OT: Happy Happy Joy Joy, Amazon is in advanced talks with DC
- Thread starter RaleighPittFan
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And not Pittsburgh.
Very happy they arent coming here
Very happy they arent coming here
Good. It's already so expensive out there, can't get much worse. (Famous last words.)
I'm in apex and that woulda destroyed my commute to downtown
This should be good.
Can’t wait to watch all the social justice loving tech workers start pushing out life long residents that are poor and disadvantaged so the tech workers can move in and eat tofu. Some place in VA or WV can be the new place to outsource minorities, low wages, and labor violations just like what happened near Silicon Valley.
Can’t wait to watch all the social justice loving tech workers start pushing out life long residents that are poor and disadvantaged so the tech workers can move in and eat tofu. Some place in VA or WV can be the new place to outsource minorities, low wages, and labor violations just like what happened near Silicon Valley.
Yeah, this will make it impossible for any Average Joe to live anywhere in that area. Crazy.
That's the thing about liberal strongholds
San Francisco
Manhattan
Palm Beach
Hollywood
There is either incredible wealth or heartbreaking poverty
But there sure as hell isnt a middle class.
Agree. Who wants a successful company to locate here to provide local job opportunities for Pitt, CMU, Robert Morris grads and make Pittsburgh better and prevent a brain drain. Certainly not me
Yeah, I don't get that either. God forbid we keep CMU, Pitt and Duquesne grads in Pittsburgh and have increasing job opportunities here.
Apple is looking at options for something more like 5,000 jobs than 50,000. Pittsburgh could probably handle that. This region has affordable housing and the economic inequality isn't as bad as Seattle or Silicon Valley. I don't want us to go that route where tech > almost everyone else.
I also live in the city and I sense a city/suburban Amazon divide in terms of those us concerned about the impact on the city vs. those excited by the idea of the growth that could have come with it.
I also live in the city and I sense a city/suburban Amazon divide in terms of those us concerned about the impact on the city vs. those excited by the idea of the growth that could have come with it.
These jobs won’t necessarily go to the local grads. And how many of CMU and Pitt’s grads are Pittsburghers? What about the local grads in DC?
Some locals are saying that Amazon could change Pittsburgh in a way they’d prefer not.
A good place to live isn’t all about having more wealthy people. A good community isn’t solely about attracting outsiders to make it gooder.
NOVA and NYC are the new Amazon homes.
https://www.wraltechwire.com/2018/11/12/reports-amazon-chooses-northern-virginia-new-york-for-hq2/
https://www.wraltechwire.com/2018/11/12/reports-amazon-chooses-northern-virginia-new-york-for-hq2/
Really? Just those cities. The USA has the both the richest and the poorest compared to all developed nations. The wealth gap in the USA is larger than all other developed nations and our poverty rates are higher.
Our city simply can not handle this.
Regardless of the mayor and county commissioner making promises, the cities chosen simply make.more sense for Amazon, and prevent Pgh from experiencing infrastructure nightmares.
Pass.
Regardless of the mayor and county commissioner making promises, the cities chosen simply make.more sense for Amazon, and prevent Pgh from experiencing infrastructure nightmares.
Pass.
A far more realistic outcome is smaller, growing companies see what Amazon saw in us, and they relocate to our region.
Everybody seems to want the 500 foot solo home run.
I'll take a bloop single with the bases loaded.
Everybody seems to want the 500 foot solo home run.
I'll take a bloop single with the bases loaded.
Amazon was never going to choose Pittsburgh. It was all a ruse to get more benefits from their real location. Plus, the transportation infrastructure can't handle the increase in people, especially in Hazelwood, one of the proposed locations.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
There's very little interest in investing in infrastructure in Pittsburgh unless it's going to connect to something that exists. The locals don't seem to want it and the city and county seem to like to sit back and complain about not having it more than trying to figure out solutions. Meanwhile, the existing infrastructure is crumbling around us. I realize it's not simple to solve but someone has to want to do better than the mess we have now.
I'm still shocked with those choices. I get Pittsburgh limitations, but there were other great choices on that list that have the space, infrastructure, academic portals, airports like Raleigh along with affordable housing.
I mean why not just put in downtown Manhattan?
I mean why not just put in downtown Manhattan?
Both Long Island / Queens and the northern Virginia areas are flush with MS13 gang members so that must have been important also in making the decision
The Steelers got their T extension at the expense of Oakland, so that's all that matters.
I'm still shocked with those choices. I get Pittsburgh limitations, but there were other great choices on that list that have the space, infrastructure, academic portals, airports like Raleigh along with affordable housing.
I mean why not just put in downtown Manhattan?
I'm in Atlanta and that's how I feel, too. Amazon could have had 5-10 whole blocks in downtown, right across from Mercedes Benz and the basketball Arena, and exploded growth south and away from the currently overloaded suburbs. That site would have been linked with mass transit, had 3 highways within a 5 minute drive, and I think also would have connected to TN and NC via regional rail. Plus, we have a ton of tech workers here already and Georgia Tech, which is a top 10 CS school. Our airport is also far better than LGA/JFK and Reagan National.
