I’d bet money on the two being Crystal City, VA and Denver.
The DC suburb makes sense for an East Coast hub, and it’s smart to be near the capital for DoD contracts. And Denver is a nice, growing tech city with an attractive lifestyle.
The DC suburb makes sense for an East Coast hub, and it’s smart to be near the capital for DoD contracts. And Denver is a nice, growing tech city with an attractive lifestyle.
Colorado is nice, but it's nothing compared to the Texas population and economic boom. 28m people in Texas, versus 5m in Colorado. Texas is also building high-speed rail, which will end up linking all of their major cities, an immense bonus. Denver / Colorado also sit in the middle of a dead zone in terms of major populations, along with being slightly too far west from any major ports (Dallas or Austin get you close to the Gulf).
Chicago is far larger than Denver to draw talent from (including more surrounding populations) and far larger to draw general labor for. All have relatively good real-estate prices (comparable to Denver), plenty of tech talent, and are large shipping hubs. All three also have slightly lower tech industry wages than Denver. Toronto's tech and non-tech wages are far lower than all of these. Toronto gets them out of the US, but still very nearby, as a talent immigration hedge (political insanity hedge).
Dallas / Texas gets an interesting nod, because Bezos has deep ties to Texas. He's putting one of them in Northern Virginia because of WaPo, his second home there, and the DC politics. It might make sense that he'd favor Texas for similar self-beneficial reasons.
Atlanta, Dallas and Chicago are more diverse versus Denver, which is likely an important consideration for a mega corporation like Amazon. Chicago and Dallas are dramatically more diverse.
Toronto's extreme real-estate prices, double that of Atlanta and Chicago, is likely a big negative.
I give Denver a zero shot at landing one of the HQ2 sites.
> Texas is also building high-speed rail, which will end up linking all of their major cities, an immense bonus.
Denver already has light rail connecting the airport, Boulder, and Golden as well as other metro areas, as well as amtrak, shuttles, and other public transport to the mountain regions for skiing and other recreation. It's also among the most bike-friendly cities I've seen in the US, with routes extending extremely far and having a vibrant cycling culture. Workers commute with all of these options every day.
For being a smaller metro, Denver-Boulder's tech scene is much more vibrant than DFW's. Amazon _already_ has tech offices in both Boulder and Denver.
Among Texas cities, Dallas also doesn't have the tech talent pool and established network of transplanted tech companies that Austin already has, let alone the politics that many west coast tech workers (and Bezos) find attractive (although that point is kind of moot, because either way it's still Texas).
I don't really think it's going to be Denver, either. I'd be really disappointed if it's Dallas. I expect Chicago, Boston, DC, or Atlanta.
The writing is on the wall — Texas will turn blue sooner than later.
Dallas is a liberal stronghold in Texas, and in absolute numbers turns out more for Democrats than any other city in the state, including Austin (percentage-wise Austin wins by +5%, I believe). Unlike Austin, which is gerrymandered in the state legislature, every single state/county/city official in Dallas is a Democrat.
Dallas is also a gay rights stronghold, representing the only county and city in Texas, again including Austin, with non-discrimination clauses in employment and housing for LGBTQ+ individuals.
Furthermore— Texas is considering bi-partisan legislation to legalize weed. Dallas has already decriminalized it, and the State, while backwards in other regards, hasn’t indicated it will force Dallas to back down on that measure. Dallas also has stricter gun laws than the state of Texas. Dallas, unlike Austin, actually has the political capital to push back on state laws, because Dallas isn't gerrymandered nor represented by 4 Republicans like Austin is.
Texas has a long way to go, but I think if you would step in Dallas you would learn to leave your preconceived notions of it at the door.
I believe an HQ2 would speed up Texas’ change.
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As far as public transit goes, I'm sorry, but DART rail blows Denver out of the water. I'm personally familiar with both systems, and Dallas also has the funds and political capital to keep expanding. In addition to an already extensive LRT network, we have a streetcar network with 2 lines (soon to be 3), we're building a second subway Downtown to double system throughput, we've started construction on another 26 mile line to the airport (we already have 2), and construction on the high speed rail from downtown Houston to downtown Dallas starts in February.
I'm not sure what this is based on. Do you mean like startups? Or general tech companies? Or large companies with significant tech presence? So much of this thread has devolved into these kinds of suppositions and city comparisons. Why do these discussions always come to this, with everyone rushing to defend one metro and demonize another?
> Dallas also doesn't have the tech talent pool and established network of transplanted tech companies that Austin already has
I think this may be making the same mistake of assuming a few satellite offices of a few large companies makes a difference. Or that you hear more about startups on this site and others gives a certain impression.
Yes to all of the above if you consider the full Boulder/Denver metro.
On the plus side, the buses do leave every ten minutes, with plans to increase that to every five minutes within the next few years.
Austin's tech worker population is peanuts compared to the East or West coast so I don't think it gives them much of an advantage over Dallas.
That the reason for the lack of usable public infrastructure for white collar workers in Atlanta is due to overt racism on the part of government officials is just the cherry on top.
Like it's only not annexed by Atlanta because they made a ten foot wide city called Chattahoochee Plantation on the border of the county.
EDIT: It's like saying that Arlington isn't part of DC, which while technically true, misses the whole point. Atlanta proper is only about 1/10 the population of the metro.
Its more or less a ghost town since BRAC moved out a bunch of agencies and contractors a few years ago. This had the effect of hollowing out what little independent retail / dining there was there as most of it catered to the office lunch crowd.
From a commuting perspective, its right across the river from DC which makes it very difficult to get to from a driving / bus perspective. Taking the metro is somewhat better but would require a transfer for many people.
That seems to match south lake union in Seattle, which used to be warehouses and car dealerships.
Also there's a relatively high concentration of metro stops as is for a section that's not urban/DC core, and Potomac Yard is finally coming in in a couple years as well. Plus a pretty high commercial vacancy and a bit of marginal land that can still be developed. I mean, the dream would be they come in there and somehow spur additional transit down Columbia Pike, but that's probably a bit too much to hope for.
It's also already not easy at all to buy a home there (speaking as someone who bought a place in Arlington a few months ago), so it must not be too awful to live there.