Ottawa’s pitch to lure retail monster
Ottawa-Gatineau wants Amazon to build its massive second headquarters at LeBreton Flats — a secret only revealed now that the deadline for cities to bid for the giant project has passed.
Amazon is based in Seattle, but wants a second headquarters — HQ2 — in another city. The decision set off a bidding frenzy from North America cities, because Amazon expects to create 50,000 jobs.
Mayor Jim Watson recently said Ottawa was offering fewer than 10 candidate sites, but he wouldn’t name them.
Now the promotional video for Ottawa and Gatineau tells the full story in an aggressively paced sales pitch against a background of repetitive, rhythmic music.
“Amazon HQ2 in Canada’s Capital Region will be integral to, and integrated into, one of the largest and most transformational waterfront development projects undertaken on North America’s urban landscape in generations,” it begins.
“Amazon’s quest for a setting worthy of HQ2 happily coincides with the beginning of massive redevelopment projects along the shorelines of the cities and Ottawa and Gatineau on the mighty Ottawa River.”
Artist’s sketches of an Amazon future show shimmering, white office towers filling up much of the Flats area, overlooking a Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway with almost no traffic despite all the new offices, and the LRT.
And the video tells Amazon that “approximately 120 acres of pre-planned and close to shovelready public and private lands are poised for development. Amazon could step in on the ground floor of this generational city-building undertaking to establish an incomparable eight-million-square-foot urban HQ2 right on the edge of nature.”
Among the selling points in the video, created by Invest Ottawa:
An experienced tech workforce with colleges and universities nearby.
An international airport that’s a short flight from many U.S. cities.
Access to the Canadian government, the U.S. Embassy and diplomats from more than 130 other countries.
All the usual tourist attractions — winter sports, fall leaves, hiking, cycling, the National Arts Centre, the National Gallery.
A new NHL hockey arena in LeBreton.
Extra land in the suburbs if the Flats aren’t enough.
The website sales pitch looks forward to the day when the future “Amazonians” are settled here.
“HQ2 is located in one of Canada’s most connected cities, with competitively priced, redundant Dark Fibre connectivity that supports Tbps+ speeds,” the site says. “Since establishing HQ2, Amazon has become a major player in the Ottawa-based Centre of Excellence for Next Generation Networks, which Amazon counted on to make its deployment in Ottawa-Gatineau as simple as possible.”