Today, January 18, 2018, Amazon execs announced the 20 "finalist" cities. Why they failed to pick one seems odd unless those execs have in mind to shake down the city managers for more incentives.
The stated driver by Amazon execs is attracting future workforce. Almost thirty percent (27.6% or 4.7 million) of all U.S. college students attend school in one of ten largest metros.
- New York 1.06m
- Los Angeles 974k
- Chicago 502k
- Boston 346k
- Philadelphia 342k
- Miami 308k
- Dallas 303k
- Washington, D.C. 293k
- San Francisco 298k
- Houston 270k
Not surprisingly, the top five metros for college students made the HQ2 list:
- New York City
- Los Angeles
- Chicago
- Boston
- Philadelphia
Also, not surprisingly, Dallas and Washington, D.C. made the cut. Additionally, Newark, N.J. is part of the NYC metro. Montgomery County and Northern Virginia are part of the DC metro.
The entire province of Ontario has 515,000 students, which would rank it third for metros with college students.
The candidate cities that remain likely are not being considered seriously by execs internally. Keep in mind, the true goal is sped up employee recruitment.
- Indianapolis
- Denver
- Nashville
- Austin
- Pittsburgh
- Columbus, Ohio
- Raleigh, N.C.
- Atlanta
A 75-Mile Radius Report for total population for the major metros looks like this:
- New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA Metro, 24.6m
- Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington,, PA-NJ-DE-MD Metro 12m
- Newark, NJ-PA Metro, 12m
- Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI Metro, 10.6m
- Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro, 9.7m
- Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Metro, 8.3m
- Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metro, 7.6m
THE WINNER?
The likely winner comes from the Boston to DC corridor. And it should not surprise anyone if the winner ends up being Newark, New Jersey.
New Jersey legislators offered a kingdom to Amazon execs. Newark, New Jersey, as as subset of the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro has as many living within 75 miles as Philadelphia. With easy access to Manhattan (the New York of New York City) by mass transit and access to major airports (Newark, Kennedy, La Guardia) while having cheaper land than Manhattan, Newark seems to be the better call over NYC itself. Plus, a Newark location would let employees choose between city life and suburban life.
HQ2, A BAD STRATEGY BY AMAZON EXECS
In the comments to my previous work on HQ2, I wrote:
Still, I don't like Bezos / Amazon's strategy at all. I'd much rather have a as many headquarters as needed by function, which could be pulled up and moved if tax breaks / incentives fail to materialize upon expiry of existing ones.
NFL owners provide a good example of leveraging moving a franchise to get stadiums built or upgraded.
So Amazon could have a data center HQ, an R&D HQ, a drone delivery HQ, a warehouse HQ, and so forth. Each of these could sit where politicians of the day are most accommodating.
Amazon execs simply do not know what the future holds. Being distributed would give them flexibility.
If execs had five functional HQs, they could have dangled $1 billion for each one, which is roughly the price of one NFL stadium and they could have dangled 10,000 workers with another $1 billion annual income.
Under my plan, Amazon could have located these five functional HQs here:
Baltimore, Denver, Dallas, Calgary and your suggestion of Orlando.
They should site something in Canada to leverage their supposed two-week tech worker visa.
Who can predict the future? Computer-controlled cars will innovate life in the USA.
Having two HQs about equal in headcount will cause a rivalry. Departments and sections will keep secrets to keep projects in their domain. It's epic stupidity from the minds of Amazon execs to design the firm with two co-equal headquarters as they have billed this undertaking.
Amazon execs should break up the firm into functional headquarters and site those in regions to leverage extant work / talent / higher education ecosystems.
The execs should have dangled five regional centers at $1 billion each. Their recruitment would have been stronger being varied.
THE FUTURE, AN HQ3?
Well, owing to changing demographics in the USA, which includes a falling IQ owing to replacement Americans having inferior intellects relative to legacy Americans, the future isn't in the southern states nor is the future to be found in the Northeast.
The demographic future of the USA resides in the Northwest. That is where the future higher-IQ-on-average Americans will be found.
So expect future Amazon execs to build HQ3 where smarter Americans will be found.
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