There's a battle brewing across North America, and it's all about becoming the second home to the multibillion dollar tech company Amazon. What's its stake? I'm Jonavin Strickland and this is text updating. Amazon is looking to expand beyond its Seattle headquarters. As such, the company opened up the opportunity for cities to submit proposals to the company as part of the corporate decision on where it will set down roots next. A few cities responded to the call, specifically
two thirty eight of them. Only seven states in the US did not submit a proposal. Those seven, in case you are curious, are Arkansas, Vermont, Montana, Wyoming, both the Dakotas, and Hawaii. It seems as though there will be no aloha spirit at Amazon. The competition is fierce and more than a little odd. Take the offer that originated from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Banners in that city proclaimed that Calgary would fight a bear for Amazon. This likely falls slightly outside the list
of requirements Amazon was looking at. Charlotte, North Carolina, declared October eighteenth, the day before the proposals were due, as c LT is prime day. No word on whether all citizens were expected to enroll an Amazon Prime and observance of the holiday, Tucson, Arizona sent over a cactus to Amazon's headquarters, twenty one ft saguaro cactus. The Amazon Twitter feed thanked Tucson for the gift, but explained they couldn't accept it. Instead, they donated the cactus to the Desert Museum,
a natural history museum in Tucson. Birmingham, Alabama, built giant mock ups of the Amazon dash buttons, which our WiFi enabled buttons that allow you to order certain projects from Amazon just with a press of said button. The Birmingham version allowed people to walk up and press the giant buttons, which would then send out one of six hundred pregenerated Twitter messages to Amazon touting the benefits of moving to Alabama.
Closer to my home is Stone Crest, Georgia. Stone Crest is just to the east of Atlanta, Georgia, my hometown. In an effort to convince Amazon to hang its hat in this relatively small city, the city council voted four to two to d annex Stone Crest and rename it Amazon Georgia. I'm not sure how I feel about that, Not all the proposals were accompanied by publicity stunts. One intriguing one would locate the headquarters in three nearby cities.
The surprising thing is that these three cities aren't all in the same country. They include El Paso, Texas, Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Juarez, Mexico. Such a site would require special considerations such as border control, but it demonstrates the creativity many sites were employing when pitching their proposals. Not
everyone saw this as a positive thing. The city of San Antonio published an open letter to Amazon pointing out that this process had created what amounted to a bidding war between cities and states, pitting them against each other. But then that's exactly what Amazon intended. By making the proposal process public, Amazon put pressure on prospective cities and regions. Attracting a massive tech company like Amazon would win powerful
political points for any local government officials. Amazon's HQ would create jobs and other economic opportunities. In fact, according to Amazon, the new HQ will bring fifty thousand new jobs and five billion dollars of investment to a region. But to convince a company to build out a massive development in a city requires some incentives. Typically in the form of
massive tax breaks, and it worked. For example, Newark, New Jersey, put together a proposal that included around seven billion dollars in state tax breaks. This is as high stakes as gambling gets. According to the financial services company Moody's Analytics, the cities that are most likely to get the nod from Amazon include, in order, Austin, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Rochester, New York, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. New York City follows close
behind in sixth place. Other firms have a very different lineup of the likely finalists, and Amazon is staying mute on the subject. That will likely be the case until sometime in two thousand eighteen, when the company is expected to announce its choice for the new headquarters. At that point, the city might discover what folks in Seattle have known for a while. Amazon's presence can be both good and bad. In Seattle, Washington, Amazon has been responsible for massive building
projects throughout the city. Construction cranes seem to be on every corner, Housing prices have increased dramatically, public transit improvements have lagged behind the growth of the city, and the homeless population has increased. These issues must be weighed against the benefits of the company's presence, and perhaps more to and should be directed toward them before Amazon gets neighborly with a new city. To learn more about Amazon and
tech in general, subscribe to The Tech Stuff podcast. I love to explore how tech works and how it affects us in our daily lives. That's all for today. I'll see you again soon.