Amazon HQ2

[Cadi40]

11 hours ago, ah59396 said:

Respectfully, you've spent the last 19 pages of this thread telling us all that you think Charlotte will land HQ2, for a multitude of reasons.  Why the sudden change?

I understand, I have been pretty Bi-Polar with this topic but I realized Charlotte doesn't need to land HQ2 To continue to grow at the rate this is.

[kermit]

5 hours ago, Cadi40 said:

I understand, I have been pretty Bi-Polar with this topic but I realized Charlotte doesn't need to land HQ2 To continue to grow at the rate this is.

Yea, its certainly true that not all growth is good, but I am kinda falbbergasted that some of us have managed to sourgrapes ourselves into thinking that landing Amazon would be a bad thing. IMO the biggest risk we face is to continue our current mode of growth which mostly attracts low-wage jobs.

Sure Amazon has the potential to disrupt housing markets and stress our infrastructure, but those impacts would be the city's fault, not Amazon's. Would could easily accommodate  50,000 very highly paid new arrivals by radically restructuring our zoning and going all in on transit expansion*. By keeping housing costs (relatively) low and creating a huge new wad of professional jobs, the city would become even more attractive to highly-skilled folks (and even easier to serve with transit). -- thus attracting  more HQs (and skilled people) in the future.  The returns on Amazon's workers would dwarf any other conceivable HQ opportunity since it would require a whole new group of producer services spillovers than finance or energy businesses. 

That we will keep growing without Amazon is certainly true, but this will result in adding more people to the metro who want more cheap (e.g. sprawling) housing and who will need to drive to work (meaning more traffic) and who consume lots of resources (e.g. school capacity and road space) while adding little to the tax base.

*Yes, I understand rezoning everything inside NC 4 for TOD is politically unlikely and it would would result in lots more 'beiging (beijing?) apartments.' While such a change would be problematic, we need to keep in mind that Charlotte can easily accommodate 50,000 new affluent residents without significantly increasing housing costs or traffic with some policy changes. We certainly can't accommodate the growth Amazon would bring under our current auto-oriented system.

 

Edited October 22, 2017 by kermit

[PeytonC]

Growth is always good as long as it is smart and reasonable. Another negative impact of the (low) possibility of HQ2 in CLT besides the obvious crowding would be the continued rise in consumer real estate pricing that is already close to out of reach for many average (not only low-income) residents. I'm fine with the steadily-growing city that Charlotte has become - affordable for most. It is a very pleasant place to raise a family without spending your life savings on housing or living expenses. If we wanted a place like that we could move to Seattle, San Francisco, or any other over-priced, pseudo-sophisticated city.

Edited October 22, 2017 by PeytonC

[kermit]

1 hour ago, PeytonC said:

Growth is always good as long as it is smart and reasonable. Another negative impact of the (low) possibility of HQ2 in CLT besides the obvious crowding would be the continued rise in consumer real estate pricing that is already close to out of reach for many average (not only low-income) residents. I'm fine with the steadily-growing city that Charlotte has become - affordable for most. It is a very pleasant place to raise a family without spending your life savings on housing or living expenses. If we wanted a place like that we could move to Seattle, San Francisco, or any other over-priced, pseudo-sophisticated city.

Yea, but as I said, our current mode of growth also has substantial (if indirect) costs associated with it, particularly in terms of congestion and diluted tax base. Continuing on our current path only leads to us towards becoming suburban Atlanta. If we were lucky enough to land Amazon it is completely possible to limit their impact on house prices, if we were successful in doing that we would be set up for much more high quality growth in the future. 

Initially I had hoped that the competition for HQ2 would make Charlotte more aware of the importance of transit in economic development. Although now that I see a  bunch of well-informed urbanists have begun to fear Amazon's impact on Charlotte I think we may get an even bigger cultural benefit from Amazon's search -- a tangible realization of how  auto-oriented development combined with restrictive low-density zoning substantially limits high-quality growth. Why do we blindly accept the zoning and transportation policies we currently have if they can't comfortably accommodate something like HQ2? Given recent relocation decisions by GE, Mercedes, Marriott, Nestle, (and Amazon!) relocating HQs in dense urban regions that are walkable and transit accessible -- we need to acknowledge this trend and develop a new plan for managing growth before we get left behind.

