This is clearly a DoD play. The federal government as a whole is thirsty for cloud services and having a services provider like Amazon literally at their doorstep is going to win them a lot of work. If they do bring good experts to government work instead of what the typical government contractors in the area provide this will be a good thing for taxpayers.
People keep saying this and I really don't follow. Why does the DoD care where the headquarters of the parent company of their contractor is located? Are they gonna pop in and ask questions about the Amazon retail site?
Sure AWS needs a sales office in the region. And a datacenter. And a lobbying shop too. Pretty sure they got all that covered already.
Cloud services? This is a 2nd headquarters and Amazon is more than cloud services. They could handle the point you are making with simply a large local office. Not the entire company which is involved in a host of things that would make other areas more attractive.
This would effectively double the cost to DoD of any awarded cloud service contract to Amazon. In the form of higher cost of living for federal employees.
There are lots of other good things about the area- good schools, physical room for them to grow and take over a bunch of buildings, lots of engineers and business people in the area already, etc.
I'd be willing to bet Bezos knew with 90% confidence where he'd want HQ2 a year ago and put on this prisoner's dilemma game amongst states to reap the most benefit possible before moving there.
> put on this prisoner's dilemma game amongst states to reap the most benefit possible
It may be just one factor, but it is much more than that let me explain.
Let us say Bezos came to the conclusion that Northern VA is right place long ago as you said and naively announced the place & commitment. What follows next is 65% of the region people cheer at the announcement and 35% protest stating it will cause housing expensive and traffic congestion etc..
After some back and forth negotiations with local govt. Amazon builds it HQ2. By the time HQ2 complete building complete campus (3 years), the unhappy dissident group get more support and "pass local city and state laws" demanding Amazon should pay for some affordable housing projects and some new infrastructure which may run into few billion dollars.
Now with this new bidding game, it is hard for the people of Northern VA to demand Amazon. Even if they do demand few years down the line few billion dollars towards some affordable housing etc. Amazon can happily pack back some of those Billions they got as tax breaks.
One can't build a Trillion dollar consumer retail business without playing on basic human psychology.
Jeff Bezos owns a $23m house in DC. The entire HQ2 process was a farce to get cities to game theory themselves to death in favor of Amazon. HQ2 was always going to be in NOVA.
Just a stones throw away from Washington DC, imagine that. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Amazon is in talks to do billions of dollars worth of work with the DOD and that the location choice of the second headquarters might have a lot to do with that.
1. As you point out, right next to Pentagon and federal government.
2. Good transportation: right on the Metro and literally across the street from National Airport.
3. If you're going to have 2 headquarters, having them be on opposite coasts makes sense.
4. And I think another one that is pretty unique to Crystal City is that Amazon and their employees definitely want to be in a downtown, urban environment. However, most of the other cities on the list were either extremely crowded downtown, available sites were actually more out in the 'burbs, or the cities were far down in what a lot of people would consider "2nd tier" (or 3rd tier) cities. Crystal City is basically an urban suburb of DC that you could easily see having a great "vibe" for an HQ2, but still has room for Amazon to build out.
Aargh, I wish ONE tech company would put a HQ somewhere in the South. I currently live in the Bay Area working at a company I love, but I'll have to move back at some point (my wife wants to be closer to family).
Crystal City, VA is still an 8 hour drive from the part of the South I'm from. Atlanta, Raleigh, and Nashville have so much potential... I think if just one of FANG put a HQ there (or even an office), the others would quickly follow.
I feel like the South has a long way to come before the average tech worker would want to live and work there. You couldn't pay me enough (literally since comp is so low out there, but also kind of metaphorically as well) to go work and live in any Southern state. Maybe you need a critical mass?
- fellow Bay Area tech worker
Technically there are plenty of tech company HQ in the south. Just off the top of my head, RedHat, SAS and Epic Games are all in Raleigh.
As for the giant FAANG companies, I think the south is better off without them. They skew the market so much that it’s very economically disruptive, and since US cities are generally very resistant to building housing, I suspect that you’d see the big company offices would mess up the housing market anywhere they went the same way they have in SF and Seattle.
> "The company may be having similar discussions with other finalists."
