Amazon HQ2 RFP

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DominusNovus said:
So, how about that giant tech company that is considering Boston as a site for their second Hq?
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Sounds like a great idea.
I don't think Amazon would invest so heavily in the Seaport area if they were planning on building a huge campus here.
 
i agree a lot of stars would have to align, but South Station area plan B would work quite well with gobbling up significant space in the Seaport.
 
Ruairi said:
Sounds like a great idea.
I don't think Amazon would invest so heavily in the Seaport area if they were planning on building a huge campus here.
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I suspect that the HQ2 search is a special team segregated from normal operations and that people outside that team have orders to continue "business as usual" with no regard for the HQ2 search. Any and all pending deals can be dropped or amended once a city is chosen, but Amazon cannot afford to freeze all expansion in the 20 best metros in North America just because ONE of them MIGHT become HQ2.

If they pick Boston as HQ2 and scrub this Seaport deal, nobody in Boston is going to complain. Giving even odds to all 20 cities, there is only a 5% chance of that happening. That makes proceeding with this deal (or ones like it in other cities) a safe bet for Amazon and a no-lose situation for Boston.
 
I suspect that the HQ2 search is a special team segregated from normal operations and that people outside that team have orders to continue "business as usual" with no regard for the HQ2 search. Any and all pending deals can be dropped or amended once a city is chosen, but Amazon cannot afford to freeze all expansion in the 20 best metros in North America just because ONE of them MIGHT become HQ2.

If they pick Boston as HQ2 and scrub this Seaport deal, nobody in Boston is going to complain. Giving even odds to all 20 cities, there is only a 5% chance of that happening. That makes proceeding with this deal (or ones like it in other cities) a safe bet for Amazon and a no-lose situation for Boston.
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This a thousand times. Also keep in mind it's a decade long build out with HQ2. A decade is a long time... a decade ago Amazon was very different.
 
fattony said:
I suspect that the HQ2 search is a special team segregated from normal operations and that people outside that team have orders to continue "business as usual" with no regard for the HQ2 search. Any and all pending deals can be dropped or amended once a city is chosen, but Amazon cannot afford to freeze all expansion in the 20 best metros in North America just because ONE of them MIGHT become HQ2.

If they pick Boston as HQ2 and scrub this Seaport deal, nobody in Boston is going to complain. Giving even odds to all 20 cities, there is only a 5% chance of that happening. That makes proceeding with this deal (or ones like it in other cities) a safe bet for Amazon and a no-lose situation for Boston.
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I hope you're right but I can't see them just scrubbing this deal if they locate HQ2 in Boston.
I also think one hand is definitely talking to the other with regard to ongoing Amazon expansion and the location of HQ2.
I don't see it as great news for Suffolk Downs but it could give a glimmer of hope for a campus based around South Station.
 
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TheRifleman said:
Amazon, one of the world's richest companies, to get up to $10M in property-tax breaks

https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/...e-of-the-worlds-richest-companies-to-get.html
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It is $2,500 per job created. That is peanuts and will be repaid through the new sales/property/income tax revenue from those jobs in a year or less. It is such a small amount, it isn't really clear why either side thinks it is necessary at all. There is nothing to be concerned over because of the small amount of money involved and the fact that it is tied to the jobs actually being created. The City only bears the cost if the City also gains a bunch of NEW taxpayers. It is a win-win for everyone including Amazon, the City, the Commonwealth, and the existing taxpayers. Once this initial tax break is recouped, Boston will have established Amazon as one of the city's largest private employers. That is a slam-dunk-home-run-win.

Compare to New Jersey's embarrassingly desperate offer of $7 billion for 50,000 jobs. That is $140,000 per job which would take 56 times longer to recoup. That is measured in generations rather than years.
 
More from your linked article:

"The company will receive a $5 million reduction in property taxes over a 15-year term for a 430,000-square-foot office it anticipates leasing in Boston’s Seaport Square development area, which would house 2,000 workers by 2025. Amazon could also receive an additional $5 million in property-tax reductions if it chooses to lease an adjacent building, which would also house 2,000 Amazon employees.

If Amazon were to lease both Seaport buildings, it would be required to create and retain a combined 4,000 new jobs “in or within 25 miles of the city area, but all within the commonwealth of Massachusetts,” the agreement states.

Jonathan Greeley, director of development review for the city of Boston, said the tax agreement was written with the intention of adding new jobs to Boston and Massachusetts and “not to pull employees from, say, Kendall Square” or the nearby 253 Summer St. office. Amazon anticipates employing 900 workers at the 150,000-square-foot Summer Street office, which is slated to open this spring."


