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Amazon Picks New York, Northern Virginia For HQ2 [Update: Confirmed] (washingtonpost.com)
The Washington Post is reporting that Amazon has picked New York's Long Island City and Arlington County's Crystal City neighborhoods as the company's second headquarters (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source). The two locations will split the duty and will reportedly bring the cities an infusion of jobs and tax revenue. From the report: Amazon will open major new outposts in Northern Virginia's Crystal City and New York City, splitting its much-sought investment of up to 50,000 jobs between the two East Coast sites. The choice of Crystal City in Arlington County as one of the winners would cement Northern Virginia's reputation as a magnet for business and potentially reshape the Washington region into an East Coast outpost of Silicon Valley over the next decade.
It also represents a victory for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), who had joked that he would change his name to "Amazon Cuomo" if necessary to land the prize. Amazon's decision to split the project rather than open a second headquarters on par with its Seattle campus has angered some who said the company had ginned up competition among cities only to change the rules midstream. Some said it was unfair that the company seemed to be considering only sites in more affluent communities. Updated on November 13, 15:10 GMT: Amazon on Tuesday confirmed that it had selected New York City and Northern Virginia for new headquarters. In a statement, Jeff Bezos said, "We are excited to build new headquarters in New York City and Northern Virginia. These two locations will allow us to attract world-class talent that will help us to continue inventing for customers for years to come. The team did a great job selecting these sites, and we look forward to becoming an even bigger part of these communities."
It also represents a victory for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), who had joked that he would change his name to "Amazon Cuomo" if necessary to land the prize. Amazon's decision to split the project rather than open a second headquarters on par with its Seattle campus has angered some who said the company had ginned up competition among cities only to change the rules midstream. Some said it was unfair that the company seemed to be considering only sites in more affluent communities. Updated on November 13, 15:10 GMT: Amazon on Tuesday confirmed that it had selected New York City and Northern Virginia for new headquarters. In a statement, Jeff Bezos said, "We are excited to build new headquarters in New York City and Northern Virginia. These two locations will allow us to attract world-class talent that will help us to continue inventing for customers for years to come. The team did a great job selecting these sites, and we look forward to becoming an even bigger part of these communities."
if you were planning on more than one location, you wouldn't pick the same coast, because of hurricanes and similar electrical grids.
massively overcrowded, horrific traffic, insane cost of living.
Unless someone likes living in an over crowded over priced city with a pile of east coasters.....No thanks!
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I had been hoping that Amazon would choose a city that could handle to have a large company like Amazon show up; instead, Amazon picked two cities/regions that already have ridiculous issues with real estate. NYC at least has a semi-functional public transit system, but my understanding with DC is that the metro doesn't stretch out far enough to accommodate most people living in the suburbs, resulting in long commutes. There are a number of cities that would have been a better choice and probably handled Amazon's impact on real estate much better (Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Miami).
The fix was in. Ha ha if you thought there was an actual competition for the HQ. Should have sold him a new residence first...
I bet the recipients gave out the full set of perks even though the site was split so they get only half the jobs if that. Tricked again. No wonder that he has billions and they have to lean on the taxpayers again.
In my own case, a VP moved the whole division 25 miles so he could be closer to his hockey rink. Though in that case, he happened to shorten my commute to 3 miles.
A huge percentage of the people who have to do that commute don't live anywhere near VRE or DC Metro. For many of us, the time to get to a rail station is a large chunk of the drive.
"Live closer"
Ok, we'll get right on that. Nevermind that our area has a fetish for high end, luxury homes that are only affordable if you have dual incomes well over $100k.
Going after military money, makes sense to me.
NYC is planning to close the Riker's Island prison. Close it, sell it to Amazon, make it HQ2. It already has housing pre-built and a fence to keep the techbros from wandering into the water. What's not to like?
But it's not perfectly fine for Cuomo and de Blasio to give said tax breaks.
NYC is if not the highest, then close to the highest taxed city in the nation.
We have a federal, a state, and a city graduated income tax. And believe you me, everything else has a tax or a fee here.
Amazon is going to put significant load on the city. Rents are going to go up, the MTA will be further overloaded.
They want to be at the center of the financial world, fine. Let them pay the taxes everybody else pays.
Check your premises.
This is the truth! I live in Brunswick, MD (origin point for the "Brunswick line" for the MARC commuter rail line in Maryland). CSX constantly does anything in its power to disrupt the MARC and make it appear the lines are overcrowded. Since I live about a block from the train yard, I can tell when pretty much every train passes through. And it's quite common that there will be no train coming through for hours at a time, but during the time window when the MARC runs? Mysteriously, they have all of this freight rail traffic too, and have to make the MARC wait behind a freight train.
To CSX, commuter rail is simply a nuisance that creates more scheduling hassles for them.
