Posted on 10/20/2017 11:17:56 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
SEATTLE — Amazon.com has driven an economic boom in Seattle, bestowing more than 40,000 jobs upon a city known for Starbucks coffee and Seahawks fandom. Its growth remade a neglected industrial swath north of downtown into a hub of young workers and fixed the region, along with Microsoft before it, as a premier locale for the Internet economy outside Silicon Valley.
Seattle is the fastest-growing big city in the United States, a company town with construction cranes busily erecting new apartments for newly arriving tech workers. Google and Facebook have joined Amazon in putting large offices here.
When Amazon made a surprise announcement last month that it planned to open a second headquarters with even more jobs, it set off an unprecedented race among cities to lure the tech giant their way. Amazon said it will need 8 million square feet in a second region, making it the biggest economic development target in decades, experts say.
But as Seattleites will say, keeping up with the Internet juggernaut has not always been easy, providing a word of caution for officials from other cities willing to pursue the company at great expense....
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
> there is something else going on here, other than just duplicating a big HQ operation
It lets them shut down the other HQ when Seattle decides to go full-Bernie.
Rich liberals only want the government to take other people’s money.
Des Moines would actually be a fascinating choice. I lived in that area half of my life. The people are much more literate than average and are hard workers. It may not be big enough, though.
There was a fantastic IBM ad many years ago. Some young hotshot executive brings the old-guard elite exec to the middle of nowhere and declares it’s where the new big facility will be.
To wit:
Old: “But how will anyone get here?”
Young: “We’re here, right?”
Old: “But how can we communicate with the rest of the company?”
Young: [hands over cell phone]
Old: “But what will this cost?”
Young: “Dirt cheap.”
Old: [gets the point]
...years later, I note how Apple and others have major facilities in, well, the middle of nowhere.
Amazon doesn’t so much need a huge warehouse anywhere in particular. They need an inexpensive location to get & put a bunch of smart people to orchestrate acquisition, purchase, & delivery. Atlanta is a prime area for that.
I guess they don't want the added expense of having to mount an armed convoy to get the workers to the facility.
Amazon better do it’s homework: Boston? They’d have to be out of their minds.
Cost of living in my part of the world is through the roof. Look for an increase in income tax soon, too.
Go with a business friendly state - the opposite of Massachusetts.
$100,000$$$ jobs? Amazon Hospital??
A _lot_ of families are leaving NY etc and moving to Atlanta. This will just draw more, to a region already 70% domestic “migrants” of mostly white-collar leanings.
Pulling out of seattle be exactly what amazon is doing.
Interesting picture. Wonder what it is?
Getting the bell out of the communistic rain forest — yes indeed.
What is that?
Given that Amazon generally hits at least one acquisition a quarter (with a staggering 9 this year, and we ain’t done with this year yet), I’d say the most obvious thing would be to start doing all the acquisitions through the new office. They’d still get some direction from main but let the day to day stuff go through the new. Or they might slide “non-core” to the new place and leave “real Amazon” (with whatever acquisitions fall under that umbrella) in the old place. There’s lots of ways to divvy up management in a large company.
And remember the 50,000 number is “possible growth to”, it’s not going to open with 50,000 people.
Amazon is looking to expand into becoming a mega logistics company like UPS, but bigger.
I hate seeing cities sprawl over every inch of vacant land like an anthill with all the traffic smell and noise and other chaos-it is why I chose to live as far away from it as I can get, here in BFE. As much as I care for my man, I dread when it is my turn to stay at his place-he lives in a gated enclave, but the noise and smell is there, if only faintly...
He also said he figured Amazon probably asked for too many tax breaks and other concessions not given to most businesses-and those in charge decided they were too greedy...
Adding 40,000 flaming liberals to your work force...
What could go wrong?
They could have set up shop near Buffalo, NY for half the cost, and everyone would have been able to buy a 4 bedroom house on an acre of land for less than $200K and a 20 minute commute.
Traffic sucked in Seattle when I left there six years ago. I just visited a couple months ago. It’s a nightmare now. It’s gotten significantly worse.
they will all be liberal activist hacks.
Lake washington really messes it up. It was really convenient for me to bike commute to downtown when I lived on Mercer Island, though. :)
And when I got a motorcycle it did add to the convenience with all those hov lanes.
Ask Detroit what happened when GM, Ford, and Chrysler move 400,000 jobs out....
two headquarters means amazon can play one against the other.
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