*****So, Rifleman, to summarize: Amazon is getting "from the taxpayers" divided over 15 YEARS less than 50% a Boston Red Sox pitcher gets for ONE YEAR, while bringing 4,000 high paying tech jobs to the area.

I would like to encourage the city and the Commonwealth to greenlight something like this every day....and twice on Sundays.
 
On principle, I’d rather just see the tax lowered proportionately acrosss the board and a prohibition against offering special tax breaks to invite businesses, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
 
KentXie said:
As a follow up from what I mentioned earlier, something like this would give me pause about moving to Austin, if police confirms that this was racially motivated. It plays into the "we are not welcomed here" factor.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/15/us/austin-explosion-packages/index.html
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Cause Boston is an angel with regards to race relations :rolleyes:. But every city has some race problems, I don't think it would a dividing factor.

In fact I don't think that the red state blue state thing will have much of an affect on Amazon's decision.
 
tysmith95 said:
Cause Boston is an angel with regards to race relations :rolleyes:. But every city has some race problems, I don't think it would a dividing factor.

In fact I don't think that the red state blue state thing will have much of an affect on Amazon's decision.
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Gotta disagree with this somewhat. I can't believe it won't have some influence on the decision. Maybe not the dominant one but I don't see how you can keep business and politics separate in the real world.
 
Rover said:
Gotta disagree with this somewhat. I can't believe it won't have some influence on the decision. Maybe not the dominant one but I don't see how you can keep business and politics separate in the real world.
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I guess so. But with regards to the race relations thing, racism isn't rampant in Austin any more so then it is across the country. With regards to the link Kent showed, I think that is probably one guy or small group putting all of those out. They don't represent the city as a whole, and i'm sure that Amazon knows that.

And in my opinion some sort of race related controversy could just as easily happen in Boston. It's interesting how people around here always decry the racist south, yet Boston and many northern cities today are more segregated then most of the south.

I've heard this once before and I think it holds an element of truth. In the north white people don't have many black friends/neighbors, but they would vote for a black politician. People in the south would never vote for a black politician, but they are good friends with African Americans and interact with them throughout their daily lives.

Although Austin is a very liberal city, it is probably more like the north with regards to politics and race issues then it is like the rest of the south.
 
tysmith95 said:
I've heard this once before and I think it holds an element of truth. In the north white people don't have many black friends/neighbors, but they would vote for a black politician. People in the south would never vote for a black politician, but they are good friends with African Americans and interact with them throughout their daily lives.
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Plenty of black southern politicians, elected by white people.
 
DominusNovus said:
Plenty of black southern politicians, elected by white people.
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Source? My understanding is that there are plenty of black politicians in the south but they're in heavily gerrymandered districts that are like 70%+ black. I'd be curious to see if there are plenty of districts that are 50%+ white that have elected black politicians.
 
Why not just lower real estate taxes for all the local businesses? Instead of giving certain groups heavy tax benefits? If our leaders are so worried about jobs just lower taxes for all the local and small businesses to grow?

Why give away prime property to a billion dollar corporations that the taxpayers have been funneling billions in infrastructure costs around only to give the land away to the corporations for peanuts then claim its for job creation.

Lower taxes for all the businesses in Boston would create much more jobs than giving away prime property only to drive out the local residents with higher real estate costs to subsidize these corporations stealing prime property funded by the taxpayers in the billions
 
Because Amazon can go anywhere... local businesses don't have that option.
 
Re: Amazon HQ2 R

jklo said:
Because Amazon can go anywhere... local businesses don't have that option.
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You act like Boston needs Amazon. The average individual tax paying citizen in mass cannot afford the seaport but their tax dollars have been the main focus in that area for infrastructure. Now we are giving tax incentives to corporations as a discount to locate in that area which is already unaffordable to the majority of the taxpaying citizens in mass because we focused all tax dollars to make that area amazing on the waterfront. The corporations are pricing mass residents out of their homes based on driving up real estate costs throughout the surroundings of Boston with these types of dealings. As the only group of people that can afford this type of real estate is international elite or rich upper class citizens throughout the country.

How do you justify this?

There is probably some kid innovating at an MIT lab to generating a business model to put Amazon out of business in the future Located in Cambridge ma to only let our dumb fucking politicians continue to allow these big corporations to swindle priceless land deals where all the taxpayers money has been focused over the last 20years.
 
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Re: Amazon HQ2 R

TheRifleman said:
You act like Boston needs Amazon.
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Bezos seems intent on expanding his empire into other markets, far beyond retail and services like AWS... and has the capability to do so by using Amazon stock to buy into and dominate. There are sooo many jobs directly and indirectly that Amazon is going to kill at other companies that it's hard to ignore that there wouldn't be an impact on Boston if Amazon wasn't here at all. I don't think I would give these kind of incentives to any other company really.
 
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