Amazon HQ2 RFP

[odurandina]

....Our politically sustained housing CRISIS.....

fify. great post but i felt it didn't go far enough to point out the guilty who seemingly run for office for the express purpose that their communities remain exclusionary, and housing prices stay sky high.... not even one serious infill project at a transit hub outside RT128.... we're not serious about bringing about anything close to affordable housing in the Commonwealth. too many people are happy keeping things just the way they are.

 

[stellarfun]

There is the employment multiplier, yes, but let's not forget spouses and children.

In a hypothetical future where HQ2 is here, I wonder how many employees would have been in Boston anyway, just working at a different firm? How many would relocate here purely for Amazon? How many other non-Amazon tech jobs will be created here because of HQ2? How many retail, service industry, legal, real estate, public service, etc (the traditional definition of jobs multiplier) jobs will be created?

Among spouses, again I wonder how many Amazonians will meet their spouse/significant other here vs. how many will bring spouses with them. Some spouses will also be Amazonians themselves.

All those questions need to be estimated to paint a real picture of how different the population will be with or without HQ2. It is an interesting problem.

Interesting and valid points.

Gender disparity is such in Seattle that the ratio of men to women in 2014 was 130M:100W. Average age of an Amazon tech employee was 31. 75 percent of Amazon tech employees are male. Can't find values for mean or median household size of an Amazon employee in Seattle, which could be distorted in any event given what constitutes a 'household'.

However, in the 2010 Census (when Amazon was much smaller, employment-wise)

Among the nation’s 50 largest cities, Seattle has the smallest-size families on average, and one of the lowest rates of single-parent homes.

It’s got the third-highest rate of people who live alone and the third-highest rate of unrelated people living together as roommates or unmarried couples.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattles-households-far-from-average-census-finds/

I suspect the 2020 Census will find those Seattle values exacerbated /exaggerated /more off-the-charts than the 2010 Census.

 

[stellarfun]

I only post this excerpt from a longer article on patient dumping at a Baltimore hospital because Amazon executives have said that the quality of local education is a key metric as they evaluate the submissions from various cities.

...Last week, amid a stretch of frigid weather, images spread of Baltimore students bundled in coats in unheated schools. One teacher described students shivering and able to see their own breath.

“Things are so broken here, so broken,” said Bronwyn Mayden, a Baltimore native and executive director of Promise Heights, an initiative established by the University of Maryland School of Social Work. “It’s like dominoes — one just knocks down the other. Can it get any worse, y’all?”

The city’s troubles have reached a point where there’s no outrage, she said. Instead, there’s simply acceptance.

“I think,” Mayden concluded, “people are numb in Baltimore.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...nt746pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.4fbe698ec231

 

[Gameguy326]

Why are we still talking about Baltimore? No, I'm serious, why? I lived there for two years before moving to Boston, it's a nice city, but it loses to Boston in basically every metric talked about here: education, local talent pool, public transportation, government, even its strengths like its hospitals are overshadowed by Boston's. Does anyone actually have any tangible data on literally anything Baltimore has over Boston?

 

[jass]

Why are we still talking about Baltimore? No, I'm serious, why? I lived there for two years before moving to Boston, it's a nice city, but it loses to Boston in basically every metric talked about here: education, local talent pool, public transportation, government, even its strengths like its hospitals are overshadowed by Boston's. Does anyone actually have any tangible data on literally anything Baltimore has over Boston?

Cheap land
Cheap rent
No NIMBYs
Low traffic
The ability to turn the city into Amazonplex due to a government that will do anything they want (see Johns Hopkins)

 

[Gameguy326]

Cheap land
Cheap rent
No NIMBYs
Low traffic
The ability to turn the city into Amazonplex due to a government that will do anything they want (see Johns Hopkins)

Traffic in Baltimore/DC is FAMOUSLY AWFUL.

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2015/07/19/dc-baltimore-top-worst-cities-list-for-drivers/

Of COURSE they have NIMBYs.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/06...-to-nimbys-hacks-away-at-protected-bike-lane/

Johns Hopkins has no more sway than, say, Harvard. I have no idea what you're talking about.

The rent is a little cheaper but that's it.

 

[jass]

Traffic in Baltimore/DC is FAMOUSLY AWFUL.

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2015/07/19/dc-baltimore-top-worst-cities-list-for-drivers/

We're talking about the city, not the metro

Of COURSE they have NIMBYs.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/06...-to-nimbys-hacks-away-at-protected-bike-lane/

Different scale bro

Johns Hopkins has no more sway than, say, Harvard. I have no idea what you're talking about.