[the city (consultants actually)  is rewriting our zoning code as we speak -- somehow I doubt this was mentioned in our bid package]

 

Edited October 22, 2017 by kermit

[HRVT]

On 10/19/2017 at 3:13 PM, asthasr said:

That one is laughable. Raleigh gets zero points for universities? We get no points for transit? Meanwhile, Houston gets points for both...

That was my first thought. How in the world does Raleigh get NOTHING for universities? The only thing I can think of is that they are looking only at universities within the designated border of the cities (Houston has UH, Rice, and Texas Southern while Raleigh has NC State and nothing else). I guarantee that Amazon would not be scoring that way though. Amazon would certainly be giving credit for Duke and UNC being less than a half hour away.

[TheOneRJ]

14 minutes ago, HRVT said:

That was my first thought. How in the world does Raleigh get NOTHING for universities? The only thing I can think of is that they are looking only at universities within the designated border of the cities (Houston has UH, Rice, and Texas Southern while Raleigh has NC State and nothing else). I guarantee that Amazon would not be scoring that way though. Amazon would certainly be giving credit for Duke and UNC being less than a half hour away.

Amazon wouldn't score at all because Raleigh is not on their radar. 

[HRVT]

11 minutes ago, TheOneRJ said:

Amazon wouldn't score at all because Raleigh is not on their radar. 

I didn't necessarily say Raleigh was on Amazon's radar (but I think Raleigh is a legitimate dark horse) but I was quoting a post that was responding to the image I've linked here. Raleigh is actually relatively high on the list but was given ZERO credit for universities while Houston was given a TON of credit. The only rationalization for that is that they're solely looking within the actual city limits. Amazon would be accounting for schools that are nearby (ie: Duke and UNC). Even NC State should count for SOMETHING though if you're going to look only within the city limits (which is again, stupid).

But IMO, the project is going to a MAJOR city. Most likely I think it will be NJ/NY. But other leading choices would be Boston, Atlanta,  Denver, and Toronto (among a few others). I doubt Raleigh or Charlotte get a hard look. And I still can't believe Greensboro wasted any time submitting a bid.

Edited October 22, 2017 by HRVT

[15895]

I think amazon coming here would be great overall. I think some people would like to see a negative to hedge against getting their hopes up.

[HRVT]

2 hours ago, AirNostrumMAD said:

I think amazon coming here would be great overall. I think some people would like to see a negative to hedge against getting their hopes up.

Amazon coming anywhere in NC would be a HUGE coup. I'd love for them to come. But I'd wager that the odds are very low. Probably less than 1% chance combined between Raleigh and Charlotte. 

[DMann]

Keep in mind that the city that gets the award will not have the Amazon Bus pull up and have 50,000 people get out on the first day.  It will be a 10 year build out, very sustainable, 5,000 per year.

[RiverwoodCLT]

Between 2010 and 2016 Charlotte Gain the population  of 110,627.   So I think it could handle Amazon.

[KJHburg]

Just heard on FoxBusiness that Amazon will announce a short list of cities for its HQ2 by end of the year which is good.  If other companies are delaying their decision because of this decision it is better to be on the list or off and at least know.   Obviously they are doing this to get the bidding for more and more incentives higher and higher. 

If Charlotte gets HQ2 great and we will deal with it. But if we don't we still be thriving like we are now.   Until 2 years ago Amazon did not have any presence in the area and we have thrived. 

