After months of criticism regarding its HQ2 selection
process, Amazon called off its plans to build one of its
headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. In the
aftermath of the exit, the general public has blamed every party involved for
something: Amazon for selecting New York in the first place, politicians (in
particular the New York City Council) for vehemently standing against the deal
and the city and state of New York for pledging economic incentives for the
deal that would have cost as much as $3
billion.
But with no plan to reopen its search for a second HQ2
location, instead proceeding only with its planned Northern Virginia
headquarters, the question remains: where does Amazon go from here?
Three months after addressing
the criticisms of Amazon’s HQ2 selection process, the RTP team revisits the discussion by
sharing what the fallout of the New York exit means for Amazon.
Adam Blair, Editor: Covering
the often-mysterious doings of Amazon can bring out the latent
conspiracy theorist in me, so let me put on my tinfoil hat for a moment. The
online retailer’s precipitous pullout from New York City as the site for
its other HQ2 — HQ2.5? — only makes sense if Amazon’s real
goal was to rapidly gather up a ton of information from as many cities as
possible. Like many tech companies, Amazon is a hungry data vacuum:
many have said its Prime program is really just the company’s way of learning
everything about members, from what they eat and wear to what they watch and
listen to. The same with the HQ2 process: In the space of a little under two
years, Amazon got bids from 238 municipalities, and detailed
data from the 20 finalists. So when local opposition turned the prospect of
actually building a corporate campus in Long Island City into a major hassle,
Amazon didn’t use a threat to leave as a bargaining chip, the way sports teams
do when they want a new stadium. It just up and left — because it had already
gotten what it wanted.
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Glenn Taylor, Senior
Editor: Amazon will survive this just fine, but it does make me wonder if
the company will approach its protocol differently for any serious expansion
efforts going forward. If the company wants to build out an international
headquarters, will it embark on a similar path that it did before selecting
NoVa and Queens? I feel like the sheer amount of uproar that the HQ2
development generated basically means they won’t pull that kind of stunt again,
but in reality, nothing could really stop them from doing it. I would hope that
this would be a lesson in transparency going forward for the e-Commerce giant
(I know that’s expecting a lot from a
business of that caliber). Like I said in the previous Q&A that touched on
the topic, the moves to New York and D.C. really didn’t bother me as much as
the process to get there, and I think the people living in the area had a right
to be more than skeptical of any related motives, even if it meant bringing
more economic growth to the area. No one likes more traffic and higher rent
payments.
Bryan Wassel,
Associate Editor: While I don’t think getting chased out of one city will
have any effect on Amazon’s performance, I wonder what this holds for future
expansion. First blood has been drawn, and activists concerned about rising
real estate prices and gentrification nationwide have been shown that protests
can affect real change. This may not impact any future plans in smaller cities
where becoming an Amazon hub would be a serious boost in prestige, but other
major cities where housing costs are a bigger concern than adding a few
thousand jobs may be even more emboldened to oppose Amazon’s insertion into
their neighborhood. If nothing else, it may force politicians to be more
transparent in future bids — one of the major complaints about the
process was how opaque the entire affair felt for the common people, and giving
them access to the full details of each plan means proponents can offer
concrete information on why Amazon’s presence would be a benefit. Of course,
this could also mean fewer politicians woo Amazon in the future for fear of
officials getting voted out by unhappy constituents.
