Amazon allure
Business leaders want Amazon to expand here.
South Florida, the land of second homes for winterweary northerners, hopes to persuade Seattle-based Amazon that it is the perfect location for the online shipping giant’s second North American headquarters.
Economic development leaders say landing the $5 billion development would be transformational for South Florida, creating an “international technology hub” with all the ancillary businesses that would follow the company to the region.
The 8-million-square-foot, 50,000-employee campus Amazon envisions would be four times the size of the former IBM complex in Boca Raton and would have five times the number of workers that IBM employed there during its heyday in the 1980s.
Local business leaders have decided a team effort is needed to beat out the heavy competition from across the country and Canada, so the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance in Broward County, the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County and The Beacon Council in Miami-Dade County are putting together a joint proposal.
They’re hoping that
“warm and sunny” South Florida will be an alluring juxtaposition to “wet and cold” Seattle.
“We are the next metropolis that they should be looking at,” said Kellie Smallridge, CEO of the Business Development Board.
Since Amazon put out a request for proposals for a second headquarters this month, more than a hundred communities have already said they’re interested — including Los Angeles, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Chicago and Orlando. Even Gary, Ind., wants to be looked at. It took out an ad in the New York Times that admitted its proposal “may seem far-fetched,” but so was Amazon.com’s meteoric rise after starting operations out of the Seattle garage of owner Jeff Bezos.
Broward County Commissioner Michael Udine didn’t buy an ad, but he sent a letter to Bezos on Wednesday, touting the region — and in particular, his northwest Broward district — as a great location for Amazon, which had $136 billion in sales last year.
South Florida’s three business development boards will be coming up with potential sites in each of the three counties that could handle the project, whether through infill development or on currently undeveloped land. The proposal request says the company is looking for up to 100 acres.
The company’s Seattle headquarters is made up of 33 buildings and has 40,000 workers.
David Coddington, vice president of business development for the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, said the economic development Amazon would spur is so much greater than the more-normal wooing of businesses that would bring several thousand employees to South Florida.
“It’s beyond a gamechanger. You’re building a city within a city,” Coddington said.
Coddington and Smallridge said South Florida has the good transportation options Amazon is seeking, with three international airports and the soon-to-open Brightline commuter train that will serve Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and eventually Orlando. But a New York Times analysis, which picked Denver as the best choice for Amazon based on the company’s request for proposals, eliminated South Florida after it had made it to the paper’s final 14 because of its “weak transit and bad congestion rankings.”
In addition to a great climate and miles of sandy beaches, business officials say South Florida has a robust collection of colleges and universities, a strong workforce and attractive housing.
But the region is off to a slow start in the competition, which was announced just as people here were getting set to deal with Hurricane Irma. The deadline for proposals is Oct. 19. Officials say they will meet it.
“We’re savvy enough and sophisticated enough, as economic development boards are, to put something together,” Smallridge said. The team also expects help from Enterprise Florida, the state’s business-recruitment agency, which could put together an incentive package that would be available to any Florida community lucky enough to score the company’s headquarters.
Amazon, which spent $8.7 billion to acquire Whole Foods Market, recently announced plans to build an 885,000-square-foot fulfillment center at the OpaLocka Airport and bring about 1,000 full-time jobs to South Florida. It also opened a 50,000-square-foot Prime Now processing hub in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District in June for delivering groceries, electronics and other items to Amazon Prime members.