Amazon not warm on Ocean State
Boston, Philly, Newark among several East Coast regions on company’s ‘short list’ for new HQ – but not Rhode Island
When Seattle-based retail mammoth Amazon announced Thursday that Rhode Island didn’t make the list of 20 finalists still under consideration for the development of its second mega-base of operations, at least one economic development professional in northern Rhode Island wasn’t particularly surprised.
“I knew they wouldn’t be on the list,” said Scott Gibbs, president of the Economic Development Foundation of Rhode Island. “That’s not meant as a critique of the state or its efforts to secure this. They had to do it.”
Others in the economic development business weren’t as confident of the outcome as Gibbs, or maybe just not as candid. But one thing they all agree on is that competing for Amazon’s attention wasn’t a waste of time – it was an important exercise that may yet reap dividends for the state, and the region, in the future.
Simply mustering the focus and organizational discipline to bid for an investment on the scale Amazon proposes leaves the communities who took a shot at landing the big corporate fish better positioned for success the next time opportunity knocks, they say.
“There was value in competing,” said Pawtucket’s Director of Commerce and Redevelopment Jeanne Boyle. “We felt we checked a lot of boxes The opportunity to structure an economic development effort for a campus-like corporate proposal, the work we put into our Amazon pitch, I don’t think it was a wasted effort.”
Valued at roughly $356 billion at the end of 2017, Amazon has swiftly evolved into the nation’ dominant
retailer larger Best JCPenney Buy, than – with Wal-Mart, and Macy’s, a Sears net Kohl’s, Target, worth combined. announced Last that fall, the it was company seeking the country proposals to build from a around second headquarters – dubbed HQ2. The online behemoth said it would spend $5 billion on the project and need up to 8 million square feet of space to build a virtual twin to its Seattle campus, promising to hire up to 50,000 people for positions paying an average of $100,000 a year or more.
After Amazon considered applications from 238 cities in the U.S. and Canada, Boston was closest to northern Rhode Island and the only one from New England among the top 20 finalists announced Thursday. New York was the next-closest to the local region and after that, Newark, N.J.
The full list includes Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Montgomery County, Md; Nashville, Northern Virginia; Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Toronto. Also on the list were, Columbus, Ohio, Raleigh, N.C.; and Washington, D.C.
Pawtucket planted its hopes of attracting Amazon’s eye with an offer to redevelop a large swath of underutilized factory buildings near the Central Falls line that is already a work in progress as an extension of the MBTA commuter rail line. Combined with its reputation as the statewide hub of a burgeoning craft brewing industry and – with any luck – a future Ball Park at Slater Mill to succeed a retiring McCoy Stadium as home for the Pawtucket Red Sox – an Amazon deal would have put the city’s redevelopment plan on steroids.
“Obviously we were disappointed,” says Boyle. “We were up against really tough competition from the larger metro areas.”
In Woonsocket, Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt was pitching Amazon a stretch of River Street that included some undeveloped land near the Blackstone River and, like Pawtucket, old mill buildings that could have been demolished or retrofitted.
Pawtucket’s and Woonsocket assets were both part of a broader package that was assembled by the RI Commerce Corporation as the state’s bid for HQ2.
Just as her peers in Pawtucket, Baldelli-Hunt, too, dismisses the notion that making a pitch for Amazon was an exercise in futility. She says that putting together an application for a large corporate suitor isn’t just a dress rehearsal for success – it sends out a broader message that the city is open for business and ready to work with private investors.
“Any community that applied and put forth a plan and showed interest and potential sites for the expansion of Amazon’s second headquarters had let the world know they are welcoming new businesses to their communities,” she said. “Now this plan is available and potentially that could lead to new business and new enterprise coming into these communities.”
As president of the Economic Development Foundation of Rhode Island, Gibbs runs Highland Corporate Park, a roughly 490-acre tract of land straddling the Woonsocket-Cumberland line, with a combined 2 million square feet of office and manufacturing space. Roughly half of that is occupied by CVS Health, which has maintained its principal administrative headquarters in Highland Corporate Park for decades.
The main reason Gibbs was so convinced that Rhode Island never had a shot at landing Amazon is that the state’s labor force, housing availability and transportation infrastructure are no match for the scale of the online retailer’s gargantuan requirements.
But as sure as he was that the Ocean State was never a viable contender, Gibbs says he also realizes that the the state’s failure to step up would have also been unacceptable – and not just because of the opportunities Amazon offered as a economic development fire drill.
“To be seen as a legitimate location for investment, you’ve got to toss your hat in to the ring,” said Gibbs. Had the state chosen not to do so, he said, “The optics would have been negative. There would have been a bunch of people who hopped on the soapbox” and lambasted the state “for not trying.” Officials in Woonsocket and Pawtucket haven’t given up hope of some spinoff benefit from a major cash infusion from Amazon. It all boils down to Boston, they say.
If Boston can pull it out among the top 20 finalists, Boyle and other officials in the area say the city is close enough to Rhode Island to make a difference. Especially in Pawtucket, says Boyle, Boston-based jobs would be easily commutable for city residents from a new MBTA stop. The draw of high-paying jobs for residents in proximity to the MBTA is likely to change the calculus of the real estate market within a large radius of the train station, bringing in more professionals and jump-starting some new businesses.
Gibbs says some of those new residents would certainly be refugees from the Greater Boston area, where the real estate market, fueled by jobs in the vibrant “new economy,” is one of the most expensive in the nation.
A similar dynamic could be taking shape in Woonsocket as well, where the fledgling Boston Surface Rail Company proposes establishing commuter rail service to eight cities in three states – Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire – by 2019. At least one of those stops, Lowell, is within the orbit of Greater Boston.