I mean you could have simply said "I know nothing about Baltimore"

The city is demolishing 10,000+ brownstones (talk about affordable housing) for Jonhs Hopkins.

"But Hopkins is seeking to engineer the revival of a huge swath of East Baltimore through an 88-acre redevelopment project that includes taking over a struggling public school. It is unusual for an elite university to dive so deeply into urban education and redevelopment at the same time."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...adddfe36cbe_story.html?utm_term=.50567bed3de8

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-hogan-vacants-20170210-story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...05528f6b712_story.html?utm_term=.3593a5cfa3b4


If Harvard asked the state to spend $100,000,000 to demolish entire neighborhoods, do you think they would listen?

 

[mass88]

Cheap land
Cheap rent
No NIMBYs
Low traffic
The ability to turn the city into Amazonplex due to a government that will do anything they want (see Johns Hopkins)

Outdated and crumbling schools.

 

[Jouhou]

Why are we still talking about Baltimore? No, I'm serious, why? I lived there for two years before moving to Boston, it's a nice city, but it loses to Boston in basically every metric talked about here: education, local talent pool, public transportation, government, even its strengths like its hospitals are overshadowed by Boston's. Does anyone actually have any tangible data on literally anything Baltimore has over Boston?

Because I remembered that wapo was rooting for baltimore. If Bezos has real sway in the decision, Baltimore has better chances than anyone thinks. Keep in mind, I'm rooting for Philly for selfish reasons (I'd profit from Philadelphia office space absorption), so it's not like I'm being biased here.

 

[jklo]

Why are we still talking about Baltimore? No, I'm serious, why? I lived there for two years before moving to Boston, it's a nice city, but it loses to Boston in basically every metric talked about here: education, local talent pool, public transportation, government, even its strengths like its hospitals are overshadowed by Boston's. Does anyone actually have any tangible data on literally anything Baltimore has over Boston?

The biggest issues with Boston's bid is the lack of housing and I'm not sure if they will offer the kind of incentives needed to be competitive. Don't sleep on Newark btw.

 

[shmessy]

The biggest issues with Boston's bid is the lack of housing and I'm not sure if they will offer the kind of incentives needed to be competitive. Don't sleep on Newark btw.

Newark actually makes sense for an H2Q. The airport, the port, the land space, the Amtrak (the fast and efficient part of it from NYC to DC) the $5 billion in incentives the legislature just passed for it.........

 

[tangent]

If Harvard asked the state to spend $100,000,000 to demolish entire neighborhoods, do you think they would listen?

Not demolishing a neighborhood (hopefully that doesn't happen again like it happened in the West End), but the state is working with Harvard to spend a Billion dollars on a project to demolish and realign I-90 and create a new Research/Office Park (with some presumably mixed use?) at Beacon Yards.

Quite a bit larger in size than the Baltimore project that you cite in cooperation with Harvard (and maybe BU a bit)

 

[tobyjug]

Newark actually makes sense for an H2Q. The airport, the port, the land space, the Amtrak (the fast and efficient part of it from NYC to DC) the $5 billion in incentives the legislature just passed for it.........

And just because Newark is itself a bit of a Trumphole doesn't mean you can't commute in from Westfield, etc.

 

[odurandina]

The conventional wisdom that leveling crumbling slum housing (with streets barely wide enough to fit modern firefighting equipment) was a tragic mistake is tossed around very loosely around here (cue the violins).

Many of those buildings, half of which would have probably burned out long ago would have been extremely challenged to bring up to modern housing spec.

Bulldozing them wasn't the mistake. embracing dismal brutalist architecture (was).

Without eminent domain powers Boston would have sunken into obscurity.....

 

[statler]

Those crumbling buildings and narrow streets you speak of were very similar to ones you see in the North End today. In fact, there were plans to raze the North End as well. Do you feel it was mistake not to?

 

[odurandina]

No.... But the West End & Downtown renewal was as much a crucial strategic move to reignite the economic engine of Boston.

 

[tobyjug]

No.... But the West End & Downtown renewal was as much a crucial strategic move to reignite the economic engine of Boston.

I see what you did there: you slipped in a conjunctive to link downtown to your West End hypothesis.

Disagree, respectfully. The West End was and is a development dead end.

 

[statler]

If the West End was left alone, today we would be talking about the how the once 'crumbling' buildings now house million dollar condos and complaining about the gentrification of a once great working class neighborhood.

It happened to the North End, the South End, Southie, parts of Dorchester, and it is even happening out in East Boston. No way that trend would have passed over the West End.

 

[tobyjug]

Lenny Nimoy's house would be a scifi shrine.

 

[statler]

^^Gah! I get mad just thinking about what could have been.