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Originally Posted by spuzzum
The bid from Toronto is outstanding. A 100 page proposal with references from corporate, provincial and city officials. 8 potential building sites and a transit, airport, university, and economic analysis. I'd be interested to see the details from the Calgary bid.
I wonder what is the perspective thoughts from upper mgmt are on desired distance from HQ1 - if they even care or want a max 1-2 hour flight. YYC lacks the amount of non-stop flights into the US. Calgary also has a pretty crappy transit system. We unfortunately might be a little bush league but what a coup if they were able to land HQ2.
I'm wagering Denver, Atlanta or Toronto as front runners.
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The main issue with the Toronto bid is it seemed a bit of an excercise in pleasing every municipality in the region. Most of the proposed sites are junk and it waters down its effectiveness compared to focusing on the 3-4 best sites. Their vision for downtown is also not too clear - what 500k-million sq ft space are they supposed to land in in 2019? Office space is so tight there, Amazon would have to be spread across a lot of buildings. They also are less than truthful about rent levels. Affordability and congestion will be big issues - it’s pretty tapped out in terms of capacity - much like Seattle now. Toronto has other strengths like proximity to talent, but Google is making a big play there, so that’s regional completion for people Amazon may not want.
I had some involvement in Calgary’s bid. It’s excellent. The stuff that was public facing is just pure PR, they chose to keep the details of the actual bid secret. Employees apparently will have some say, so getting the Calgary name at least into people’s brains is necessary.