Some councillors don’t share mayor’s enthusiasm over Amazon
Not everyone at Vancouver city hall seems as excited as the mayor about the city’s prospects of luring Amazon to open a second headquarters here.
But the agency leading the effort to bring the tech giant to Vancouver says it is set to meet next month’s bid deadline, and is consulting with stakeholders including local governments outside the city limits and around the region.
At Tuesday’s Vancouver city council meeting, the first session back after the summer break, Green Coun. Adriane Carr questioned Mayor Gregor Robertson’s recent public support for an Amazon bid. The Seattle-based online retailer announced earlier this month an invitation to North American cities to submit proposals to attract the company to spend $5 billion to build a second corporate headquarters.
Carr told the mayor and council she had a series of questions, starting with: “Did I miss something?”
“This is a very, very major undertaking,” Carr said. “If I missed something, let me know. But how and when was council informed about this bid going forward?”
Carr asked why the issue wasn’t on Tuesday’s council agenda for discussion, noting the fast-approaching deadline to submit the proposal is Oct. 19. Carr, Vancouver’s lone Green councillor, raised concerns about housing, transportation and impact on local businesses. Robertson said he would respond in his role as chairman of the Vancouver Economic Commission, the organization leading the bid. The commission, Robertson said, is charged with pursuing economic development and job-creation opportunities, “so this fits completely within the scope of what the Vancouver Economic Commission does.”
The commission recently held a meeting with a number of stakeholders including Metro Vancouver, Robertson said, “because this bid clearly has a more regional context to it.”
The regional nature of the bid was apparent in a list, provided Tuesday by the economic commission, of more than 20 companies and government bodies who met last week at the commission offices for a bid briefing, including representatives from the cities of Richmond and Surrey as well as Metro Vancouver and the federal and provincial governments.
Outside council, NPA councillor George Affleck expressed skepticism about Vancouver’s chances with the bid, describing it as “a make-work project for the Vancouver Economic Commission.”
One challenge for Vancouver might be Amazon’s stated aim of finding a greenfield site of 100 acres (around the same size as the Langara Golf Course in Vancouver), “in proximity to each other to foster a sense of place and be pedestrian friendly.”
Asked about the greenfield space, a representative for the commission’s Amazon task team sent an emailed statement saying: “We are working closely with cities and landowners to identify space. There are several options the team will be reviewing, but it would be premature to discuss them at this early stage.”