I don't see the outside-the-box thinking Amazon prides itself on at work in this decision. All Amazon is going to do in NYC and DC is further drive an already outrageous COL there and make it absolutely impossible for anyone making under $200,000 per year (or more, maybe) to ever own property.
Dollars to Donuts those Amazon leaders had those two sites as top 5 locations before they ever started the bidding process.
Losing out on Amazon, while not surprising given the deficiencies of Pittsburgh, is certainly not something to be celebrated, unless you are a status quo yinzer who hates change.
It would have taken Pittsburgh and Western PA to the next level, even if kicking and screaming, and would have been great for the University of Pittsburgh.
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I'm still shocked with those choices. I get Pittsburgh limitations, but there were other great choices on that list that have the space, infrastructure, academic portals, airports like Raleigh along with affordable housing.
I mean why not just put in downtown Manhattan?
I think you have to know that area they putting it in. It is going to take off big time as a tech center. Cornell has invested in a large amount ($2 billion planned) in a tech/engineering campus on Roosevelt Island between Manhattan and Long Island City in partnership with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. https://tech.cornell.edu/ and that campus was all about NYC being forward thinking and recruiting major universities there (major tech universities, like Columbia, Toronto, MIT, Stanford, and CMU, were bidding for a spot in NYC). I'm really not surprised they went there given what is going on there...jealous for Pittsburgh. And Pitt still can't close Bigelow.
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I'm surprised that our commitment to Bus Rapid Transit and bike lanes didn't sway Amazon.
Bottom line. Pittsburgh had ZERO chance without a decent rail system that connects the city to the airport AND to East End, where the Universities are located and many younger people live. We COULD have had a line to Oakland, but the Rooney's used their influence to make sure that the extension was built to their stadium instead. That's a fact Jack, even though many will refuse to believe.
Bottom line. Pittsburgh had ZERO chance without a decent rail system that connects the city to the airport AND to East End, where the Universities are located and many younger people live. We COULD have had a line to Oakland, but the Rooney's used their influence to make sure that the extension was built to their stadium instead. That's a fact Jack, even though many will refuse to believe.
No, not surprising at all, but does not have to be a loss. Leverage making the top 20, use what you learned and developed and target some industries or companies and go take them from existing locations or win expansion bids. Just need to act fast and let the people know how we are not stopping and get some wins.
Sure, the process they went through is certainly useful for recruiting other companies. The publicity the city received was good. It wasn't an exercise in futility. But it is a loss, and Pittsburgh isn't the only loser in this. These cities didn't get the huge economic infusion that they were aiming for, and to say otherwise is just spin.
You are absolutely right, Pittsburgh needs to aggressively keep pushing its message going forward and utilize all the work it has already undertaken.
So Amazon got a lot of cities, counties, states, and school districts to give them massive amounts of proprietary information for free and then will probably get very large subsidies to move to the major east coast cities they probably planned to move to since the start of this anyway? (Or at least VA probably was part of the plan all along.)
Well played by them all around.
Well played by them all around.
Smaller, innovative forward thinking companies that scale well in our city is a far better outcome than the Amazon behemoth that would be an improbable and impossible fit.
That's not a SLY talking, it is the voice of reason.
I kind of agree with this. My take on Seattleites is that many are happy that Amazon are there, and many are not. For the ones who are happy, it's because Amazon is a driver of economic growth for their entire city and that has raised property values and brought in new services (restaurants, activities, etc.). For the ones who aren't, it's the flipside of Amazon's enormous economic presence: the cost of living has gone up for everything and housing has become unaffordable. There's no doubt that Amazon would have driven the city "forward" but it also would have permanently changed the landscape of Pittsburgh. Simply put, Amazon would have created drawbacks that - at least in 2018 - are not well-appreciated by the pro-Amazon crowd.
I'm not sure about that. The City is still struggling to increase its population. Bringing in young people who will or already have families, who earn a white collar middle class type of salary, and could be sending their children to Pittsburgh public schools, helping to make them better and more sustainable institutions, is a good thing if done the right way.
Of course, the politicians would likely screw it up. And we would end up with a very divided city of haves and have nots.
Oh, they know what the drawbacks are. You have to weigh negatives vs progress in a city that has lost 55% of its population (and thus tax base) since 1950 and is bereft of start-up capital. If you aren't progressing, you are falling behind, or dying. Slower and steady growth might have less growing pains associated with it, but it is also yet to be seen if Pittsburgh can land a single new company as a result of its efforts on this bid, so it is absolutely a loss for a major infusion of economic growth, capital, and tax revenue in a city that desperately needs it.
Played being the key word.
This was in the cards for politics alone. As the poster noted earlier, Atlanta was probably more of a logical option. But ... all the white bubbas, nascar, football fans ... ugh. As Chad Brown's wife might say, where can you get a decent piece of sushi there?
And while the actual city of Pgh could offer the complementary politics they'd like, the city still carries the old, grimy stigma in many ways, and surrounding areas widely have the rep of being too conservative (an opinion many posters here will either scornfully or proudly support
).As far as things like infrastructure and transit and COL and housing costs, i'm sure they were duly tracked and weighed by the analytics flunkies and passed up to the (normally would say "suits" but in this case maybe has to qualified by "varvatos") ... who scoffed at the city that REALLY won and automatically selected the ones they targeted from the start.
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