cities-according-to-moodys-data-2017-10

Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world, and is looking for a second headquarters.  The quest for this "HQ2" has been a call to action for cities across North America all competing to get it.  Just about every city in the United States has a plan, some more realistic than others.  They're on a budget of $5 billion, want 50,000 square feet of office space, and want to be in an area that has major colleges/universities, and is good with transportation.  Most have speculated that it will be on the East Coast, as the existing HQ in in Seattle.

I have nothing but pure speculation, but it seems to me that the top contenders are: (in alphabetical order), Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, New York/North Jersey, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Washington.

[Odainsaker 2,133]

A $5 billion direct corporate investment in a single city is nothing to scoff at, nor is 50,000 new office jobs.  The potential 8 million square feet of office campus area is of a scale to match the combined Twin Towers of the former World Trade Center in Manhattan.  Just the amount of activity and money moving through a city from this project would be stunningly transformative for any city's economy, even if the local incentive package itself has to reach $5 billion, and Amazon knows it.  Some cities and states have offered to bankroll Amazon's full $5 billion cost or promised Amazon up to $7 billion in tax breaks, expecting that the additional indirect benefits and the movement of capital are more important than the direct costs.

After initially joining in the mad bidding war, my home city of San Antonio pulled out of the race two days ago and did not submit a bid application.  Officially, our city leaders rightfully decried the absurd escalation of outlandish incentives that are being desperately pitched to Amazon.  Realistically, we actually never had much of a chance given the priorities Amazon set forth, for our transportation systems are pathetic, our educational attainment levels are even worse, poverty is endemic, and our parochial outlook stands in sharp contrast to the cutting-edge image tech companies like to present.  Knowing our shortcomings from the outset, San Antonio boosters had hoped to instead promote qualities Amazon did not specifically ask for:  cheap cost-of-living, cheap labor, cheap land, cheap energy, low taxes, and low regulation.  That might have worked if we had a smidgen of the infrastructure, skillsets, and workforce Amazon was seeking, but we currently lag too far behind in these areas to warrant any close consideration when competing against other major U.S. cities.

Perhaps this outcome is just as well, for it has forced our city leaders to openly acknowledge these shortcomings, and to admit how foolishly miserly decisions to not seriously invest in transportation and education in the past have now cost us very real opportunities today.  We should already have had our downtown streetcar, intraurban light rail, and interurban commuter rail projects running, but, instead, the anti-rail folks have amended our city charter to effectively block rail and are now trying to do the same at the state legislature.  When suggestions surfaced at the state level in 2011 to push the University of Texas at San Antonio into a nationally ranked Tier 1 research university, we should not have instead attacked the perceived economic value of higher education or decried the godlessness of liberal curriculums.  When AT&T moved its corporate headquarters from San Antonio to Dallas in 2008 citing the poor quality and lack of connections of our international airport, and then Toyota cited the same issue in 2014 when they too opted for Dallas over the Texas city that actually hosts their manufacturing and assembling plant, we should have looked more carefully at improving our airport.  Woulda, shoulda, coulda...  No matter how cheap the bulk electricity here is, Amazon was never going to locate a second headquarters to someplace that can only barely scrap together an occasional direct flight back to Seattle on a minor airline.

Still, I would have recommended the city bid anyway with a fair, modest package accounting for our limited means.  Let Amazon be the one to turn it down.  After all, Amazon's is by their own admission a transformative project, and if they really and honestly wanted to live up to promoted ideals about socially progressive urban transformation, perhaps they should pick a city where they would indeed radically transform the local trajectory.  Philadelphia's The Inquirer offered this article:  "What scrappy Camden offers Amazon others can't:  A chance to lift up an entire city."  Nah, my money is on Boston or New York.

Meanwhile, Toyota and Mazda have formed a joint-venture to construct a new $1.6 billion, 4,000-job Corolla manufacturing plant in the U.S. and are seeking $1 billion in location incentives.  San Antonio, with its currently successful Toyota Tacoma and Tundra plant, can strongly and realistically compete for this and the potential 20,000 indirect related jobs if it can get willing cooperation from the state in forming an attractive package.  Reportedly, Toyota had even already bought the required land in anticipation of a second plant here 12 years ago.  I fear, however, that foolishness at the state and national levels will undercut our chances, for the state legislature embarked on a bathroom-gender bill fiasco that clouded perceptions of the state's business climate as the legislators of Ted Cruz Land battled to see who could claim to be the most conservative.  It's the sort of culture war foolishness that I think may scare away Amazon from headquartering in Austin or Dallas, even though Amazon bought up Austin's Whole Foods chain and has clustered one of its highest concentration of U.S. facilities outside Seattle in the Dallas area.

