Ughh. Brooklyn is participating in the competition too. That would make it even less affordable 
I was actually thinking the Brooklyn Navy Yard or even Governors Island would be a cool and creative use of space for a large and innovative company like Amazon.
It sounds like Minneapolis/St. Paul will be throwing their hat into the ring. I’m certain the pitch would be the abundance of open space to make another boring suburban office park style headquarters. We do, however, have over 100 acres of prime urban land in St. Paul at the old Ford plant. 100+ acres on the Mississippi, in a well developed urban area. It’s about 4 miles to the airport, 6 miles to both downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul and just over a mile from one of the existing light rail lines.
No chance that happens though, because A) i’m guessing the environmental cleanup is a decade long process and B) we’re going to stuff 3000 units of affordable housing and a sh_it_load of faux hip retail space there. Then we’re going to act shocked when people with money and jobs don’t want to live there. I’m really looking forward to it.
I can see it for the Navy Yard. But the transportation to the Governor’s Island is lacking.
Pretty sure Amazon has the budget to run their own private ferry service. Goldman has already set the precedent there, so it’s not like it would be a bureaucratic nightmare.
Isn’t Governor’s Island already “developed” as parks and historical sites?
So they’re going to move to the most expensive RE market in the east coast and set up shop on an island only accessible by ferry? Why not Staten Island or better yet Ellis Island?
Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t seen this discussed and it’s a complete moonshot and could be a complete non-starter for many reasons.
The island has had a bit of development over the past couple of years and only opened as a park 2 or 3 years ago. It’s only open for a few months of the year, during the summer, and I’d imagine the vast majority of visitors visit during the weekend, so in theory the park aspect could be preserved to some extent.
boston and toronto are hands down winners versus NYC cost wise and the talent pools are equal. can people even live on USD100,000 in NYC? i think that price point for employees indicates that it will not be NYC.
Not sure your point. Clearly there are cheaper places than NYC, but there are also 1000s of companies in NYC who don’t pay all of their employees $100k+. Should they all up and move to Boston and Toronto as well?
are there 1000s of companies with 50,000 employees who don’t pay US$100,000 AVERAGE? US$100,000 average means that they are paying some employees US$50,000, US$60,000. do they want to have articles written about how AMZN employees are living in abject poverty in NYC? i’m exxagerating obviously but going to the most expensive option for every stakeholder for no good reason doesn’t make much sense.
I mean, I’m sure there are people at JPMorgan, Goldman, Bloomberg, and many other companies who make less than $60k per year, and there are no articles written about how those firms have employees living in “abject poverty” in NYC. You should probably note that NYC is bigger than Manhattan. There are plenty of people living in the outer boroughs on that kind of income.
those companies listed have average pay in the several hundreds of thousands. if AMZN’s average pay will actually be US$100,000 and they need to hire 10,000+ very well paid software engineers, there will be tens of thousands who make $50,000 or less. US$100,000 average salary would make AMZN the lowest paying large employer of highly skilled in NYC.
Austin, Texas
Of course!
I hear you but a ferry between NYC and NJ (two populous points) make more sense than when one of the destinations is an isolated island imo.
An expensive location would come with higher salaries… If they are hiring 100 accountants in NYC, those people would have to be paid twice as much as accountants in Minnesota or somewhere cheaper. That assumed $100k number is going to be different depending on the location. Amazon could still choose NYC, especially since the talent pool in the area is quite high quality. However, the cost disadvantage will probably drive them somewhere cheaper.
Not sure why you’re hung up on this $100k thing, MLA. The RFP says AT LEAST $100k, not $100,000.00. Literally hundreds of tech companies have been able to make it work in NYC and Palo Alto (which is just as expensive as NYC), so I’m sure Amazon would be able to figure it out if they really wanted to.
high quality and top notch like new york taxes.
Boston or DC winning dis fools