The article sounds very speculative. I don't know anything about this place, but if it's expensive like people here say it is, then I don't see the point of Amazon moving there. I think a place like downtown Chicago would make more sense. (if only the winter was not as cold and better public schools...)
I used to live in Crystal city until 2011. Back then it was $1700 a month for one bedroom. Now it’s around $2200 a month for one bedroom. Putting their headquarters there will turn Crystal city into a very, very expensive parking lot.
Denver still makes the most sense to me. Single hop to Beijing & Shanghai, real estate and wages aren't at DC, Seattle, Bay Area rates quite. Lots of amenities (open space, good beer, close to skiing) that Amazon doesn't actually have to pay for. Decent tech scene (Google, Facebook, Uber campuses, as well as an ever growing Amazon dev presence). Large downtown property looking for a buyer and is probably underrated (Elitch Gardens). Decent public transit that's trending really well (new light rail within the past couple of years, and more coming out soon).
DC never made sense to me. The other defense contractors manage to not have HQs in DC.
I think this story is exactly what they'd leak if they were trying to buy real estate somewhere else.
That was my first thought as well, that they would have a hard time finding a more expensive place for every metric, from real estate* to salaries.
However I don't see Amazon and Chicago being a good match, culturally, if that makes sense, nor do I think there are compelling strategic reasons for basing this location there.
*edit: Based on snowwrestler's comment it sounds like Crystal City has seem some large occupants move out, so real estate prices may be trending down. However it's still a fair premium to pay to be next to the airport, compared to farther out (where you also have a high concentration of software developers.)
Amazing the amount of people here who takes this as some kind of truth instead of just a story that could have even been leaked for another purpose (perhaps even to gain more leverage with the area that they actually want to go to).
This is also the epitome of infotainment something that in the end won't even matter unless it actually happens other than to discuss the 'inside baseball' of the entire event.
How sure is anyone of this? Sure enough to go and snap up real estate (say residential) knowing that if it is correct that real estate will inflate in value well over whatever it is right now (already inflated).
Also I still am not seeing the advantage to Amazon (as long as everyone is speculating) of going into such a dense and expensive area to begin with. Jeff is all about efficiency and paying as little as possible. What possible advantage does he have but located in such an expensive area that is sure to get even more expensive.
I live in the DC area and this is entirely expected. Bezos owns the Washington Post and a very expensive DC home. Amazon's got data centers in Northern Virginia. We would've all been shocked if it went somewhere else.
I don't follow this line of reasoning. Jeff Bezos decides where to put Amazon's new HQ based on how quickly he can get home? Demand for his time is probably already spread all over the globe, I'd imagine many of his important meetings happen over phone/conference daily.
But the entire point of the exercise wasn't to make Jeff happier and shorten his commute, it was to find a way to continue to grow without overloading Seattle any more than it already is.
HQ2 needs to be somewhere that people want to live, with the room for lots of them.
I really was hoping HQ2 would go somewhere more conservative politically. There's plenty of people who would work for Amazon but aren't really excited by Seattle (I'm not one of them, but I know some).
Detroit specifically would have been perfect- low cost of living, lots of space to grow, great airport, lots of robotic/mechanical industry leaking from the failing car industry, plus UofM nearby. I don't know how they didn't make the finalists.
> [T]he best way to make it is you collect as much data as you can, you immerse yourself in that data, but then [throw all that data away and decide based on personal whim]
There was an old study that made the rounds, which I cannot find at the moment, that corporation headquarter moves overwhelming move towards the CEO's home. They do lots of studies and analysis and claims of doing what's best for the company, but in the end the primary driving force is the convenience of a single person (and everyone who reports to that person weighting and biasing to favor the desired outcome).
"Go with your gut" is code word for "which HQ2 city offered the greatest tax exemptions" ;-)
Oregon gave Intel a 30 year property tax exemption, worth $2B, to establish their their HQ2 fabs near Hillsboro. Wouldn't be surprised if Amazon is asking for similar.
That’s sounds worse than it is. I think a better phrasing would be “read as much information as you can, and then sleep on it and go with the first option your subconscious tells you to go with”. Or gut, or instinct or ‘feel’. Informed intuition is a wonderful thing.
