It’s hard to imagine where the Boston region would find the room for a company that will ultimately want up to eight million square feet of office space (the Pentagon, for comparison, has 6.6 million). Mayor Marty Walsh also said on Thursday that Boston is “not going to get into a bidding war with another city over something like this.” And it’s pretty clear that a bidding war is what Amazon wants.
The company has asked for very specific information on all the state, regional and local incentives communities are willing to offer, and the timelines for how long it would take to approve them. Amazon concludes its proposal by stressing that this a “competitive project.” So let the competition among cities begin!
Denver and Washington, including their suburbs, have already raised their hands. Mayor Michael Hancock of Denver has said he’s excited about this “megaprospect” and has begun talking to the economic development partners the region would need to make an offer. Officials in Washington and suburban Loudoun County sound eager, too. But land in the District of Columbia is expensive and increasingly hard to come by. And a far-flung suburban campus, like those many government contractors have in Northern Virginia, seems unlikely for a company that has grown out of a proudly urban home in downtown Seattle.
So Denver it is. The city’s lifestyle and affordability, coupled with the supply of tech talent from nearby universities, has already helped build a thriving start-up scene in Denver and Boulder, 40 minutes away. Big tech companies, including Google, Twitter, Oracle and I.B.M., have offices in the two cities. Denver has been attracting college graduates at an even faster rate than the largest cities. The region has the benefits of places like San Francisco and Seattle — outdoor recreation, microbreweries, diversity and a culture of inclusion (specifically cited by Amazon) — but the cost of living is still low enough to make it affordable, and lots of big-city refugees have been moving there for this reason. Amazon would be smart to follow them.
Where the Population of College Graduates Is Growing
As metropolitan areas vie for these residents, some are attracting them at a higher rate than the national average. The rate over the last dozen years does not necessarily reflect the current percentage. For example, Denver’s percentage in this age group is 7.5, higher than Houston’s and more than the national average of 5.2 percent, but lower than that of Washington, the Bay Area and Boston.
Percent change in the number of college graduates aged 25 to 34, from 2000 to 2012
Houston
Nashville
Denver
Austin
Portland
Washington
Buffalo
Baltimore
Los Angeles
Pittsburgh
St. Louis
New York
Top 51 metro areas, average
Minneapolis
Chicago
Boston
San Francisco
Memphis
Providence
Atlanta
Cleveland
Detroit
50%
48%
47%
44%
37%
36%
34%
32%
30%
29%
26%
25%
25%
21%
17%
12%
11%
10%
6%
3%
1%
-10%
“There is a very strong track record of places that attract talent becoming places of long-term success,” said Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard and author of “Triumph of the City.” “The most successful economic development policy is to attract and retain smart people and then get out of their way.”
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