Amazon's New HQ?

[VacantLuxuries]

A random thought I had (unrelated to MSP's chances) is if Amazon's presence could speed up the "purpling" of a (red but tilting swing) state like Georgia (ATL) or North Carolina (Charlotte/Raleigh)

If Bezos cared about that at all, he'd be giving it to Cleveland.

[BoredAgain]

Minnesota’s bid will be “restrained,” Dayton says.

http://www.startribune.com/gov-mark-day ... 444027563/

Probably good news for people against the proposal (and other cities that want it).

My thinking on this is that, basically, there's two possibilities:

1) Amazon knows where they want to locate HQ2 and is just using this confidential RFP process to see what they can squeeze out of the target city/state by making it seem like a competition - they'll immediately go to their maximum offer because they don't know how their offer stacks up compared to everyone else's, and Amazon can go ahead and locate in the prechosen target just by saying their offer was the most compelling, regardless of whether it actually was. In this case, it doesn't really matter what MSP offers - either Amazon comes here, and minimizing the offer was the best thing to do for everyone except Amazon, or they don't, and it didn't matter anyway.

2) Amazon is actually willing to site HQ2 in whatever metro makes the most compelling financial case, and it does more or less come down to who's willing to give them the most taxpayer money - in which case, we don't really want it, because offering enough incentives to beat out Austin or Kansas City or wherever would be devastating to the state's budget, at least in the short term.

All that being said, yeah, it'd be a way better investment than any of the last few publicly funded stadiums.

It is very possible that Amazon has a "short list" of a few candidates and is looking for ways to differentiate the final choice. I fully expect that they will read every proposal they get, but most of them would be quickly set aside no matter what they include. I also suspect that they are looking for local political support in zoning and land acquisition instead of just subsidies and tax breaks.

[xandrex]

My thinking on this is that, basically, there's two possibilities:

1) Amazon knows where they want to locate HQ2 and is just using this confidential RFP process to see what they can squeeze out of the target city/state by making it seem like a competition - they'll immediately go to their maximum offer because they don't know how their offer stacks up compared to everyone else's, and Amazon can go ahead and locate in the prechosen target just by saying their offer was the most compelling, regardless of whether it actually was. In this case, it doesn't really matter what MSP offers - either Amazon comes here, and minimizing the offer was the best thing to do for everyone except Amazon, or they don't, and it didn't matter anyway.

2) Amazon is actually willing to site HQ2 in whatever metro makes the most compelling financial case, and it does more or less come down to who's willing to give them the most taxpayer money - in which case, we don't really want it, because offering enough incentives to beat out Austin or Kansas City or wherever would be devastating to the state's budget, at least in the short term.

All that being said, yeah, it'd be a way better investment than any of the last few publicly funded stadiums.

EDIT: What BoredAgain said.

I think your first point is more likely.

Although, I don’t know that it requires a competition to get states to make really good offers. If they only want, say, Denver, they could just tell Denver that they are offering 50,000 jobs and billions in investment over the next decade and tell them to come up with a good offer. I don’t think Denver would be any likelier to low-ball them.

My guess is that they have 2-4 cities and want to see what they have to offer, including site plans and potential incentives. I think they genuinely might be using this process. But maybe I'm naive.

[acs]

Minnesota’s bid will be “restrained,” Dayton says.

http://www.startribune.com/gov-mark-day ... 444027563/

Probably good news for people against the proposal (and other cities that want it).

Golly gee, no conflict of interest here. It's not like Mark Dayton's personal fortune is built on inheriting shares of Dayton Hudson Co. AKA Target.

[VacantLuxuries]

I personally am glad he's being cautious with our resources and not throwing everything at this private company, like our neighbors did.

But go ahead and grind that axe.

[David Greene]

Target has had plenty of sweet deals thrown its way. I see no reason not to do the same for a company that projects to bring thousands, if not tens of thousands of jobs here.

Target is actively hostile to Minneapolis. I have no sympathy for them.

[RailBaronYarr]

Maybe the problem is that we keep throwing sweet deals at giant companies, like specifically choosing a LRT routing to meet a retailer's second HQ location in a suburb? Similar to the amount of money we collectively threw at the MOA (both in the 90s and again recently), we could make a solid argument to just give whatever subsidies we're prepared to offer to literally anyone, including Target and Best Buy (which would certainly change the discussion around their fate - good or bad - being what it is regardless of where Amazon locates). We could give those zoning, property/corporate/sales (on construction) tax breaks to a thousand small retailers or the medical device industry to offset Obamacare's 'awful' taxes, or literally anything. Doing something else might not drive 50k new jobs, but there is *also* no guarantee it'll work for Amazon.

I feel the pull, too! 50,000 well-paying jobs, the possibility that they might be synergistic with our region's existing companies (including Tgt and BB!), the state/local taxes, the other companies surely to follow them and build on the economic impact. It'd all be great! I just don't know why we have to sacrifice so much, and in this particular case, to such an incredibly successful and profitable (if they stopped plowing all earnings into new companies/investments) company like Amazon.

The word "subsidy" is thrown around too much IMO. Given that, I think it's fair to say that "we" already subsidize businesses by taxing ourselves with a higher than average income, sales, gas, and other tax rates in this state (and region) to pay for the things that make us so desirable - from parks to a punch-above-our-weight transit system to good roads with low congestion (yeah, even if I don't personally like it) to good schools (ew for typing that) made somewhat equitable with state-level-funding to anything else! It's working out quite well for us - even if our job and GDP growth isn't world-beating, we're on a steady, constant pace of growth with a wide variety of industries that's shielded us from devastating impacts of one of them going under. So even though the prospect of Amazon excites me (and to be honest, terrifies me from a housing perspective), I just don't see the **need** to go after them.

