Amazon HQ2 RFP

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Re: The New Office Thread

nm88 said:
Some compelling suggestions - Widett Circle, Suffolk Downs, Sullivan Square, USPS in Fort Point. All are good ideas that provide branding and building options that any international corp HQ would likely desire. Build-to-suit sort of thing. And still be in the city.
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I'd add I-90 Allston Interchange redevelopment, I-90 Air Rights parcels, Lynnway redevelopment in Lynn (near GE Riverworks), and the Bayside Expo Center site near JFK/UMass station to the potential site list. Thinking about # of acres needed, Northeastern University's campus is a great comparison to the volume of space Amazon is after... they currently have something in the ballpark square footage of what Amazon is talking about (UPDATE: Per Appendix B of NU's Institutional Master Plan, the campus had 7.4 million sq. ft. of development on their Boston campus... add the new ISEC building to that, and it's about equal to the size of Amazon's Seattle campus). All sites discussed thus far could accommodate that kind of development.

Personally, I think the Suffolk Downs site is a stroke of genius suggestion. 100+ acres, 2 heavy rail transit lines immediately abutting the site, and a development plan underway to intensely transform the site now that HYM Investments has their hands on the area. Considering all the campus needs of Amazon, it's a natural catalyst for the kind of development that Suffolk Downs could sustain and help the neighborhoods thrive.
 
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Re: The New Office Thread

Now that I've thought about this more... this feels like a tremendous opportunity for:

1. State and/or city to sell off the Government Center complex and State Services Building
2. Build a proposal with Amazon's HQ in that spot (Green + Blue line on site)
3. Do the Red-Blue Connector

Amazon is then connected to RGB lines. State gets a massively needed transportation project done and the city can get rid of City Hall in favor of something else (scale down City Hall and lease space IMO).
 
Re: The New Office Thread

The NY Times article on HQ2 indicates that some teams would move from Seattle to HQ2; i.e., the two headquarters would not be mirrors, but one or the other would have some non-duplicated technical/research functions.

That being the case, little chance Amazon would move a team from the cultural climate of Seattle and Washington state to a city and state where the cultural climate is quite different.
 
Re: The New Office Thread

Why not throw Worcester into the mix if you're considering Providence? Still pretty much part of Boston metro, and somewhat cheaper(than Boston, not sure how it compares with Prov) with loads of exmills to redevelop, and an airport that's closer to downtown than TFgreen is to Providence.
 
Re: The New Office Thread

From the JB owned Washington Post
News of the search has unleashed a wave of speculation about where the world’s largest online retailer could set up shop. But experts say the company’s decision is likely to be as much about politics as it is about logistics and incentives. Bezos has been a vocal opponent of the Trump administration’s immigration bans, and earlier this week was among hundreds of tech leaders who urged the president to reconsider his stance on the “dreamers” immigration program.
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The article has Toronto as one of the favorites, because of Canada's immigration policies. If the article's premise is correct, that would rule out 'red states' whose elected officials are hard set against more immigrants and immigration reform.
 
Re: Amazon seeking 2nd HQ

Whoops, missed that somehow. Please delete this thread mods.
 
Re: The New Office Thread

meddlepal said:
Now that I've thought about this more... this feels like a tremendous opportunity for:

1. State and/or city to sell off the Government Center complex and State Services Building
2. Build a proposal with Amazon's HQ in that spot (Green + Blue line on site)
3. Do the Red-Blue Connector

Amazon is then connected to RGB lines. State gets a massively needed transportation project done and the city can get rid of City Hall in favor of something else (scale down City Hall and lease space IMO).
Click to expand...

My fear with that (good) idea is that with the heavily staged buildout, a lot of the site would remain empty for a long time. There's also the fear that - if you look at Amazon architecture in Seattle - they'd keep both brutalist structures and reuse them. Their buildings aren't typically pretty.
 
Re: The New Office Thread

My money is on Boston, Pittsburgh, or Houston for the new Amazon HQ.
 
Re: The New Office Thread

stellarfun said:
This is the sort of stuff that, IMO, makes Texas poison to JB.
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The only politics Bezos really cares about is the immigration push - and that push is really all about cheap labor. Bezos is notoriously cheap. So Boston might actually work out because they also have another large stash of cheap labor - college kids.

Boston would probably have to give him a sweetheart deal like GE got though.
 
Re: The New Office Thread

So, separate thread or what for Amazon or what?