Ideally, they'd build another set of tracks that the MARC could use exclusively, or at least in some kind of shared agreement with CSX where MARC gets priority on them. But the last time I saw this proposed, the funding was never approved (after some haggling and debate that led to a watered down proposal of adding an extra track only between a few communities in the DC suburbs like Gaithersburg and Rockville).
NYC has its advantages...
Of course it does. That many people don't live there by accident.
(a) culture, theater, etc
You think these things don't exist elsewhere? NYC has great options to be sure but so do pretty much every other large city in the US. Folks from NYC like to imagine they have options nobody else has which simply isn't true. I live in the midwest and can be in a world class art museum within 60 minutes of leaving my house. My metro area has opera, playhouses, excellent museums, major universities, outstanding restaurants,
(b) public university is cheap, like cheaper than the UC system and great. Many of the CUNY schools have affiliations with research institutions, so it's easy for undergrads to do research
There are public universities that are reasonably affordable in most states. CUNY is a pretty good deal though.
(c) you can walk or take public transit most places. Your kids can be independent, not dependent on a car or having someone to pick them up
Needing a car sometimes to get around does not preclude independence. If you are being fair, having to depend on public transit to get around has some pretty serious limitations too, especially in the US. I live in a small town with a walkable downtown, restaurants, shopping and parks. I also have 16,000 acres of public park within a 10 mile radius of my house with every outdoor activity you can imagine and which NYC residents could only dream of. People from NYC like to think Central Park is something special but compared to what I have access to here in the Midwest it's a sad ugly joke. They only think it's amazing because Manhattan is so disgusting otherwise. Don't get me wrong, NYC can be a great place but living elsewhere is definitely not limiting.
(d) a lot of really interesting people -- diversity is a good thing.
True and I like the diversity too but having a lot of people (quantity) is both a positive and a negative. Personally I like living somewhere a little less over crowded and quieter. Your mileage may vary of course. I live near a major college town which gets the same benefits of diversity without the massive overcrowding.
Go fuck yourself.
Thanks.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Well - certainly the politicians acted in their own best interests. NYC politicians are really, really good at that.
Check your premises.
"In addition, Amazon announced that it has selected Nashville for a new Center of Excellence for its Operations business, which is responsible for the companyâ(TM)s customer fulfillment, transportation, supply chain, and other similar activities. The Operations Center of Excellence in Nashville will create more than 5,000 jobs with an average wage of over $150,000."
load "linux",8,1
Not needing a car is a HUGE increase in independence for YOUR KIDS, who can't drive, though.
It really isn't. Where I live children can walk to their friends houses, quite a few can walk to school, they can walk most areas of our town, the movie theater, and they can easily get rides places even if I'm not there to provide them. I'm not really sure how you think they are being limited without the sort of public transit available in NYC. Sure they need cars sometimes too but this is hardly some huge crimp on their lifestyle. I went to college on the east coast not far from NYC and I've spent lots of time in other cities like Chicago with good public transit so I've seen it all first hand. Good public transit is great but it really wouldn't be a game changer with regard to lifestyle for my daughter.
They can walk themselves to school after age 10 or so, take public transit to/from high school and after-school events.
It's absolutely routine for children to carpool where I live and in many cases they can walk where they need to go. School buses transfer them to/from home. I think you are making it out to be more of an advantage than it really is and I speak from first hand experience.
As far as parkland, if you're talking about a 10-15 miles radius of NYC, we probably do have 16,000 acres of parkland.
No you most certainly do not and most of what you do have is scattered about and barely would qualify as a park in the sense of what I'm talking about. Literally a quarter mile from my door I have a 4000 acre park (central park is 840 acres for comparison) with a nature center, 18 hole golf course, discgolf course, two beaches, a water park, an 8 mile multipurpose trail, 30 miles of hiking an equestrian trails, a working farm park, boat rentals, camping, cross country skiing, ice skating in winter, dozens of pavilions, picnic areas, fitness courses, animal rehabilitation center, a toboggan/sledding hill, horseback riding, boat docks, fishing, and more. Plus this 4000 acre park is contiguous with 2 other similar sized parks via trails and roads. There is nothing even remotely similar within 20 miles of Manhattan.
Now to be fair, I don't have much in the way of restaurants open 24/7, I have shitty public transit options when they exist at all, I do have to drive quite a lot, getting stuff delivered is a pain, and there are certain conveniences of living in a dense urban area. Nothing is perfect in every way. We have better parks but worse conveniences. We have bigger/nicer homes for much less money but have to go further to get where we want to go. Tradeoffs...
GNAA Post
You fail it. You will never troll as hard as Amazon trolled 20 cities with their HQ2 "selection" con game. It is the most epic troll of my lifetime. The cities were obviously chosen ahead of time.
If you doubt that, consider the following: JeffB has 3 houses. Amazon will have 3 HQs. The average distance between a HQ and a JeffB house will be 6-7 miles (depending on exact location). The whole thing was a con game to bilk the cities.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.