But I'm also not in charge so whatever!

[amiller92]

Golly gee, no conflict of interest here. It's not like Mark Dayton's personal fortune is built on inheriting shares of Dayton Hudson Co. AKA Target.

Does he currently own any? Seems like something he would have divested. He said he didn't own any shares during the contribution controversy: https://www.queerty.com/mark-dayton-is- ... e-20100826

[David Greene]

I'm certainly not saying unlimited giveaways. I just think we should make a real effort, not some watered-down attempt just to say we tried. I actually think the city could do the most here, not the state. The city could provide a lot of (public) infrastructure for example. The state could help fund that as it did with Mayo. I would hesitate to give a property tax break but it would be understandable if this were to go on currently untaxed land. I absolutely would not give a 100% property tax break and would put a sunset clause in there.

[amiller92]

Yeah, I think the question is just how much effort to take. I'd be okay with what you describe, especially if it was to go at the Farmer's Market, impound lot, Upper Harbor Terminal or someplace else we're trying to develop anyway.

[BigIdeasGuy]

Target is actively hostile to Minneapolis. I have no sympathy for them.

I'm genuinely curious what has Target down to make you think they are actively hostile to Minneapolis?

[David Greene]

Moving out of the city and actively opposing transit investment, for starters.

[QuietBlue]

Moving out of the city and actively opposing transit investment, for starters.

Yeah, who would want to work for one of those companies that moves out of a downtown to the suburbs, anyway?

I worked at Target HQ when the northern campus was in its early stages of getting established. As I understood it, the main reasons for building it were 1) the future of the leased City Center space was very much in question, 2) a lot of the space in City Center wasn't great for what it was being used for (I can attest to that from experience), and 3) there was a lot of population/housing growth going on in the north metro, and the company wanted to take advantage of that. I can attest to this also, as the team on which I spent the most time while there had a lot of northern suburbs residents, and many of them wanted to move to TNC.

True, there was also some rumblings that it was to show the city of Minneapolis that the company had options to locate elsewhere if they wanted. And that may have been a side effect, but it wasn't really why they did it.

Obviously, a lot has changed since then. Many more employees live in Minneapolis today and they've made more investments in Dowtown. Creating something like TNC isn't something they'd do today. But it makes more sense when looked at in the historical context.

[David Greene]

Moving out of the city and actively opposing transit investment, for starters.

Yeah, who would want to work for one of those companies that moves out of a downtown to the suburbs, anyway?

Point taken, but at least we moved near LRT!

Yes, I absolutely hate that we moved, but it does seem to be the best of a number of bad possibilities.

I fault Target much more for its anti-transit stance than I do for the move. Word is that back in 2006? 2007? the Chamber was ready to support a sales tax for transit, but Target nixed it.

Target is not friendly to urban areas. Its bread and butter is in the suburbs.

[amiller92]

It's going to need to change that to stay alive.

[RailBaronYarr]

Just to be clear:

- Target actively lobbied hard for transit that an entire LRT alignment was chosen for their suburban campus - the type of location of jobs you're totally fine with for other companies you don't harbor ill will toward (in my memory, at least - and these are companies without another larger/significant presence downtown).
- For the past several years, Target has focused almost exclusively on opening urban-format stores. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but I don't think they've even opened a single suburban store in the last 2 years. While Target is one of many companies that shares a small part of the blame for post-war suburbanization, they are also (primarily) reactionary to a massive social movement supported by basically all levels of government and shift in consumer demands.
- Amazon is a company that also serves suburban residences.
- Amazon is a company with an *existing, significant* suburban job center. Amazon certainly could have chosen a less-than-ideal location for a warehouse in order to be located where transit is, or nearer the population-center of the region. They didn't.

[LakeCharles]

If you dislike Target for them building one HQ in the suburbs that houses 25% of their HQ jobs with the remainder downtown, I assume you actively hate United Health, Best Buy, 3M, CHS, Cargill, Supervalu, Health Partners, General Mills, CH Robinson, Land o' Lakes, etc. for housing 100% of their HQ jobs in the suburbs (almost all of them w/o good transit access).

[David Greene]

AFAIK none of those companies single-handedly killed funding for transit.

[LakeCharles]

If Target really is single-handedly in charge of our transit policy, then we have so many issues. And if that is true, presumably all those people that entirely defer to Target on transit would entirely defer to Amazon if we bribed them to come here. Which, I guess is maybe an improvement, but barely.

[RailBaronYarr]

Whatever might have happened (you don't even seem too confident given your "word is" language), there is no way Target single-handedly killed a regional or county-wide transit sales tax. Regardless of whatever their role in that decision was, we ended up with CTIB just a couple years later. I personally fail to see how a company that moved (or even opened!) its HQ in a suburb without transit 5, 10, 20, 40 years ago is any less deserving of your scorn (rather than your strong support for sending a multi-billion dollar light rail line their way!) than Target, which has kept its main HQ downtown. Some other tidbits on whether or not they support transit: they are a MetroPASS employer, and they don't provide free or even reduced-rate parking for employees (at least, employees below senior-management-level).

This whole "XXX company does or does not deserve corporate handouts because I have personal objections to them" is a really, really bad way to govern.