Colorado makes pitch short ( 23 pages), sweet
Colorado’s pitch to entice Amazon for a second headquarters is amere 23 pages, excluding the 52- page appendix— a surprisingly concise document that officials believe is just enough for the Seattle conglomerate to make its decision, according to the proposal released publicly Thursday.
“It is not over the top. It is appropriate and that is what we were striving for,” said J. J. Ament, CEOofMetro Denver Economic Development Corp., the private agency that handled the state’s proposal to Amazon.
The proposal, shipped to Amazon in a customwooden crate, like a gift, includes 12 pages of the best Denver- area sites for Amazon to plop downall or part of a potentially 8 million square foot headquarters and up to 50,000 employees. But 11 of those pageswere blurred out becauseMetro Denver felt that sharing specific detailswould hurt its relationships with the landowners or affect its non- disclosure agreement with Amazon. Also blurred out was the potential value of financial incentives that the state plans to offer Amazon.
“We really do impair a private landowner’s ability to market his property or her property in the way they want to if we are disclosing what may or may not be there,” Ament said. “I came from investment banking. I think of it as insider trading of stock. We’re in possession of material, non- public information. Inmybusiness, you’d go to jail if you started talking.”
Colorado is limited by law as to what it can offer financially in tax credits and other incentives. Neither the governor, the state legislature nor Metro Denver can promise more, Ament added.
The state’s proposal named some possible incentives, including the job growth tax
credit; job training grants of up to $ 1,200 per employee; enterprise zone program offering income- tax credits for companies locating in distressed areas; in- state tuition benefits for employees; and local city incentives that every community “under consideration has developed … to support the build- out of Amazon HQ2.”
In a past interview, Sam Bailey, Metro Denver EDC’s vice president of economic development, said incentives could be “in excess of $ 100 million.”
On Thursday, Bailey said the state focused on talent, not incentives, and looks forward to Amazon’s contribution to the state if it picks Colorado. Amazon has said it could make $ 5 billion in capital expenditures in the new community.
“For us to bring in a corporate citizen ( like Amazon) will help us focus on some challenges we have, such as expanding our affordable housing. This may be a call to action to further expand our mass transit. The thought leadership this company brings also could ignite follow- on small business,” Bailey said. “You’ve seen through this process the companies big and small that we worked with to get this project done. Imagine a company like Amazon, with 50,000 jobs, that could really ignite the economy.”
The proposal starts with a letter from Gov. John Hickenlooper to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with a brag that Denver has more live music venues than Nashville and Austin, cities also vying for the HQ2. But it quickly touches on Colorado’s natural amenities, including its 58 peaks over 14,000 feet, and entertainment options, like Red Rocks Amphitheatre. A map of hospitals and health care facilities plus colleges and universities locations gets you to page five.
A large chunk of the appendix are letters from university leaders plus case studies of existing and recent corporate imports or home- grown talent, from ArrowElectronics to Ibotta and Google.
By comparison, Massachusetts released its entire proposal online, a 182- page tome. The San Francisco Bay Area’s pitch is about 160 pages. Washington D. C.’ s offered about 70 pages.
Two pages of Colorado’s proposal focus on the region’s accessibility to Seattle and the rest of theworld because of Denver International Airport.
“DEN is the fifth busiest airport with the third- largest domestic air service network in the nation,” reads the proposal, which included a chart showing howthe Denver airport has more daily flights to New York andWashington, D. C., than the Seattle airport does.
There are also two paragraphs about public transportation in Metro Denver and a nod to the Colorado Department of Transportation’s innovation efforts with autonomous vehicles like Otto, the self driving truck that delivered beer to Colorado Springs.
While eight locations were featured because they met Amazon’s requirement of being within 30 miles of a population center and 45 minutes to an international airport, all 30 sites submitted by cities and developers were included, if only as a list.
“We wanted to highlight and provide the information of all the other sites that could be adaptable for an HQ2, as well as a followon investment,” Bailey said Thursday.
Three areas in particular did not meet the cut. But, Ament said, Metro Denver reached out to economic development officials in Castle Rock, Fort Collins and Weld County to help advise the project.
“We got more than 30 different locations and more than 400 documents that are professional staff here reviewed along with the professional staff that works with the governor,” Ament said. “No political person picked a location. It was all done by professional staff.”