Halifax confronts itself with Amazon bid

HA L I FA X • It started out largely as a cheerleading exercise, a way of touting Halifax’s best-kept secrets to show the world it’s open for business.

But Halifax’s bid to woo Amazon’s new corporate headquarters has morphed into something akin to a municipal mid- life crisis as the city delves into a round of soul- searching on what it really wants out of life.

Amazon, the e- commerce and cloud computing giant, is on the hunt for a location for a second campus in North America, with plans to spend $ 5 billion and create 50,000 jobs.

Halifax’s decision to enter the competition has set off a firestorm of debate about whether the city and i ts 425,000 residents are ready for the big leagues — or even want to play.

“Imagine i f we ne ver reached for the stars or took a leap of faith,” city solicitor John Traves wrote on Twitter.

Mayor Mike Savage admits t he city is a “dark horse,” but said Halifax has a shot.

“We’ve got the lobsters and donairs, fiddles and bagpipes, but that’s not a value proposition,” he said in an interview. “The value proposition is, we have the skilled labour, the tech sector, the quality of life.”

But critics say Amazon could pose an existential threat to what makes the city so appealing, turning it into a congested company town.

Ben Wedge of the Halifax Cycling Coalition pointed out in a column in the daily Chronicle- Herald that Amazon’s workforce would require one in five of the city’s current workers, and nearly a third of the office space.

“Halifax is too small, in the wrong location, and not ready to offer 21st- century transportation options,” he argued.

Even business l eaders have questioned the logic.

“Imagine if we put the creativity, money and time of an Amazon ( headquarters) bid into something actually achievable for Halifax,” Gordon Stevens, who owns Halifax’s Uncommon Grounds cafes, wrote on Twitter.

Still, Savage describes the bid as a capacity- building exercise, a chance to nurture ambition in an East Coast province that traditionally relied on shipbuilding and fishing but has become Canada’s fifth-biggest tech hub.

“We may be an outlier, but we think we’ve got a shot,” he said. “Everything that we’re doing as a city is pulling together our capacity to give us a sense of where we are and what we can go for.”

Halifax council will have a chance to review the city’s bid behind closed doors before it’s submitted to Amazon by the Oct. 19 deadline.

Savage said the coalition putting the bid together, including city hall, businesses, universities and local organizations, has identified a possible location for the Amazon campus in Halifax. But he said “we’re keeping it all close to our chests” until the deadline has passed.