First question I haves is, could Boston, the city, handle this? We're talking a decade-long process to go from the first building to full build-out (according to the RFP) so it's not like everything has to be up and running on 1/1/2019, but, seriously, is Boston big enough?

* Enough highly-educated / trained workers
* Enough housing
* Adequate public transportation (lol)
* Adequate infrastructure (roads, .. etc.)
* Suitable location (100-acres)

I realize these were the sort of questions people had when the Olympics(tm) was proposed, but there are major differences between this and that; for one, Amazon would be (presumably) a permanent member of the community while the Olympics(tm) was going to come and go and leave a disaster in its wake.

At this point, I'm not interested in reading comment after comment on the "tax breaks or no tax breaks" issue; I think we have bigger questions to ask.
 
Re: The New Office Thread

Regarding the airport - who does Amazon have their contract with? My guess would be either Alaska Airlines or Delta Airlines. Boston is a hub for Delta and they have plans to continue to grow here. Maybe that could be another selling point of further expansion in Boston.
 
Re: The New Office Thread

For those worried about 50,000 new workers - according to the BRA, in 1996 (the only data I could find), the average work hour population of Boston doubled to 1.2 million (link below). 50,000 new people is just a 4% increase from that 20 year old figure, which I assume is quite larger at this point given that population of the city has grown by more than 100,000 over the same time period and the United States has had a prolonged period of reurbanization.

With regards to talent, a significant portion of students graduating from the local schools leave Boston for companies such as Amazon - if the high paying job they are seeking existed in the Boston area, they would presumably stay.

Link - https://web.archive.org/web/2013072...ity.org/PDF/ResearchPublications//pdr96-1.pdf
 
Re: The New Office Thread

I'd expect Boston to be a top 3 finalist based on criteria and the fact that we're the "east coast" equivalent of Seattle. As someone mentioned earlier - Seattle has access to China and Boston to Europe. One of many reasons why Boston HAS to be a top contender.

If that happens, where is the best location?

Here's my top three based on feasibility and positive impact for the city's growth.

1. Flower Exchange with widett circle as expansion
2. SST with fort point lots next and across from Gillette as expansion
3. North Point
 
Re: The New Office Thread

JohnAKeith said:
* Enough highly-educated / trained workers
* Enough housing
* Adequate public transportation (lol)
* Adequate infrastructure (roads, .. etc.)
* Suitable location (100-acres)
Click to expand...

I would say yes on #1 - we have a large net brain drain of college kids leaving every year anyways (mainly because we simply have too many and not enough jobs to keep them all). Housing - well, at least it would be staged, so if we keep up with current development I think we will be OK (although prices will probably still go up either way). As for public transportation - for what its worth, we pretty much have the 3rd or 4th best system in the country - far more extensive than Seattle's. Our infrastructure is meh - but so is everywhere, really. Location I think others have covered pretty well, we definitely have sites where it would work.

In the end, getting Amazon I think would be nice, but, even if we don't get land them, I think we will probably still be looking at the same population growth in that period anyways (50k-ish over a ten-ish year period), and thus will need to be looking at all these issues anyways.
 
Re: The New Office Thread

I got a square mile of developable land, Mass transit (train and bus), with a large immigrant population, within 45 minutes of Logan and TF Green, cheaper land and housing, etc etc right here.

C'mon down.
 
Re: The New Office Thread

CNBC has an interactive matrix ranking cities by five criteria.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/07/her...ns-wish-list-for-its-second-headquarters.html

Two of the criteria are education-related, one is employment growth, one is mass transit, and one is airports. All receive equal weights. As the full matrix gives equal weight to airports as it does workforce education, which is unrealistic in the real world, and you remove the airport criterion, CNBC ranks the cities as follows:

New York
Washington
Boston
Atlanta
Chicago
Raleigh
San Francisco
Miami
 
Re: The New Office Thread

stellarfun said:
CNBC has an interactive matrix ranking cities by five criteria.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/07/her...ns-wish-list-for-its-second-headquarters.html

Two of the criteria are education-related, one is employment growth, one is mass transit, and one is airports. All receive equal weights. As the full matrix gives equal weight to airports as it does workforce education, which is unrealistic in the real world, and you remove the airport criterion, CNBC ranks the cities as follows:

New York
Washington
Boston
Atlanta
Chicago
Raleigh
San Francisco
Miami
Click to expand...

I don't really understand their airport ranking either, why would New York's airport be ranked that much better than ours?
 
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