This is no surprise, it was always going to be Virginia, or somewhere else in the east coast tech corridor. The whole "city competition" has been a grand scheme by Amazon to get cities (mostly those in the aforementioned area) to offer incentives to move there. No other states were ever in the running.
Given how wealthy that area already is I'm guessing not as much as other places would have been willing to give us (i.e. IIRC New Jersey and Chicago were offering some of the bigger tax incentives). It would be more because Bezos wants those gov't contracts badly than anything VA was offering.
Makes it easier for Amazon to lobby the feds. Not sure how I feel about this.
Also is this how skynet starts: they get some big government contract, it’s some military A.I. thing and then boom T1000s. I joke but still. I agree with the others that Bezos has this place picked all along. I was hoping he put it in Portland Oregon but the local government would have taxed him a ton or insisted on a union and Amazon wouldn’t have liked that.
Been looking to buy a house in the Northern Virginia area for about five years now, but the prices have climbed almost linearly, and never slowed down. If Amazon does settle here, I'll probably continue renting until I can GTFO. Microsoft also bought a large plot of land around Loudon county, on which they plan to build a campus.
If this area is to become the next Seattle, I have no interest in being here.
You're looking at it the wrong way. Instead of looking for a house to buy to live in, look at how you and others can get in on an apartment complex purchase.
Very unlikely it will be Crystal City. Based on parameters that news lifted on qualifiers for HQ2.
1. There isn't sufficient space for a large campus.
2. DCA is a small airport.
Loudoun county has a higher chance than Crystal City based on the above parameters. Of course, the parameters could have been wrong. And I would much prefer Crystal City over Loudoun, too.
I have heard that the HQ2 is supposed to be a kind of "domed city." If it is Crystal City, Amazon HQ2 has started a infrastructure formation using a subscription with a DCaaS.
If “domed city” is the atmosphere they’re looking for, Crystal City is definitely the right choice — the existing buildings there are all connected together by a warren of underground tunnels, which includes an underground shopping mall. Combine that with the Brutalist ‘60s architecture and you get a neighborhood straight out of a bad sci-fi movie.
Please. Don’t. Housing is terribly expensive here, and a second HQ would spike it grossly. Why not choose a place that needs the jobs and development??
Not great, but could be a lot worse. Crystal city is on two of the main subway lines. And has a Virigina regional rail and Amtrak stop. There is a pretty major bus depot there too.
The downside is one of the subway lines only runs every 13 minutes during rush hour. And that cannot be increased without decreasing runs on other lines (because they share a tunnel). Maybe Amazon will convince the governments to run more on that line (and take it away from the other lines).
edit: Forgot to mention that airport access is probably the best place in the entire country. You could basically walk to national airport.
There is one Metro stop directly in Crystal City, an express bus with dedicated lanes from another close station, and Metro is in the final planning stages to build a new station between those. The VRE, a Virginia light rail system that uses Amtrak tracks, has a stop in Crystal City. There are bus routes too, and bike lanes. And Reagan National Airport is directly adjacent.
Public transit to Crystal City is about as good as it gets. Which is good, because the road traffic sucks.
The metro is trying to improve the safety of the system after some fatal accidents a few years ago. The work force is unmotivated and maintainence reports are falsified. The wait times for the weekend suck and the system shuts down pretty early leading to fans at sports stadiums chanting, “metro sucks.”
Even with all that it’s one of the better transit systems in the US. Not as good as Chicago or NY, but for the size of city it’s good.
metro is somewhere between "incompetence that leads to dead passengers"[1], "shit's on fire, yo"[2] and "meh". Lately the biggest scandal is they turn down ads for the ACLU in favor of Northrup Grumman.
In any event it's generally minimally acceptable at best. Dumping a ton of people onto it will not help matters.
The traffic and congestion is already horrible. The cost of living is excessive. I don't understand why these companies - that can locate anywhere - want to lessen the quality of life for their employees.
Dc has very good public transport and crystal city is convenient to trains everywhere from ashburn and Dulles all the way around to Springfield. I live in Reston and take the silver line to work every morning.
