Amazon HQ2 thread

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Parkway

Very true, my point was only that they are different from other companies in .com boom 2.0 like Snap and Twitter that haven't figured out how to make money at all.

Yeah, unless they expand their business model and features, I don't see how either of these can survive in the long run. Twitter's stock price more or less had a huge correction as it was way overvalued. Was once about $40 billion and now around $12 billion.

[bnk]

https://chicago.curbed.com/2017/10/2...amazon-hq2-bid

Chicago officially announces 10-site bid for Amazon’s ‘HQ2’ headquarters
From the Loop to the suburbs, Chicago’s official bid offers the tech giant a wide variety of options

by Jay Koziarz Oct 23, 2017, 11:05am CDT




previous conceptual rendering showing a block-sized supertall tower replacing Chicago’s post modern Thompson Center


City center, 1,700-foot supertall tower by AS+GG.


Lincoln yards
...


Fulton Market

...


The river district

...

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by bnk

Since as far as Canada and North America is concerned Toronto seemed to meet the most check lists. But from this new article they seem to be bowing out as of just a few mins ago.

Public officials in San Jose and Toronto have also said they won’t be participating in the race to offer incentives to Amazon, with a Toronto spokesman calling it a competitive bribery.

I give them balls for standing up to Amazon though.

I wouldn't conclude that it's a sign that Toronto has bowed out. Toronto knows it doesn't have to offer cash to lure companies. It's tech giants that are coming knocking on its door of late. Alphabet just won a bid put out by the City of Toronto to build the world's first tech community from the ground on up. It's a deal to implement advances in technology right into the infrastructure of a city and test other things like self driving vehicles, etc. This 'Google Island' is one of many massive tech investments in the Toronto area.

There was a refreshing article in the Toronto Star that made me think how far the city has come in the last 20 years. Toronto has grown from self doubting and insecure to boundlessly optimistic and confident. Toronto tech will continue to boom with or without Amazon, and they know it.

There’s no begging in Toronto’s Amazon bid

Stonecrest, Ga. promised to create a whole new city, name it after Amazon, and install the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, as mayor-for-life. Chula Vista, Calif., offered $400 million in tax incentives. Newark, N.J., upped the grasping bribery stakes to $7 billion. What incentives were we willing to offer? None.

Well, not none, exactly. The city’s bid offered the incentive of locating in Toronto: an amazing city to live in, and an amazing place to do business. It explains what we are, why we’re attractive, and why anyone would be foolish to overlook us. Amazon would be lucky to locate here. And that ought to be incentive enough. ....in considering the prospect of inviting a new global tech giant to the city, we became aware of our own attractiveness. And felt some confidence in ourselves, with or without them.

The submission reads like a manifesto of civic self confidence: “From safety, crime, healthcare, and education, to housing, culture, and economic as well as geophysical stability, the Toronto Region leads North America on every important quality of life metric,” it says in one place. “Ontario was the first province in Canada to legalize same-sex marriage in 2003. We remain signatories to the Paris Climate agreement. We believe in — and enforce — gun control. Abortion is in no danger of being repealed, and birth control is accessible. We have universal healthcare and robust public schools,” it goes on. “We are also fun,” it also says, maybe protesting too much. “We welcome more new immigrants each year than New York, L.A., and Chicago combined. We speak over 180 languages and dialects.”

It’s great that we put all this stuff down to entice a business to locate here. It’s a document aimed at Amazon, but it’s there ready to send out to virtually any other company looking to see what we offer. Let Amazon decide whatever it wants. We’ll be fine either way.

Full article: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...id-keenan.html

[GlassCity]

Vancouver's said it won't be releasing its bid publicly, and I don't expect us to get the HQ anyway, but I'd love to see the potential sites they've identified just for fun.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by JManc

Yeah, unless they expand their business model and features, I don't see how either of these can survive in the long run. Twitter's stock price more or less had a huge correction as it was way overvalued. Was once about $40 billion and now around $12 billion.

Twitter has been egregiously mismanaged, most currently by a CEO splitting his time between Twitter and Square which is a big success. It actually shouldn't be that hard for Twitter to make money and numerous articles suggesting ways to do it have appeared in the financial press. The service iself seems rather firmly engrained into the national media landscape, especially with a President who can't stop using it (and maybe that's the answer: Trump will buy it!)

One can blame the volatility in the stock price on dashed hopes that the company would be acquired at a hefty premium . . . and it probably should have been: More mismanagement.

As for Snap, one way or another Facebook/Instagram is pobably going to put them out of business (unless they too are lucky enough to be acquired).

