Amazon said no to cactus, yes to data looking for a new office

The search for a second headquarters for four months of Amazon leads to an anticlimatic conclusion: the company would choose at least two smaller sites and would probably use data from hundreds of cities that had asked to plan for the longer term . , more progressive expansion.

During its highly publicized selection process, Amazon gathered information from 238 municipalities that have entered the race for the e-commerce giant's next campus, promising to create 50,000 new jobs in the technology sector. and offering a $ 5 billion investment. Cities from coast to coast to coast and even from Canada have let go of offering incentives ranging from tax breaks to a 20-foot cactus and even renaming the cities and politicians themselves. same.

Amazon respectfully refused the cactus. However, according to Richard Florida, professor of urban studies at the University of Toronto, he has kept free information of hundreds of millions of dollars from cities to create the world's largest database of institutional sites. The highly publicized hunt for Amazon looking for QG2 was a "trick," he said. "I've always thought that it was not a site and was part of a company implementation strategy to find different sites." and different talents, "said Florida. "Two and three headquarters are just the beginning." Amazon has not responded to a request for comment.

Amazon launched one of the largest municipal contests in the US in September 2017 and was quickly flooded with information from cities about their transit systems, talent pools, available real estate and tax incentives. worth billions of dollars. He has announced 20 finalists and is expected to make a final decision by the end of the year.

As research winds down, Amazon would now divide its upcoming institutional sites between Long Island City in New York City and the Crystal City area in Arlington in northern Virginia, near Washington DC, according to people close to the issue.

The process was public enough to give Amazon a valuable advertisement as a coveted company while keeping hidden most of the details of each city's bid, which maximized Amazon's bargaining power and would bring its fruits for years to come, "said Jed Kolko, chief economist at Indeed.

"Amazon now has an idea of ​​what cities would be willing to offer and possibly projects to invest in local infrastructure," he said.

Google has taken a similar approach by launching its Fiber Fast Internet experimental service almost a decade ago. The Web giant and the Alphabet Inc. unit sent out a "request for information" and hundreds of cities responded, including one who proposed to rename themselves "Google". Google has collected valuable data on how cities are managing the development of telecommunications and utilities and what municipalities are willing to compromise.

In the future, Amazon will probably be less reliant on site selection consultants, who often receive commissions based on incentives that help businesses secure their governments, said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, which monitors government investments in businesses. Amazon has fueled an economic boom in his hometown of Seattle, where he is often blamed for traffic problems and soaring housing costs that is forcing some residents to leave the city. By choosing more than one location, he may seek to avoid criticism that his arrival will encroach on local infrastructure.

Julia Pollak, economist for the online job market ZipRecruiter, said the group's bid to Amazon's head office was a "very smart" power game that would likely result in the goliath of e-commerce spreading in several cities. Other cities on the Amazon shortlist announced in January include Atlanta, Dallas and Miami.

"They courted all these cities and forced them to reveal their willingness to pay premiums," Pollak said. Although Amazon divides the size of its next campus, city officials have "already revealed their cards," she said. The advantage of moving to various locations in North America is access to more lawmakers and powerful allies to help lobby for government contracts, Pollak said.

Each city has its advantages: New York has talent in finance and marketing, Washington DC is near Capitol Hill, Miami has links to Latin America, while Toronto is a way to protect against restrictions on immigration to the United States. "It's not one or two cities," tweeted Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.