As a Pittsburgher living in Seattle for the past few years, hearing this gives me hope. I know NIMBY isn't the best philosophy, but I make an exception for Amazon, who I think has done a number on Seattle and its culture.
Seems like an admission that they have nothing new to do so they are seeking growth through federal contracts.
Northern VA is the poster child of what happens when you have tons of growth over decades, but absolutely no planning, or worse, lots of nimby preventing infrastructure.
Arlington, VA probably did the best job of any post-WWII high growth city in America. The orange line corridor is actually urbanizing what was once pure suburbia. Crystal City/Pentagon city is built pretty densely and has space for even more high rise buildings.
Every other city in America that grew post wwII would have just built strip malls and single-family homes.
There are new high rises going up in Crystal city even as rents stagnated. Can't be too much nimby stuff going on.
Compared to say, silicon valley, they did a good job.
Loudon County did a bad job. Fairfax did a mixed job. They definitely grew in some places--like Tysons, but other parts have just grown without planning.
<Basically any popular urban center in the US in the past 50 years> is the poster child of what happens when you have tons of growth over decades, but absolutely no planning, or worse, lots of nimby preventing infrastructure.
Reston and Ashburn are two fully planned communities. A lot of thought went into Reston particularly. Almost every home is near a walking trail, a pool, and a small shopping center.
I still maintain that not picking Chicago would be a major mistake. I only think this because I want to see them take over most of the Sears Tower and convert it into a delivery drone launch site. A) How bonkers-cool would that look? B) Ideal test site for large scale drone delivery. Less drone power drain, since they would essentially be performing a controlled descent instead of a liftoff and descent. Asymmetric flight paths, like with the drone return around the 2nd-3rd floor, would allow more rapid launches. Grid street layout that makes actual sense, so easier on the AI/ML. Center of the country (ish), so longer distance delivery with solar powered drones might be viable.
Okay, I'll admit it. I just REALLY want to see streams of flying killbots emanating from my home town. The Robot Uprising is coming, people, and I'm hoping early allegiance leads to a nicer brain vat in their biocomputer.
Seriously, though, I would have thought Atlanta, Chicago, and Boston, in that order, would be better. Bi-coastal or geographic center make logistical sense. ATL and BOS have excellent tech resources, but maybe a bit too much competition for talent in BOS. ATL gives a presence in "The South", so could serve as a political/cultural foothold without any major compromises. ATL proved it can easily support a tech boom during the y2k bubble. BOS serves as a great gateway to Europe. CHI is really hungering for more tech influence and would probably bend over backwards to be accommodating. Plus, the most likely site in CHI is actually a great location for anyone that likes an urban setting, not just millennials. Amazon is one of the few tech companies that I think CHI could embrace because it has a strong influence on financial markets and doesn't feel as 'magical' as many tech companies (where it's hard for everyday people to understand what they do). And Chicagoans can be fiercely loyal, even to companies. Case in point - The Sears Tower. The only time you hear "Willis Tower" is on the news. And there are a couple dozen other cases of locals refusing to rebrand stuff simply because ownership or naming rights changed.
Being by DC isn't a BAD location, but it seems like it would be better to have a strong satellite location that can be expanded as needed. I would assume the atmosphere there is more restricted for some of their more ambitious projects involving lots of sensors and physical presence. Every location will have red tape, but it seems like there DC would be ordering it in bulk.
Amazon wanted an in-place tech-ready workforce, an environment that could appeal to yuppie urbanites, and a good transportation hub. Empty office space for quick bootstrapping and the ability to wring concessions were also major sweeteners. Bicoastal geography was also strongly suspected to be a major criterion.
That pretty much cut out any second-tier city from the running. When Montgomery County, DC, and Northern VA were all announced as finalists, it ought to have been pretty clear that Amazon was focused on the DC area. Crystal City itself is basically the description of what you're looking for in that list I gave. Atlanta doesn't really have anything when you take out the airport (which is lousily situated anyways). I suspect Chicago, NYC, and Toronto all have too much focus on other industries (and, besides, Illinois is basically broke, so a sweetheart tax deal needs to be discounted on the basis that Illinois could need to find the cash quickly).