[SydneyCarton]

It would be great if Charlotte gets this, but I'm not counting on it.  I think that the short-list will be:

NY-NJ

Boston

Philly

Chicago

Atlanta

Dallas (depending on the subsidies)

[cjd5050]

52 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

It would be great if Charlotte gets this, but I'm not counting on it.  I think that the short-list will be:

NY-NJ

Boston

Philly

Chicago

Atlanta

Dallas (depending on the subsidies)

Amazon has made it clear they want a stable and business-friendly environment.  It's also known that Amazon is not friendly to unions.   You have listed New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia and Texas.  

In terms of being business friendly, Illinois ranks 48th, New York 45th, New Jersey 44th, Pennsylvania 35th, Massachusetts 20th, Texas 18th and Georgia with the highest of the bunch at 14th.  In terms of unions, New York has the 2nd most union members in the US.  Illinois is 3rd.  Pennsylvania is 4th and New Jersey is 5th.  After California, these are the most union-friendly states in the US.   Georgia and Texas do have union members but unlike the other 4 they are Right To Work states.  

Outside of these being the biggest cities and unless what Amazon put in their RFP is meaningless...why do people continue to list cities and states that clearly go against what they claim to be looking for?

 

[BullDurhamer]

7 hours ago, cjd5050 said:

Amazon has made it clear they want a stable and business-friendly environment.  It's also known that Amazon is not friendly to unions.   You have listed New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia and Texas.  

In terms of being business friendly, Illinois ranks 48th, New York 45th, New Jersey 44th, Pennsylvania 35th, Massachusetts 20th, Texas 18th and Georgia with the highest of the bunch at 14th.  In terms of unions, New York has the 2nd most union members in the US.  Illinois is 3rd.  Pennsylvania is 4th and New Jersey is 5th.  After California, these are the most union-friendly states in the US.   Georgia and Texas do have union members but unlike the other 4 they are Right To Work states.  

Outside of these being the biggest cities and unless what Amazon put in their RFP is meaningless...why do people continue to list cities and states that clearly go against what they claim to be looking for?

 

what's more business friendly than new jersey paying amazon to take newark off their hands?

Or consider this list:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/11/americas-top-states-for-business-2017-overall-ranking.html

Quote

State	OVERALL	Workforce	Infra-structure	Cost of Doing Business	Economy	Quality of Life	Technology and Innovation	Education	Business Friendliness	Access to Capital	Cost of Living
Alabama	37	36	18	7	26	50	31	47	33	29	12
Alaska	47	25	35	42	48	22	41	42	20	49	46
Arizona	26	7	14	37	19	31	24	49	14	18	25
Arkansas	41	37	12	7	32	47	48	38	39	32	4
California	28	10	22	49	22	21	2	28	50	1	48
Colorado	6	4	28	38	13	14	7	12	8	12	32
Connecticut	33	7	47	43	41	23	13	3	32	20	45
Delaware	40	15	36	40	39	37	18	36	22	38	33
Florida	12	22	7	30	2	24	28	40	17	4	27
Georgia	2	3	4	26	1	28	23	33	19	9	14
Hawaii	49	48	40	50	35	1	45	30	47	41	50
Idaho	20	33	32	11	8	18	36	44	3	41	6
Illinois	31	24	24	30	45	27	12	24	47	5	21
Indiana	14	35	3	2	10	45	26	29	8	24	2
Iowa	15	42	23	10	21	9	25	9	11	30	15
Kansas	34	33	12	21	46	35	31	18	15	36	8
Kentucky	35	47	6	3	29	41	38	30	44	27	10
Louisiana	44	28	39	4	49	49	47	48	40	31	20
Maine	46	50	48	32	38	7	41	20	36	40	38
Maryland	25	11	43	48	7	26	4	25	33	15	44
Massachusetts	10	6	41	45	14	10	1	1	20	7	47
Michigan	11	13	19	24	9	33	9	23	25	17	3
Minnesota	3	16	10	36	6	3	5	2	33	16	31
Mississippi	48	46	41	1	47	44	46	46	43	44	1
Missouri	22	43	11	17	18	46	22	15	23	20	11
Montana	30	44	30	11	35	8	37	22	26	35	30
Nebraska	13	20	26	13	27	10	33	5	6	41	13
Nevada	39	41	8	18	10	34	50	50	18	26	36
New Hampshire	18	14	49	39	22	6	21	8	1	32	30
New Jersey	32	26	46	45	31	13	18	4	42	9	41
New Mexico	42	32	16	19	44	42	27	45	45	38	22
New York	38	39	45	47	33	19	8	5	45	2	49
North Carolina	5	7	20	9	15	28	6	32	8	9	19
North Dakota	19	12	17	29	40	4	39	13	4	47	26
Ohio	16	31	5	22	17	40	15	15	37	14	18
Oklahoma	43	38	32	20	42	48	44	43	12	36	5
Oregon	17	30	20	28	10	12	14	27	41	22	39
Pennsylvania	23	21	38	34	34	30	10	10	28	5	34
Rhode Island	45	27	50	43	29	31	34	20	37	44	42
South Carolina	29	23	30	16	15	36	35	40	29	28	29
South Dakota	24	39	37	14	22	14	41	25	2	34	34
Tennessee	9	19	2	6	5	42	30	37	4	23	7
Texas	4	1	1	15	25	37	11	34	24	3	9
Utah	8	18	9	24	4	20	18	34	16	18	17
Vermont	35	45	29	41	37	2	29	7	30	46	43
Virginia	7	2	25	35	20	17	16	13	7	13	28
Washington	1	5	32	32	3	5	3	19	31	8	37
West Virginia	50	49	44	4	50	39	49	39	49	47	22
Wisconsin	21	28	26	22	28	24	17	15	27	25	24
Wyoming	27	17	14	26	43	16	40	11	13	50	15

