Amazon’s “HQ2” Should Come to Atlanta
While I extol the virtues of Atlanta in particular, the entire state is a boon for businesses and I’d be happy if HQ2 lands anywhere in the Peach State.
Georgia is a fantastic state to do business, number one by some metrics–and Amazon loves it some metrics.
Atlanta is a logistical dream for Amazon, and if Amazon loves anything more than metrics it is logistics.
The city has four world-class business schools churning out the needed MBAs to run Amazon, a time zone advantage over Seattle, far superior weather, a massive tech-savvy industry, a desirable city for retaining talent, plenty of real estate to build a new hub….honestly I could keep going.
What other cities could rival Atlanta? Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Boston (where Amazon already is invested heavily) et al–they all have terrible weather, high costs of business and a lack of land.
Miami, the NC Research Triangle, Nashville, Austin those all seem to be the areas we’ll have to compete with and they all offer many of the same benefits of Atlanta.
Am I biased? Yes. No.
Believe me, Amazon.
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I’m curious, Ed – what does the Economic Dev. package need to look like? And is there such a thing as TOO generous?
1) Other than better than others I have no idea.
2) $5,000,000,001 is probably too much.
2) An economic development team can easily justify $5 bil, what forecasted variables would you like to adjust ?
KIA got $400,000,000 in incentives for 2,500 plant jobs plus another 5,000-7,000 supporting jobs at a typical average $18 / hr, with a significant fraction of the employees being Alabama residents.
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$400M / 8,000 jobs = $50,000 / KIA-related.
About $2.5B ought to do it for 50,000 Amazon jobs.
50,000 people? That’s amazing. Even in Atlanta that would be a big change. Many of those would have to come from elsewhere, changing the demographics of the city.
Though I’m not blind to the apparent economic benefits of this idea, I’m also not blind to the plain fact that Amazon is looking for a deal; they will go wherever they can get the best tax break, which means in the end, while I’m sure those involved in the deal will make out very well, the tax-paying people of GA will be the losers.
Further, seeing how big corporations were wielding political power during the heated RFRA debates in GA, I’m hesitant to bring in another one. These corporations, by threatening to leave and take their jobs when our representatives consider legislation they don’t like, proves that they don’t have GA’s long-term interest in mind the same way GA families do.
I also sympathize with Benevolus’s concern about changing the demographics of the city. Atlanta is already an extremely diverse place, and it is barely Southern compared with the rest of the state anymore. Diversity is a good thing to a certain extent, but the violent divisions we’ve seen lately are proving that we are already bursting the limits of heterogeneity that we can afford.