Except for the weather, Chicago isn't a terrible choice. The problem is that no matter how great the city makes itself, it's still in "flyover" country. That's a difficult stereotype to break.
Chicago and its mayor worry too much about being a "world class" city. You know what world class cities don't worry about? Whether they're a world class city or not.
Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.
Yhippa|7 years ago
eli|7 years ago
Sure AWS needs a sales office in the region. And a datacenter. And a lobbying shop too. Pretty sure they got all that covered already.
benologist|7 years ago
gist|7 years ago
itronitron|7 years ago
virtuallynathan|7 years ago
blaisio|7 years ago
smokeyj|7 years ago
DevX101|7 years ago
LrnByTeach|7 years ago
It may be just one factor, but it is much more than that let me explain.
Let us say Bezos came to the conclusion that Northern VA is right place long ago as you said and naively announced the place & commitment. What follows next is 65% of the region people cheer at the announcement and 35% protest stating it will cause housing expensive and traffic congestion etc..
After some back and forth negotiations with local govt. Amazon builds it HQ2. By the time HQ2 complete building complete campus (3 years), the unhappy dissident group get more support and "pass local city and state laws" demanding Amazon should pay for some affordable housing projects and some new infrastructure which may run into few billion dollars.
Now with this new bidding game, it is hard for the people of Northern VA to demand Amazon. Even if they do demand few years down the line few billion dollars towards some affordable housing etc. Amazon can happily pack back some of those Billions they got as tax breaks.
One can't build a Trillion dollar consumer retail business without playing on basic human psychology.
teej|7 years ago
dev_dull|7 years ago
unknown|7 years ago
[deleted]
headShrinker|7 years ago
theDoug|7 years ago
Good work on 6+ months of press and making cities embarrass themselves for what seemed obvious from the start.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/news/a...
hn_throwaway_99|7 years ago
1. As you point out, right next to Pentagon and federal government. 2. Good transportation: right on the Metro and literally across the street from National Airport. 3. If you're going to have 2 headquarters, having them be on opposite coasts makes sense. 4. And I think another one that is pretty unique to Crystal City is that Amazon and their employees definitely want to be in a downtown, urban environment. However, most of the other cities on the list were either extremely crowded downtown, available sites were actually more out in the 'burbs, or the cities were far down in what a lot of people would consider "2nd tier" (or 3rd tier) cities. Crystal City is basically an urban suburb of DC that you could easily see having a great "vibe" for an HQ2, but still has room for Amazon to build out.
dhcgbgjb|7 years ago
unknown|7 years ago
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buboard|7 years ago
Running mate Zuckerberg?
throwaway713|7 years ago
Crystal City, VA is still an 8 hour drive from the part of the South I'm from. Atlanta, Raleigh, and Nashville have so much potential... I think if just one of FANG put a HQ there (or even an office), the others would quickly follow.
fierro|7 years ago
burlesona|7 years ago
As for the giant FAANG companies, I think the south is better off without them. They skew the market so much that it’s very economically disruptive, and since US cities are generally very resistant to building housing, I suspect that you’d see the big company offices would mess up the housing market anywhere they went the same way they have in SF and Seattle.
jupiter90000|7 years ago
noahl|7 years ago
DoreenMichele|7 years ago
https://saportareport.com/atlanta-region-can-brag-about-havi...
Just grabbing one at random and checking their website, you can find IT jobs at Home Depot:
https://careers.homedepot.com/job-search-results/?location=A...
That doesn't invalidate your wish. I'm just saying it is possible to find tech jobs there.
Additionally,there are some prestigious universities in Atlanta, including Georgia Tech, and there are government jobs, such as at the CDC.
redm|7 years ago
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/10/09/bay...
jdavis703|7 years ago
jimmyjazz14|7 years ago
romed|7 years ago
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totoglazer|7 years ago
jzymbaluk|7 years ago
clubm8|7 years ago
It's always been the case that DCA has a limited number of long haul flights.
It's nice to be able to WMATA to the airport but IAD is a short Uber away from Crystal City.
qaq|7 years ago
markstos|7 years ago
chrishynes|7 years ago
tinyhouse|7 years ago
The article sounds very speculative. I don't know anything about this place, but if it's expensive like people here say it is, then I don't see the point of Amazon moving there. I think a place like downtown Chicago would make more sense. (if only the winter was not as cold and better public schools...)