 

[kermit]

On 10/22/2017 at 4:38 PM, kermit said:

[the city (consultants actually)  is rewriting our zoning code as we speak -- somehow I doubt this was mentioned in our bid package]

Speaking of:

This delay is doing more to damage urbanism in Charlotte far more than any archetectural, transportation or social issue. This needs to be done yesterday.

[SydneyCarton]

8 hours ago, cjd5050 said:

Amazon has made it clear they want a stable and business-friendly environment.  It's also known that Amazon is not friendly to unions.   You have listed New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia and Texas.  

In terms of being business friendly, Illinois ranks 48th, New York 45th, New Jersey 44th, Pennsylvania 35th, Massachusetts 20th, Texas 18th and Georgia with the highest of the bunch at 14th.  In terms of unions, New York has the 2nd most union members in the US.  Illinois is 3rd.  Pennsylvania is 4th and New Jersey is 5th.  After California, these are the most union-friendly states in the US.   Georgia and Texas do have union members but unlike the other 4 they are Right To Work states.  

Outside of these being the biggest cities and unless what Amazon put in their RFP is meaningless...why do people continue to list cities and states that clearly go against what they claim to be looking for?

 

In or within 90 miles of Newark and NYC are Columbia, Yale, Princeton,  Penn, and the Cornell  Tech Center.  Not to mention, NY is the No. 1 destination for Harvard grads.  

Young people want to be in NY more than any other city.

No US city remotely compares to NY for culture, mass transit, or air travel.  Unlike Atlanta or Chicago which rely on Delta and UAL being based there for international flights, NY, like Heathrow, is an unparalleled international hub with world-wide demand.

The foregoing factors are part of the reason why NYC is home to way more Fortune 500 companies than any other city, despite the very substantial cost of living there.

Chicago and Philly are both impressive, as is Boston, and the two former cities offered huge incentives.

Atl and DFW are in the running, chiefly because I'm sure they offered enormous incentives.

Edited October 24, 2017 by SydneyCarton

[Cadi40]

14 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

In or within 90 miles of Newark and NYC are Columbia, Yale, Princeton,  Penn, and the Cornell  Tech Center.  Not to mention, NY is the No. 1 destination for Harvard grads.  

Young people want to be in NY more than any other city.

