Chicago’s bid for Amazon HQ#2

Here are a few details of what Chicago is offering Amazon to attract its second headquarters:

“Chicago offers unparalleled potential for future growth for businesses of all sizes and is the ideal place for Amazon to build its HQ2,” Emanuel said in the news release. “This bid will demonstrate to Amazon that Chicago has the talent, transportation and technology to help the company as it reaches new heights and continues to thrive for generations to come.”

Developers of four Chicago sites have provided details of their Amazon bids to the Tribune. Those sites are Lincoln Yards, the planned redevelopment of the former A. Finkl & Sons steel plant and other land along the Chicago River in Lincoln Park and Bucktown; the vacant old main post office along the river and Congress Parkway; 37 acres owned by broadcast company Tribune Media along the Chicago River near Chicago Avenue and Halsted Street; and the former Michael Reese Hospital site and nearby land in Bronzeville.

Chicago’s bid highlighted Chicago’s transportation network, talent pool, diverse economy, airport access, quality of life and proximity to research centers, according to the news release…

On Sept. 7, the day Seattle-based Amazon announced plans to invest $5 billion on creating a second headquarters, Emanuel told the Tribune the city planned to make a bid, and said he’d already spoken with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos multiple times about bringing HQ2 to Chicago.

No word on the tax breaks and incentives the city and state are offering. I’m guessing they are plentiful.

At the same time, why wouldn’t Chicago have a good chance at this?

  1. Chicago is a top #10 global city.
  2. A central location. I know we are in the Internet/social media age and all but location still matters.
  3. A strong transportation network with multiple airports, rail connections, highways, and shipping.
  4. While the city may be losing residents, the region is still growing slightly and has plenty of workers.
  5. An wild card factor: if President Trump continues to use Chicago as an example of a (Democratic) city with problems, would Bezos and company like to stick it to him and show they are committed Chicago? Lots of cities can offer land and other incentives but Amazon could claim to be a significant part of turning Chicago around. (Whether a single headquarters could do this is another story but there are business considerations as well as political narratives at play here.)

Now to see how long it takes Amazon to announce a decision.

2 thoughts on “Chicago’s bid for Amazon HQ#2

  1. Pingback: The spatial impacts of Amazon | Legally Sociable

  2. Pingback: Chicago and the counties in the region agree to compete for businesses as a group and not explicitly against each other | Legally Sociable

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s