Halifax makes a pitch to Amazon
Lobsters, bagpipes — and startups part of city’s appeal
Halifax may be one of the smallest cities vying for Amazon’s second headquarters, but what it lacks in heft it makes up for with lobsters, beer and a new generation of startups, according to its mayor.
The city of 403,000 on Canada’s east coast has traditionally relied on fishing and shipbuilding but has been expanding into technology, attracting major firms such as IBM.
“Lobsters and fiddles and bagpipes are really cool but they’re not a value proposition,” Mayor Mike Savage said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Toronto office. “There’s no better place in the world to have a drink than Halifax at our many bars and restaurants, but it doesn’t pay the bills. So we’ve been trying to add to that over the last number of years.” Here’s Savage’s Amazon pitch: Millennials: The city has long struggled with its demographics, with nearly a quarter of the population over the age of 60. But 2016 marked a shift: the 25-to-39-yearold cohort increased by a record 3,800 people, as the job market improved. Halifax is also growing via immigration, with the province of Nova Scotia accepting 1,000 Syrian refugees so far, and international students, who comprise 20 per cent of university enrolments.
Affordable housing: The average price of a property in Halifax was $288,000 in August, about one-third of Toronto’s and a fraction of the equivalent $852,000 in Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. Housing starts have risen 37 per cent in the first six months of this year.
Burgeoning tech: Companies haven’t looked to Halifax traditionally as an innovator, Savage said. “They’ve seen us more as a girlfriend than a wife, or a boyfriend than a husband,” he said. “You visit, but you don’t necessarily stay, ya know?”
“That’s changing.”