No US city remotely compares to NY for culture, mass transit, or air travel.  Unlike Atlanta or Chicago which rely on Delta and UAL being based there for international flights, NY, like Heathrow, is an unparalleled international hub with world-wide demand.

The foregoing factors are part of the reason why NYC is home to way more Fortune 500 companies than any other city, despite the very substantial cost of living there.

Chicago and Philly are both impressive, as is Boston, and the two former cities offered huge incentives.

Atl and DFW are in the running, chiefly because I'm sure they offered enormous incentives.

I understand NYC, But Charlotte is actually the Place where the most millennials are moving to. 

[SydneyCarton]

I hope that Charlotte gets it.  I just doubt that it will.

I also find it very hard to believe that more young people move to Charlotte than to NY, DC, Boston, SF, or Chicago, let alone Seattle, Denver, Austin, Atlanta, or Dallas.

[15895]

Obviously Charlotte lacks the edginess or “culture” of some hip places. 

Woukd having a Charlotte (or Dallas, Atlanta, etc) not be complimentary to already funky/edgy Seattle? 

 

Atlanta/Charlotte/Dallas - Low cost, great place to raise families, etc 

Seattle - hip, edgy, etc 

 

i know im about to get a job that wants to put people in Charlotte and LA.... same salary.... Charlotte is far superior IMO. And I’d consider myself a big urban nerd who loves big cities. 

[SydneyCarton]

I prefer LA to Charlotte, Dallas, or Atl  in every respect (better city, better weather, better geography), but for CoL and traffic.  For those two huge reasons, I'd pick Charlotte, Atl., or Dallas over LA too.

[cjd5050]

11 hours ago, SydneyCarton said:

In or within 90 miles of Newark and NYC are Columbia, Yale, Princeton,  Penn, and the Cornell  Tech Center.  Not to mention, NY is the No. 1 destination for Harvard grads.  

Young people want to be in NY more than any other city.

No US city remotely compares to NY for culture, mass transit, or air travel.  Unlike Atlanta or Chicago which rely on Delta and UAL being based there for international flights, NY, like Heathrow, is an unparalleled international hub with world-wide demand.

The foregoing factors are part of the reason why NYC is home to way more Fortune 500 companies than any other city, despite the very substantial cost of living there.

Chicago and Philly are both impressive, as is Boston, and the two former cities offered huge incentives.

Atl and DFW are in the running, chiefly because I'm sure they offered enormous incentives.

So, again, outside of these being the biggest cities and unless what Amazon put in their RFP is meaningless...why do you continue to list cities and states that clearly go against what they claim to be looking for?  You're just spitting a group of debatable opinions that have nothing to do with Amazon.  It's like you work for print media.  Can you turn this into a listicle on your newspapers blog?

Just silly.

 

 

[SydneyCarton]

I'm not going to argue with you.  I agree that the top candidates are Charlotte, Salt Lake, or maybe even Columbia, SC, despite the fact that all lack great universities, great museums, great symphonies, great mass transit, and have de minimis tech scenes.

Edited October 24, 2017 by SydneyCarton

[KJHburg]

Your Amazon article of the day and the side effects of lots of jobs coming fast.  They are proposing 50,000 jobs in about 10 years which is 5000 jobs a year and that would be jolt positive and negative on the winning city.  https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/office/amazon-hq2-promotes-50000-high-paying-jobs-and-a-shock-to-your-housing-market-80508?utm_source=MorningBrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20171024_charlotte_morningbrief&be=kj%40charlottehomes.com

I will be glad when this short list is announced! 

 

[cjd5050]

18 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

I'm not going to argue with you.  I agree that the top candidates are Charlotte, Salt Lake, or maybe even Columbia, SC, despite the fact that all lack great universities, great museums, great symphonies, great mass transit, and have de minimis tech scenes.

Who are you agreeing with?  Columbia, SC????   Are you playing SimCity?  Amazon is a company.   Are they going to look at the lifestyle for their employees?  Yes.  But it will be down the list compared to things that impact the bottom line.