Why doesn't Amazon choose a city that almost meets their criteria and invest the wealth they generate there back into the city? Then we get more good cities instead of overinvesting into any single city.
Sometimes, you do the right thing, just because it's the right thing to do. It wasn't an investment. It was just giving back to the community that housed us.
I guess you could argue that it improved employee morale? I don't think any of our employees even had kids on the team.
Microsoft and Boeing anchor Seattle next to Amazon, that makes Seattle a very stable and fertile place. If Amazon moved to, say, St. Louis? What else is there to balance it out? Budweiser?
Cell coverage would certainly be fixable, though, if the local officials commit to reasonable planning approvals, and can convince carriers to play ball.
Well, there's the Kindle Whispernet thing. I'm in Australia and was impressed when the first Kindles came out and "they just have 3G, no configuration/questions asked - and Wikipedia is free." The high-level involvement and agreements required for worldwide "just works" connectivity (which is not technically amazing, but politically impressive) means that fixing local cellular would likely be a shoo-in and require no drawn-out anything. Chances are the HQ building(s) will have cell towers factored in at the blueprint level.