Overtonwindow|7 years ago
monocasa|7 years ago
DC never made sense to me. The other defense contractors manage to not have HQs in DC.
I think this story is exactly what they'd leak if they were trying to buy real estate somewhere else.
polynomial|7 years ago
However I don't see Amazon and Chicago being a good match, culturally, if that makes sense, nor do I think there are compelling strategic reasons for basing this location there.
*edit: Based on snowwrestler's comment it sounds like Crystal City has seem some large occupants move out, so real estate prices may be trending down. However it's still a fair premium to pay to be next to the airport, compared to farther out (where you also have a high concentration of software developers.)
bradleyjg|7 years ago
samstave|7 years ago
They could remodernize Detroit in a massively good way.
gist|7 years ago
This is also the epitome of infotainment something that in the end won't even matter unless it actually happens other than to discuss the 'inside baseball' of the entire event.
How sure is anyone of this? Sure enough to go and snap up real estate (say residential) knowing that if it is correct that real estate will inflate in value well over whatever it is right now (already inflated).
Also I still am not seeing the advantage to Amazon (as long as everyone is speculating) of going into such a dense and expensive area to begin with. Jeff is all about efficiency and paying as little as possible. What possible advantage does he have but located in such an expensive area that is sure to get even more expensive.
tvanantwerp|7 years ago
fierro|7 years ago
total guess, I have nothing to back this up
mabbo|7 years ago
HQ2 needs to be somewhere that people want to live, with the room for lots of them.
I really was hoping HQ2 would go somewhere more conservative politically. There's plenty of people who would work for Amazon but aren't really excited by Seattle (I'm not one of them, but I know some).
Detroit specifically would have been perfect- low cost of living, lots of space to grow, great airport, lots of robotic/mechanical industry leaking from the failing car industry, plus UofM nearby. I don't know how they didn't make the finalists.
jaggederest|7 years ago
> [T]he best way to make it is you collect as much data as you can, you immerse yourself in that data, but then [throw all that data away and decide based on personal whim]
endorphone|7 years ago
matchagaucho|7 years ago
Oregon gave Intel a 30 year property tax exemption, worth $2B, to establish their their HQ2 fabs near Hillsboro. Wouldn't be surprised if Amazon is asking for similar.
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2014/08/...
sudhirj|7 years ago
thucydides|7 years ago
nathankunicki|7 years ago
amanaplanacanal|7 years ago
dawhizkid|7 years ago
qaq|7 years ago
Twirrim|7 years ago
Endama|7 years ago
[1]https://youtu.be/wLtLz4wQtOg
rorygreig|7 years ago
unknown|7 years ago
[deleted]
gigatexal|7 years ago
Also is this how skynet starts: they get some big government contract, it’s some military A.I. thing and then boom T1000s. I joke but still. I agree with the others that Bezos has this place picked all along. I was hoping he put it in Portland Oregon but the local government would have taxed him a ton or insisted on a union and Amazon wouldn’t have liked that.
AdmiralAsshat|7 years ago
If this area is to become the next Seattle, I have no interest in being here.
aviv|7 years ago
rayiner|7 years ago
siggen|7 years ago
1. There isn't sufficient space for a large campus. 2. DCA is a small airport.
Loudoun county has a higher chance than Crystal City based on the above parameters. Of course, the parameters could have been wrong. And I would much prefer Crystal City over Loudoun, too.
clircle|7 years ago
ENOTTY|7 years ago
perpetualcrayon|7 years ago
sj4nz|7 years ago
smacktoward|7 years ago
Simulacra|7 years ago
tacomonstrous|7 years ago
rhino369|7 years ago
The downside is one of the subway lines only runs every 13 minutes during rush hour. And that cannot be increased without decreasing runs on other lines (because they share a tunnel). Maybe Amazon will convince the governments to run more on that line (and take it away from the other lines).
edit: Forgot to mention that airport access is probably the best place in the entire country. You could basically walk to national airport.
snowwrestler|7 years ago
Public transit to Crystal City is about as good as it gets. Which is good, because the road traffic sucks.
totablebanjo|7 years ago
Even with all that it’s one of the better transit systems in the US. Not as good as Chicago or NY, but for the size of city it’s good.
neurobashing|7 years ago
In any event it's generally minimally acceptable at best. Dumping a ton of people onto it will not help matters.