Note: The best thing about Twitter and the reason I will be verklempt if it goes belly up is the "Market on Market" grocery store on its ground floor. Lots of great gourmet food products at prices targetted at overpaid 20-somethings but they carry certain south Asian specialties I know of nowhere else to find (stereotypical I know, but yeah--a lot of South Asians work at Twitter). And they carry Tartine bread (the rustic loaf at $9.99 per is to die for).

[OhioGuy]

Chicago’s Amazon bid includes $2.25 billion incentive package
Fran Spielman | 10/23/2017, 12:02pm | Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago area’s bid for Amazon’s second North American headquarters includes $2.25 billion worth of incentives — and even more if the company chooses the Thompson Center or the old Michael Reese Hospital site where the city and state could provide free land.

The incentive package includes:

- Roughly $1.4 billion in state EDGE tax credits. The newly-revised program provides a 50 percent tax break for every job they create in Illinois.

- $60 million in property tax breaks through the city and county programs known as Class 7B and 7C.

- $450 million in site-specific infrastructure improvements that would come from the Illinois Department of Transportation, the Chicago Department of Transportation, the CTA and other agencies.

- $250 million worth of investments in education, workforce development and “Neighborhood Opportunity Funds” to make certain that all Chicagoans can qualify for the 50,000 high-end Amazon jobs and that businesses that spring up or move here to support Amazon locate in Chicago neighborhoods.

- Free land worth $100 million, if Amazon chooses to build its second headquarters at the old Michael Reese Hospital site purchased by former Mayor Richard M. Daley as the site for an Olympics Chicago didn’t get. If Amazon chooses either to re-purpose or demolish and rebuild the Thompson Center that the state has been trying desperately to sell, the free land would be worth even more money.

The incentive package pales by comparison to the $9 billion that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie offered in hopes of luring Amazon to Newark.

But sources close to the negotiations view the package as a good-faith effort to lure the motherlode of all economic development projects and a far cry from the “corporate welfare” so many critics and gubernatorial candidates have decried.

[dc_denizen]

the value of incentives is definitely going to be secondary to the human capital, networking, and infrastructural assets of the chosen city. These might be worth $10s of billions, compared to 2-5$ billion in incentives.

Places like Boston, Austin (and Seattle, SF etc), maybe LA, have a proven pipeline to create, fund, and commercialize new technologies and companies. Amazon (and any other tech company) will need this ecosystem to thrive. Toronto, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and many other places don't have that capacity. even Chicago is debatable. (Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta are more about old-school corporate headquarters; Philadelphia is poorly run and thrives off of the same media/finance complex as NYC; Toronto, produces little in the way of new technology companies given its size and the amount of immigrants)

Raw numbers of university graduates, etc don't give the story. nor do abstract arguments about international immigration (there is a difference between an immigrant that moved to a given city to, say, drive a taxi, or to buy a condo to park money as a safe haven, and an immigrant coming to deploy their skills in highly challenging and cognitive scientific, computing, and engineering tasks in a US company).

Philly has plenty university students, but are Villanova and Haverford really producing the right kind of graduates? Are Miami or Toronto bringing in the right kind of immigrants?

I would expect Amazon to be thinking a lot about this specific question, and less about the value of incentives.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

are Villanova and Haverford really producing the right kind of graduates?

Hey there! My college French instructor went to Haverford and he was a nice guy: He passed me. So lay off of Haverford.

[mhays]

True, overall immigrant stats aren't the point. But neither are any stats about the past. The bigger point is that the world's talent can easily move there after they're recruited.

That contrasts with HQ1 where immigrants and visa holders are a large part of the workforce but in smaller numbers than they'd like, and possibly even smaller numbers going forward.

Toronto has a great case in my opinion, and that's the biggest reason. Health care is another.

[Jonesy55]

The savings on employer healthcare costs would seem to be a big plus for Toronto. Does Canada have higher rates of employer payroll tax type costs equivalent to Fica to reduce that advantage though?

As has been said, I very much doubt Amazon would look at just costs/incentives, the ability to get the best human capital will no doubt be #1 priority but the costs /incentives might well make the difference between a few cities that all score well on the first point.

[dc_denizen]

But it’s unclear to me whether the goal is to find a location with existing advantages and infrastructure, or to build this from scratch. If the latter, obviously many places have a good case.

[Pedestrian]

^^Wouldn't it be fun to have the ACTUAL check list of considerations off which the Amazon executive suite is working?

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

But it’s unclear to me whether the goal is to find a location with existing advantages and infrastructure, or to build this from scratch. If the latter, obviously many places have a good case.

I can think of only 2 good reasons for doing this in the first place:

1. Because Bezos thinks between Amazon and Microsoft, the potential "advantages and infrastructure" (including human capital) of Seattle is pretty fully exploited

2. He thinks there would be business advantages to having a separate HQ as far removed from Seattle as possible but as close to places far removed from Seattle where Amazon does business as possible.

