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 ...
The Hill Country is an awesome place to live. These youngsters will have a commute, but infrastructure will eventually catch up.
Fredericksburg is my kind of town. Lots of quaint shops to occupy my wife while I sample the wares at 3-4 wine bars. The Museum of the Pacific War is a must see, too...before or after the wine bars.
A strong proposal is combined with Long Beach plus Huntington Beach California.
Large, qualified workforce, access to all transport with multiple seaports, multiple airports, trains, freeways, etc.
Obvious downside includes high taxes.
Seattle and the surrounding area is a mess. Prices for everything are through the roof especially housing, and once nice country roads are traffic jams - you want this?
lol, I feel your pain.
I don’t think Fredericksburg is ready for 100,000 new residents.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be a city. It needs to be a place where land is cheap, taxes and crime are low, and there is good transportation.
Lots of businesses moved out of NYC to office parks in New Jersey, off of I-287. Other businesses left Philadelphia to go to the King of Prussia area, which is at the nexus of I-76, I-276, and I-476, and a quick ride to the airport, and NOT subject to Philadelphia taxes and demographics.
Ah Well.
At least I don’t do Houston.
I haven’t been to or through Houston in well over 10 years. I don’t plan to either.
I’m hoping it goes to a solid blue state, do not wish to see all the lefty employees and their families turn a red state.
Oh Lord NO!!! That would destroy it. Maybe Luckenbach (pop 3) can take in a few more...lol.
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.
I have lived north of Seattle for 40 years. The commute to downtown used to be 35 minutes, now I allow two hours if I have a meeting scheduled down in Seattle.
Amazon has made it considerably worse with its campus just north of Seattle causing the rest of us to compete with the Amazon workers every morning.
Describe the 50,000 workers.
Yep, that’s my take on all this.
All this talk of HQII is a ruse by Amazon to slowly migrate everything away from Seattle. The only way to do this without causing mass panic among their Seattle workers is to say this is a second HQ. Geographically Seattle is difficult. In some regards they are limited with space, they are 2 and 3 hours behind the rest of the country, and the destructive liberal politics, although loved by Bezos and company, is absolutely counterproductive to the bottom line.
Nope, Amazon is moving out of Seattle. This is just a polite way of ultimately getting out of town — permanently.
I don’t really think any mantra or anything they did/didn’t do in Austin would have kept the packs of liberals away-even back in the 70’s it was weird and laid back-the music venues, topless swimming/lounging, enough doobie smoke to get stoned on, etc at places like Hippie Hollow-Austin has always seemed like just the kind of place people like that love to move to, trash and remake into their idea of a liberal lala land, so even the nannies and envirowackos just move in and get entrenched-it’s probably 40 years too late to save Austin-just keep it in isolation so the contagion doesn’t spread...
MrT5 was from Seattle-he said when he was a kid, there were actually a lot of conservatives there...
No commuters or more infrastructure here-we’ve been there, done that...
This county had commuters living in gated enclaves who worked 40-50 miles away in the city-but they spent most of their money there, too. The Obama economy killed all that-ruined a chunk of our economy in the process, too-commuters lost jobs, moved away leaving expensive homes, snowbirds had no money to winter here, etc. Now there is finally an increase in snowbird travel, and the commuters are all gone. The people here have turned down development requests citing our desire to protect our water and other natural resources-the focus is now on home-based and other small business, rustic tourist cabins and farm to table restaurants. The population of old hippies, off griders and others like me who have gone Galt has increased, too-it isn’t for everyone, but those of us who live here like it fine...
I was blown away by how bad Mercer by Huitar Center had gotten this summer.
50,000 more leftists = solid blue forever
“I suspect Bezos is shopping for whichever city gives him enough tax credits, incentives, and other corporate welfare freebies.
Then - as usual - taxpayers will get screwed.”
Exactly!!! Does anyone think that Bezos needs a second corporate headquarters? He is up to something, and if I were a Seattle politician I would be worrying that Bezos is going to build a tax subsidized office complex elsewhere and then shut their Seattle office due to that city’s anti-business attitude. A $15 an hour minimum wage, plus a socialist controlled city council spells a coming disaster for the City of Seattle. Already local small businesses are closing for good or moving outside of the city.
You are thinking my thoughts about Amazon. The commute for those poor employees is the worst in the country. You will have three hours a day commutes if you are lucky. All that stop and go is a recipe for rear enders. My daughter got one and it totaled her 2013 VW. She was lucky to get $10,000 from it. That is the hidden costs because of the increased traffic from Amazon workers. The Leftist politician’s answer to the traffic? Build light rail. How to pay for it? Raise the car tabs. And there is more they will tax. Trust them.
I think you have a point. After all, a few years ago Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago.
It would depend...are the 40,000 people going to be Muslim refugees? Then, no.
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