Amazon HQ2 RFP

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tysmith95 said:
Providence to Boston ain't what I'd call an easy commute.
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Is it ideal, no. But definitely doable. Stamford to NYC is about the same commute time, and I know plenty of people that do it.

That being said, the demographic that Amazon will (largely) be hiring will be the 20-30 somethings, that will tend to be more urban-centric.
 
There is plenty of available affordable housing in Greater Boston. Poor little millennials will have to suck it up and take the Orange Line from Medford and Malden like I did for 10+ years.
 
JohnAKeith said:
There is plenty of available affordable housing in Greater Boston. Poor little millennials will have to suck it up and take the Orange Line from Medford and Malden like I did for 10+ years.
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Medford is on the threshold of being unaffordable, and Malden's well on its way. Rents have risen much faster than wages have.

-Concerned Gen Xer
 
Yeah, if Amazon does choose that Dot Ave site, the workers aren't going to live in Providence. When you're working 80 hours a week the last thing you want to do is take an hour long train ride. They'll take over Southie and Dorchester.

Could be useful in getting the Fairmount line upgraded to a subway.
 
JohnAKeith said:
There is plenty of available affordable housing in Greater Boston. Poor little millennials will have to suck it up and take the Orange Line from Medford and Malden like I did for 10+ years.
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With $100k+ salaries, they're not going to have to suck it up. Also, when I said that these employees would be more urban-centric, I didn't mean strictly Boston/Cambridge/Somerville. I meant that these workers are more likely to live inside 128, than outside.
 
stellarfun said:
Amazon said that 55 percent of its Seattle workers walk, bike, or use public transit to get to work. From what I can tell, mass transit consists of a single Silver Line type route and a single light rail route. Otherwise, buses.
http://kingcounty.gov/depts/transportation/metro/schedules-maps/maps/system.aspx
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Based on my gut, that actually seems pretty low for an urban headquarters. I would guess way less than half of the people at State Street, John Hancock, Liberty Mutual, etc. use cars to get to work. Hopefully if Amazon were to pick Boston for HQ2 we'd see something like 75-80% of employees using a non-car form of transit.
 
Really good Globe article today. Some surprising stats.

Globe said:
The good: Believe it or not though, there’s also good news on the rail front, and it’s this: Not every major city even has a subway or commuter rail system. We do. And our public transit systems don’t perform as poorly as we might think, relative to those in other cities. One study based on various data points, including average commute times for transit users, placed Boston as the third-best city for public transit, behind Washington and San Francisco. Another survey ranked Boston third in the country in terms of access to public transit. The MBTA is also among the more affordable city subway systems.
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JohnAKeith said:
There is plenty of available affordable housing in Greater Boston. Poor little millennials will have to suck it up and take the Orange Line from Medford and Malden like I did for 10+ years.
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pffffttt... millennials are hardly the only people talking about affordability of housing. And the majority of legislation in Massachusetts for helping people with housing affordability has been explicitly designed to help seniors.

Sure, a greater percentage of young people now live at home than at any point since it started being measured in 1880 and all evidence is the percentage of their income going to rent is higher than previous generations, despite them having roommates at a much higher rate than those generations, but, millennials oddly generally end up with housing over their heads.

There has been a surge in the homeless population 40-65 and under 20 in Boston. Once you're over 40, you can't move in with your parents and the government won't help you that much until you're 65. And your kids end up homeless with you.

Here's what the housing crisis has caused:

(1) millennials paying higher rents and having more roommates, or staying with their parents, but surviving
(2) homelessness for kids and middle age people skyrocketing
(3) tax breaks and deferrals for seniors to keep living by themselves in multi-bedroom houses in South Boston for sentimental reasons

If you don't recognize (2) is a major problem, you're living in an unfortunate bubble.
 
I'm sorry but everybody need not move into the city, nor are they guaranteed to always be able to afford it from now until the end of time. Some people, and I was one of them, just need to deal with a longer commute or if they're on a fixed income, live in a cheaper area. Yes this is simplistic but if millenials are going to flood Boston proper, people starting families and looking for more space & good school systems will continue to move out. That's part of the ebb and flow of the city's population. Its not a reason to blow off Amazon's jobs.
 
I haven't seen a lot in the news about Governor Baker's role in this. Maybe others have seen more?

Here's one snippet making reference to something he said on WGBH yesterday:

http://www.statehousenews.com/?login=yes&trial=yes&path=cms/news.aspx&yr=2017&select=20171948

Looks like a location-neutral stance. Neutral about which city, that is. Money quote:

"Locals are going to propose on their own. We're not going to partner with any particular local. Because there's a lot of different folks who are interested in submitting proposals and God bless 'em. Go for it," Baker told WGBH's Boston Public Radio on Thursday."
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I don't have time to slog through this entire show, but the WGBH podcast is here:

http://www.wgbh.org/programs/Boston-Public-Radio-Podcast-2895?episode=71683
 
West said:
I haven't seen a lot in the news about Governor Baker's role in this. Maybe others have seen more?

Here's one snippet making reference to something he said on WGBH yesterday:

http://www.statehousenews.com/?login=yes&trial=yes&path=cms/news.aspx&yr=2017&select=20171948

Looks like a location-neutral stance. Neutral about which city, that is. Money quote:



I don't have time to slog through this entire show, but the WGBH podcast is here:

http://www.wgbh.org/programs/Boston-Public-Radio-Podcast-2895?episode=71683
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Does that mean Boston and Cambridge will be submitting competing proposals? That's the only reason I can think of that he wouldn't be all-in on a Greater Boston proposal.

My logic is that surely Worcester and/or Springfield aren't delusional enough to think they could compete with Boston (and other top-tier US cities)? Who else could submit a competing proposal?
 
FenwayResident said:
Does that mean Boston and Cambridge will be submitting competing proposals? That's the only reason I can think of that he wouldn't be all-in on a Greater Boston proposal.
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I'm not claiming to have any inside scoop, but yours seems like one reasonable interpretation.

FenwayResident said:
My logic is that surely Worcester and/or Springfield aren't delusional enough to think they could compete with Boston (and other top-tier US cities)? Who else could submit a competing proposal?
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The other reasonable interpretation is that Baker is signaling to voters across the state that Boston, Cambridge, and any other bidders should expect no help from the state on tax breaks or other incentives. Or at least not on the first go-round. Which, given Baker's own politics and where he got / will get his votes, makes some sense. And if I'm right that he's signaling that, I would think it'd completely put the kibosh on any dreams Worcester / Springfield might be nurturing (if I were a politician from either of those cities, I wouldn't be bothering ten seconds with this whole Amazon concept, but I'm not a politician from there, and one never knows just how starry-eyed any given pol can get).

Lastly, I haven't found time to listen to the interview, the podcast is two bloody hours long and I bet only a few minutes are on Amazon. My point being that the snippet I quoted above is from someone else's parsing of the interview. Baker might have said more, or added important nuance that got left out. I'm curious to hear it, but like I said, I'm not slogging through two hours of podcast for it.
 
Isn't everybody free to apply, as in Amazon isn't insisting that you have state buy in (although one would think it helps). This wouldn't affect Mass of course as its pretty compact but if say SF and LA wanted to make a bid I'm not sure the California state government would necessarily pick a side.

I would expect Mahhty to make a proposal of a couple of sites and Cambridge to do the same, while Baker assures Amazon that he'd bring state funding whichever one they chose?
 
Boston + Cambridge should file joint proposal for

a. West End or
b. South Station area or
c. Dot Ave or
d. Downtown signature tower parcels + Dot Ave

+ NorthPoint/East Cambridge area.
 
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