The first argues for a place with existing resources in terms of people with the right skills looking for work and the other necessary "infrastructure", and the second argues for someplace certainly east of the Mississippi and probably near the east coast of the US or Canada. Actually, Toronto seems a pretty good fit (or perhaps Montreal because of the presence of McGill U.). The only qualm would be whether being outside the US would matter in some way (I have no idea how much business Amazon does in Canada itself). Other places that seem to me like they fit well: Pittsburgh (Carnegie Mellon and a growing tech profile), Baltimore (Johns Hopkins, U. of MD), Research Triangle of NC (Raleigh/Durhan/Chapel Hill), Atlanta (Emory), several places in Florida including Miami, Tampa, Tallahassee and even little Gainesville (with the giant U. of FL).

[Obadno]

Oh man the amount of money that will be wasted on these bids.

I haven't seen boondoggles like this outside of professional stadium hostage negotiations.

Way to go Amazon.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Toronto, produces little in the way of new technology companies given its size and the amount of immigrants)

And Japan didn't have any significant auto brands in 1970. Things change.

Toronto has historically produced lots of tech talent but they headed to Silicon Valley. Toronto based tech firms (ATI) almost always got swallowed up by larger rivals from Silicon Valley. The ones that managed to stay independent either went belly up (Nortel) or had to completely re-invent themselves (Blackberry). Today a lot of that Canadian talent in Silicon Valley is heading home with money and experience under their belts. Canadian tech grads who used to head to Silicon Valley en masse are staying in Canada to launch their companies.

Put it all together and the Toronto Region added more technology jobs last year than any other region and moved up to 4th in north America (212,500) for number of tech jobs narrowly behind New York (246,180) and Washington (243,360). So more than Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, Vancouver, Montreal, etc.

Link: http://dailyhive.com/toronto/cbre-re...ch-market-2017
http://www.hrmonline.ca/hr-news/recr...us-228615.aspx

To an outsiders perspective it may look like the Toronto region doesn't produce a lot of tech. Closer examination shows that it does. It's already 4th and if it continues growing as it has, should be in 2nd by 2020. And btw, Toronto-Waterloo does have a strong tech eco-system.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by isaidso

And Japan didn't have any significant auto brands in 1970.

Sorry to get off topic, but this is way off. Toyota, Nissan (Datsun) and Honda were already selling halfway decent amounts of cars in the US in 1970. Especially Toyota.

[isaidso]

^^ Ok, but the point stands.

Originally Posted by GlassCity

Vancouver's said it won't be releasing its bid publicly, and I don't expect us to get the HQ anyway, but I'd love to see the potential sites they've identified just for fun.

Geography is Vancouver's biggest drawback. Besides, Amazon would likely hoover up a big chunk of the city's talent that would otherwise go to Vancouver based start ups. Vancouver might get more Amazon employees out of this process though. They likely know that there's alot of talent 90 minutes north of them.

Aren't they trying to develop that water front area directly west of Granville Island for tech companies?

[BrownTown]

Is Amazon really a, "tech" company in the usual sense of the word? I generally consider them mostly a logistics company and their closest analog to be WallMart. What percent of jobs at Amazon's HQ are really tech related and what are just general managerial, accounting, lawyers etc. I'd expect the VAST majority of jobs to be similar to what you would find at any other corporate HQ and very similar to what you would find at WallMart HQ for instance. I'm not sure it really makes sense to expect this to need to go to a place with a huge tech workforce.

Honestly, I feel like it's Atlanta's to lose although plenty of other cities definitely have a shot. I don't see a chance in hell of NYC, Newark or Chicago getting it though all too expensive, it's gotta be a sunbelt city or Canada.

[Yuri]

Loved the pics from Chicago's bid. Rooting for them.

Said that, it's quite pathetic cities fighting that way to have the honour to be chosen.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

Is Amazon really a, "tech" company in the usual sense of the word? I generally consider them mostly a logistics company and their closest analog to be WallMart. What percent of jobs at Amazon's HQ are really tech related and what are just general managerial, accounting, lawyers etc. I'd expect the VAST majority of jobs to be similar to what you would find at any other corporate HQ and very similar to what you would find at WallMart HQ for instance. I'm not sure it really makes sense to expect this to need to go to a place with a huge tech workforce.

Honestly, I feel like it's Atlanta's to lose although plenty of other cities definitely have a shot. I don't see a chance in hell of NYC, Newark or Chicago getting it though all too expensive, it's gotta be a sunbelt city or Canada.

They're like Google; they have their fingers in everything. Amazon Web Services, Prime Music/ Video, Tablets, Echo as well as a bunch of other crap. Most of their money actually comes from AWS.