USA TODAY International Edition
Cities are using HQ2 bids to jump-start old projects
Win or lose, Amazon is leaving an imprint
SAN FRANCISCO – By definition, 19 cities on Amazon’s list of potential homes for its second headquarters won’t make the cut.
But even if they don’t win the golden ticket – as many as 50,000 tech jobs and a $5 billion investment – Amazon may be leaving its stamp. In many of the sites, the bid has given a push to housing, transit and education projects that had languished, sometimes for years.
Cities that might not have listened to “fancy urban planner talk will listen when it’s Amazon,” said Barry Broome, CEO of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council. The group helped craft the city’s bid after Amazon in September announced it would pick one metropolitan area to build its second headquarters, setting off a North American frenzy for the high-tech jobs and bragging rights.
California’s sixth-largest city failed in January to make the second round of headquarters potentials. Still, the prospect jump-started transit and education efforts in the area.
It’s common for states and cities to make promises about infrastructure upgrades and to move projects forward to entice companies to relocate, but “I’m not sure we’ve ever seen it on the same scale as the Amazon HQ2 search,” said Sean Slone, director of transportation and infrastructure policy at the Council of State Governments. ❚ Georgia, D.C. transit projects finally progress: In Georgia, where Atlanta is still in the running, Gov. Nathan Deal told local reporters he has updated Amazon on progress on a $100 million bus rapid transit system being built along a congested corridor that runs through Atlanta.
Known for horrible traffic and an underdeveloped transit system, it was only in May the state created a unified regional transit system, to be called the Atlanta-region Transit Link Authority.
Farther north, the three regions near the nation’s capital vying for the bid have finally pushed through a longstalled transit initiative. The District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia have each agreed to provide a share of the $500 million a year for the region’s aging Metro system. It wasn’t until March that Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan agreed to support the funding push.
The cities’ initiatives all were in the works long before Amazon first announced the bidding process. But in the effort to pass needed projects, their supporters are using the lure of Amazon to bring naysayers to their side.
“Cities will use all kinds of strategic and initiatives to increase the importance and urgency of projects. When you can create a sense of urgency or some kind of imperative, you can heighten the importance of projects that the public usually rejects,” said William Riggs, a planning strategist and professor at the University of San Francisco. ❚ Job training plans shift: Amazon’s influence over a city, which played out in a raucous and unusual fight with Seattle’s city council over a proposed “corporate head tax” to support affordable housing, could be seen in these initiatives. Good transit and transportation, ample housing and access to a highly trained workforce all were prerequisites to a winning city, Amazon said.
And that sway has pushed some cities to prioritize particular efforts, especially in transit and education. In Sacramento, the council pushed to shift local job training programs toward tech and away from programs such as health care and construction.
The Greater Washington Partnership in the D.C. area is creating a plan for a college credential that will be available to tech graduates at 13 universities in the region, highlighting their competency in data analytics, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
These efforts raise questions about whether the features Amazon wants will be of interest to other companies.
“There are examples where cities build custom infrastructure or make counterintuitive investments to woo companies or events – one of the best examples being attempts at hosting the Summer Olympics, where unneeded infrastructure investment has led to massive cost overruns,” Riggs said.
But Sacramento’s Broome is convinced that pushing job training opportunities to include tech skills is helpful because of the ways the digital revolution is disrupting everything from retail to distribution to farming.
In Kansas City, Missouri, which didn’t make the Amazon cut, the state is changing rules covering computer science courses, helping increase the home-grown talent in the area, as well as providing funding to train computer science teachers.
“You can draw a loose line between Amazon and the legislation that just passed,” said Ryan Weber, president of the KC Tech Council, a regional advocacy group. “I think it was made a priority because of the Amazon response.” But efforts will pay off no matter what types of businesses the area lands, he said. ❚ Some projects still failed: Some of the shortlisted cities may have had their chances hurt by political developments that have stalled out transit initiatives, Slone said.
For example, in May voters in Nashville, Tennessee defeated a $9 billion plan that would have built a regional transit network anchored by light rail.
An effort to overturn Indiana’s ban on light rail failed in the state Senate in March. City and business leaders had argued they needed all mass transit options on the table to attract Amazon. “This isn’t about Amazon, but it is about opportunities like Amazon, certainly, where we would be able to compete for a lot of great paying jobs and reinvesting in our community,” Mark Fisher of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce told The Indianapolis Star.