[1] https://www.aboutlawsuits.com/dc-metro-crash-lawsuit-filed-4... [2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/washington-d-c-s-metro-...
smacktoward|7 years ago
moron4hire|7 years ago
edraferi|7 years ago
tanilama|7 years ago
sjg007|7 years ago
trentnix|7 years ago
bilbo0s|7 years ago
But NYC is way too crowded. They'll need growing room.
7174n6|7 years ago
hak8or|7 years ago
The closer they are to a big city, the better, because they can attract more talent from the people already living close by.
empath75|7 years ago
unknown|7 years ago
[deleted]
otterley|7 years ago
dang|7 years ago
stevespang|7 years ago
[deleted]
viburnum|7 years ago
perseusprime11|7 years ago
dlbucci|7 years ago
jseliger|7 years ago
There are technologies that exist that allow more than a handful of people to live on a given unit of land.
tomohawk|7 years ago
Northern VA is the poster child of what happens when you have tons of growth over decades, but absolutely no planning, or worse, lots of nimby preventing infrastructure.
rhino369|7 years ago
Every other city in America that grew post wwII would have just built strip malls and single-family homes.
There are new high rises going up in Crystal city even as rents stagnated. Can't be too much nimby stuff going on.
Compared to say, silicon valley, they did a good job.
Loudon County did a bad job. Fairfax did a mixed job. They definitely grew in some places--like Tysons, but other parts have just grown without planning.
hn_throwaway_99|7 years ago
Could easily say that about SF, LA, Austin, etc.
beamatronic|7 years ago
xbkingx|7 years ago
Okay, I'll admit it. I just REALLY want to see streams of flying killbots emanating from my home town. The Robot Uprising is coming, people, and I'm hoping early allegiance leads to a nicer brain vat in their biocomputer.
Seriously, though, I would have thought Atlanta, Chicago, and Boston, in that order, would be better. Bi-coastal or geographic center make logistical sense. ATL and BOS have excellent tech resources, but maybe a bit too much competition for talent in BOS. ATL gives a presence in "The South", so could serve as a political/cultural foothold without any major compromises. ATL proved it can easily support a tech boom during the y2k bubble. BOS serves as a great gateway to Europe. CHI is really hungering for more tech influence and would probably bend over backwards to be accommodating. Plus, the most likely site in CHI is actually a great location for anyone that likes an urban setting, not just millennials. Amazon is one of the few tech companies that I think CHI could embrace because it has a strong influence on financial markets and doesn't feel as 'magical' as many tech companies (where it's hard for everyday people to understand what they do). And Chicagoans can be fiercely loyal, even to companies. Case in point - The Sears Tower. The only time you hear "Willis Tower" is on the news. And there are a couple dozen other cases of locals refusing to rebrand stuff simply because ownership or naming rights changed.
Being by DC isn't a BAD location, but it seems like it would be better to have a strong satellite location that can be expanded as needed. I would assume the atmosphere there is more restricted for some of their more ambitious projects involving lots of sensors and physical presence. Every location will have red tape, but it seems like there DC would be ordering it in bulk.
I dunno, just rambling.
jcranmer|7 years ago
That pretty much cut out any second-tier city from the running. When Montgomery County, DC, and Northern VA were all announced as finalists, it ought to have been pretty clear that Amazon was focused on the DC area. Crystal City itself is basically the description of what you're looking for in that list I gave. Atlanta doesn't really have anything when you take out the airport (which is lousily situated anyways). I suspect Chicago, NYC, and Toronto all have too much focus on other industries (and, besides, Illinois is basically broke, so a sweetheart tax deal needs to be discounted on the basis that Illinois could need to find the cash quickly).
reaperducer|7 years ago
Chicago and its mayor worry too much about being a "world class" city. You know what world class cities don't worry about? Whether they're a world class city or not.