 

[Odainsaker 2,133]

A minor update:

It was announced last week that the Texas Legislature's House Speaker Joe Straus of San Antonio would not seek re-election in 2018.  While he is a Republican speaker of a Republican-controlled legislature in a Republican state, many have seen Straus as a relatively moderate hand holding back some of the more extreme proposals of his party.  Particularly, he personally blockaded Texas's proposed "bathroom bill," vowing never to let it see daylight in the Texas House now matter how many times the governor and lieutenant governor forced special sessions demanding its passage.

For those unfamiliar with "bathroom bills" in the U.S., as issues of transgender and gender identity brought before courts and local governments force public schools and businesses to devise accommodations to prevent discrimination, counter activists have decided to override these courts and local governments by proposing state laws and constitutional changes that either designate which restrooms people can use or bar lawsuits for failure to accommodate for gender identity.  What may look reasonable on paper, however, has the consequence of forcing transvestite and transgender teenagers, who are among the most likely to be bullied into suicide, into making open choices that outright endanger their safety.  We are told this minor sacrifice is necessary because pedophiles and rapists might use cross-dressing to infiltrate women's restrooms and commit crimes, though no such cross-dressing crime has been documented.  Although no crime has actually occurred to even justify the lawmaking hysteria, what we got was the public forced to decide from images of the sleaziest drag queens or the burliest of women what restrooms they should be allowed to use based on hackneyed notions of what constitutes the normative baseline for femininity.  Worse, vigilante bullies even took it upon themselves to become "bathroom police," assaulting and harassing innocent women in front of public women's restrooms because they thought those women did not meet their visual standards for womanhood.  ISIS and Boko Haram would be so proud.

North Carolina was the first U.S. state to enact a "bathroom bill" in response to a lawsuit in one of its school districts, but, as the realization of the full implications of the law set in, the public blowback in outrage and national boycotts against the state and its cities forced the state government to quickly repeal it.  However, the issue has now been taken up as a red meat conservative cause in a culture war spreading across other states, including Texas, where the lieutenant governor made it a personal crusade to fire up the party base, and calling for repeated special legislative sessions until it fully passed.  While it passed in the Texas Senate, Speaker Straus refused to ever allow it consideration in the House, arguing with the powerful backing of the business community that a backlash like that seen in North Carolina would damage the state's economy.  The crazies were cowed this summer, and gave up their promise to endless special sessions.

Now that has all changed.  With Straus leaving and the moderates center thrown into disarray, the move is afoot to install a speaker more loyal and complaint to the party and who will pass the party's pet legislation.  Moreover, at the national level we have a president who relishes in red meat culture wars to bolster the political base.  Texas's "bathroom bill" may likely revive and be passed in the next legislative session, unleashing again another national firestorm and drawing boycotts aimed against Texas and its businesses.

This would likely all play out in backdrop just as Amazon is choosing and building its new second headquarters.  If a city in Texas is chosen for the location, Amazon and its tech yuppies would be facing the one most devastating word that they cannot afford to allow be uttered near its type of business:  "boycott."  Worse, it would be coming from activist millennial consumers trying to pressure Amazon executives to convince their new Texas legislative friends to turn against both the zealot bullies in their party and the one in the White House.  Amazon Tower in Times Square in Manhattan suddenly sounds so much more appealing.  House Speaker Joe Straus's retirement arguably ended the seemingly strong prospects of Austin or Dallas getting Amazon's headquarters.

Amusingly, before Amazon's submission deadline Denver and Austin were the pundit favorites.  Now, it's Washington, D.C., and New York City.

  Edited November 3, 2017 by Odainsaker  
How did this end up a babbling diatribe again?!

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Why is Denver no longer favored?

[Odainsaker 2,133]

A full year later, Amazon has announced the official results...

On ‎11‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 12:22 AM, Odainsaker said:

...it's Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Woah!  Okay, I didn't think back then that the "and" in that blurb was going to need any special emphasis.  Seems they decided no one city could meet all their specifications, and two cities broadens the horizons of opportunity.  Nashville, Tennessee, got a consolation prize operations center.  Critics suggest 236 other cities got played in order to sweeten the competitive bids of the pre-selected favorites, and two winners splitting the HQ2 means a double batch of secret generous incentives.  Cynics might argue that for all the criteria talk of available transportation, workforce education, or progressive lifestyles, the ultimately criteria had always been proximity to political and corporate power.

My own city of San Antonio pointedly stayed out of the fray, and my own state of Texas with two seemingly strong finalist candidate cities was completely shut out.  San Antonio also sadly didn't get the joint Toyota-Mazda plant which I had suggested was the more realistic option, but, perhaps even more sadly, Ted Cruz won his re-election just last week.  Predictably squandered opportunities.