Mayor vies for tech retail giant’s second head office
Add Gregor Robertson’s name to the growing list of North American mayors trying to lure U.S. tech giant Amazon to their cities.
Amazon announced on Thursday that it is hunting for a site for a new headquarters in North America, in addition to its sprawling Seattle campus.
On his Twitter account, the Vancouver mayor said his city is interested in landing the tech hub.
“Great news! Amazon would be fantastic addition to Vancouver’s world-class innovation ecosystem,” Robertson wrote.
The Vancouver Economic Commission says it is currently reviewing the Amazon HQ2 request for proposals with the intent of putting forward a bid.
“Just looking at the size and significance of (headquarters) ... it’s certainly causing a lot of excitement here,” said VEC media contact Ingrid Valou.
Valou said the Vancouver Economic Commission proposal would include input from local business stakeholders and other levels of government.
Amazon says that it will spend more than US$5 billion to build another headquarters in North America to house as many as 50,000 employees.
The technology company plans to stay in its current Seattle headquarters and the new space will be “a full equal” of its current home, said Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
“Our city’s business climate, talent, livability, infrastructure, connectivity and diversity render it an exceptional candidate for the new Amazon headquarters location,” said Ian McKay, CEO of the Vancouver Economic Commission. “We are confident that Vancouver’s other well-known attributes — a dense and connected downtown tech cluster, competitive cost of doing business, leadership in green business and sustainable planning, and Canada’s strongest startup ecosystem, to name a few — will position us as a front-runner among other cities.”
Cities have until Oct. 19 to apply through a special website, and Amazon said it will make a final decision next year.
Toronto mayor John Tory says he will be “leading the charge” to convince Amazon that it should call the city its second home.
Tory says he believes Toronto is a “prime candidate.”
“We are a bold, innovative city that has plenty of homegrown tech talent. We also continue to attract talent and companies from around the world . ... I will be leading the charge to make the case that Amazon should call Toronto home,” he said in a statement.
City staff are working with Toronto Global, a new agency dedicated to attracting global investment to Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area, to put together an “attractive bid for this opportunity,” Tory added.
While many cities will likely be clamouring to make their pitch to Amazon as well, candidates must meet specific requirements to be considered.
Key criteria include: a prime location, access to mass transit and proximity to an international airport.
Any potential site must have room to grow, as Amazon wants to expand its new headquarters to as much as eight million square feet in the next decade. That’s about the same size as its current home in Seattle.
Amazon said its search is open to any metropolitan area in North America that meets the parameters — the city itself doesn’t necessarily have to be a million people — but declined to say how open it
was to going outside of the United States. “We want to find a city that is excited to work with us and where our customers, employees, and the community can all benefit,” the company said on its search website, about why it was choosing its second headquarters through a public process.
Bezos has crowdsourced major decisions in the past. In June, just before Amazon announced its plan to buy organic grocer Whole Foods, the billionaire took to Twitter seeking ideas for a philanthropic strategy to give away some of his fortune. And tech companies have been known to set places in competition with each other.
In just the last month, Amazon announced plans to build three new warehouses that pack and ship packages in New York, Ohio and Oregon. And it recently paid close to US$14 billion for Whole Foods and its more than 465 stores. The company plans to hire 100,000 people by the middle of next year, adding to its current worldwide staff of more than 380,000.
Amazon’s current campus in Seattle takes up 8.1 million square feet, has 33 buildings and 24 restaurants and is home to more than 40,000 employees. At the second headquarters, Amazon said it will hire up to 50,000 new full-time employees over the next 15 years with an average pay of more than US$100,000 a year.
Amazon’s website about the search lauds the benefits it can bring to a community. And Amazon’s arrival could transform an area: Until 10 years ago, the neighbourhood near Seattle’s campus just north of downtown was dotted with auto parts stores and low-rent apartments.
Now the area is a booming pocket of highrise office complexes, sleek apartment buildings and tony restaurants.
However, Amazon’s rise has not been without local critics, who say the influx of mostly well-heeled tech workers has caused housing prices to skyrocket, clogged the streets with traffic and changed the city for the worse.