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Comment by ericabiz | Hacker News Reader

Agreed; Austin already has the Whole Foods HQ and a huge Apple and Facebook presence. Amazon also has a huge presence just outside Austin in San Marcos.

As an Austinite, I was really proud to see the city offered no financial incentives. Seems they've learned from the Domain issues (locals will understand this reference.)

I would be happy to have Austin selected as the city for HQ2. On local FB groups I have said I didn't think it would happen due to other cities offering better incentives, and I think that's why Amazon ran this contest. Instead of just saying "Austin", they said "Well, Austin...unless somewhere else gives us an unbeatable deal." :-/

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In the early days of Whole Foods they built stores with cash and bought land to build shopping centers instead of renting. I believe HQ2 may be the real reason Amazon acquired Whole Foods, because it owned a lot of real estate in Austin.

Amazon favors urban locations for their offices, however. How is a bunch of spread out grocery store land going to help them build enough office space near each other to fit 50,000 employees? What are they going to do with all of the whole foods locations on that property?

Sorry, but the idea that the WF acquisition was to actually end up with a bunch of spread out land that isn't usable for their purposes at a premium far above what they would pay for the land itself is just silly. If it goes to Austin and WF has spare land it might get used, but they would never have made the purchase just for that.

I think my comment went over your head.

Whole Foods started in Austin and has been buying real estate for decades. They famously purchased land based on the percentage of college graduates in an area. They purchased land in urban areas. I don’t why you would assume otherwise. They purchased land and held onto unused real estate to keep their competition from building new stores.

They own a lot of land in prime locations. Often they’re the landlord of all the other business near them. Ever wonder why you see natural pet food stores and eco-friendly dentists next to a Whole Foods? It’s because they own the block.

Let me know if I need to explain this further.

> I think my comment went over your head.

> Let me know if I need to explain this further.

No need to be condescending. However, I think he did have a good point. I can't see Amazon buying Whole Foods to acquire their Real Estate holdings. I also don't see those holdings being valuable in terms of a HQ2 location. I would imagine the HQ building would be similar to the one in Seattle, in the fact that it is downtown and not near an area with college graduates. Also, that building would most likely be a large office building which would be out of place in a area like that.

You seem to think I'm talking about residential areas. I'm talking about downtown Austin real estate.

Here's photo of land Whole Foods owns or leases (mostly owns) in downtown Austin that I pieced together from information in news articles. They likely have much more.

https://i.imgur.com/AxOp9Xl.png

Also UT providing a pipeline of top CS talent and a healthy tech scene locally compared to a lot of the other final cities.

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