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 ...
A lot of Microsoft’s business is licensing, rather than software in a box. Something like a decade (or more) ago, they moved their “licensing company” out of Washington state. Apparently one day the WA tax man came knocking looking for all that nice tax money and they were told, sorry, that’s a different company and they don’t live here.
You wouldn’t think so, but it did happen with the tech boom in Austin in the 90’s-my brother was living and working there at the time-he told me about all the tecchies brought in from deep blue Cali-sent real estate values into chaos as those high-paid Cali natives paid prices for homes that locals couldn’t afford, etc, never mind bringing their bad liberal attitudes with them-I’d hate to see that happen to another city in a red state. My bro left Austin as soon as he was able to get a transfer to El Paso...
Yea, but it’s northwest liberals. So you have to take that into account.
But then they’d have to live with NY taxes & regulations.
There’s a reason people & businesses are fleeing NY. I did. That reason includes the governor actually saying “we don’t want your kind* here.” * = conservatives
That’s the key point.
HQ2 will have to be in a city that has a well educated work force and that well educated people would like to live.
Wallmart’s online shopping is archaic. Totally unsuitable for competing with amazon.
Even LLBean is lightening fast. Took me 4 minutes to complete a purchase seeing the item on their website.
Huge distribution centers like to be located centrally. Almost all Fed ex packages are flown to Tennessee first, sorted then flown to their respective destinations.
Seattle seems like a horrible for a package distributer. I wonder if they’re going to close it or drastically decrease the size x number of years after the new center is up and running?
NW LIBs. Our sheriff would throw them across the county line ASAP.
Please, not Texas - try Baltimore!
I’m guessing Austin...
Although I live in North Texas, my money's on Austin, a more liberal part of Texas.
What DFW has going for it includes 3 commercial airports: D/FW, Love, and Alliance. Lots of (cheap) land for development, too.
Current DFW population is over 6 million, with 100K-150K being added every year. Infrastructure is keeping pace for the most part.
We’re paying professionals out of college $60k+/year. The normal jobs at Amazon are almost certainly going to average over $100k (if they are not warehouse jobs). Heck, the going rate for college interns is ~$20/hr these days!
Austin cannot compete.
Their road and traffic infrastructure is the worst in Texas.
With that large a number, it will have to be a mix of both.
With the exception of I-35, DFW's roads are pretty damn good.
With the exception of I-35, DFW's roads are pretty damn good.
Amazon will have to recruit young talent and must consider where such talent wants to live.
“Their road and traffic infrastructure is the worst in Texas.”
It is, and has been just that for the last 15-20 years-but the reason(s) are a mystery to me. In July I went with the contractor I work for to a lumber supplier to arrange shipment of some decking to a jobsite here. Neither of us had visited that supplier in about 10 years. We were amazed that not only were parts of the perpetually-under-construction IH 35 again-or still-under construction, creating a mess, but so was the access road and the street to the lumber supply, creating a mini traffic jam, and the place is in a suburban industrial park-I guess it is just part of keeping Austin weird...
I LOVE DFW roads. Was up there last week on 635/20/45/35/30 and others.
4, 5 even 6 lanes. Great.
Then I head back through Austin into San Antonio. And I wonder why the Road Gods have cursed us so.
For years and years, the mantra in Austin was...
“If you DON’T build it, they WON’T come.”
And so they didn’t plan. They didn’t build.
But they still came.
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