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A comment on Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2. Parent comment

Re:Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2 by epmatsw on Thursday January 18, 2018 @01:22PM (#16179757)
From what I’ve heard, there’s a bunch of mostly unused land south of the football stadium that has been slowly being bought up over the last year or so. Obvious speculation is that it’s either Amazon or someone betting that Amazon will want to buy a big chunk of land near downtown...
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Re:Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2 by paxy on Thursday January 18, 2018 @04:04PM (#16181435)
Would be a pretty big slap in the face for all other "contestants" if it turns out that Amazon intended to move to Atlanta all along and this whole thing was only for publicity and leverage.
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Re:Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2 by elif on Thursday January 18, 2018 @04:16PM (#16181535)
The thing about real estate on that scale is, to not get ripped off you have to time it carefully.

It probably would cost amazon less to buy 10 potential properties and resell 9 of them, than to announce their intentions and then attempt to buy their chosen property.

In Atlanta, we already learned that lesson by announcing the BeltLine (mixed use alternative transit development corridor around the city) before acquiring any of the land. A decade later, after court battles involving the city purchasing land via the Board of Education in order to prevent further price gouging, we still don't have all the land needed, and only ~10% of the project is completed.

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Re:Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2 by midnitewarrior on Thursday January 18, 2018 @04:27PM (#16181632)
20 "finalists" are there to make the legitimate candidates become hyper-competitive. It's the way to extract the most incentives from the levels of government involved.
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Re:Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2 by bootlooped on Thursday January 18, 2018 @06:15PM (#16182527)
Maybe the lesson there is that cities should not prostrate themselves every time a big corporation says they might create create some jobs there.
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Re:Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2 by echelon on Thursday January 18, 2018 @02:44PM (#16180627)
The "Gulch":

http://www.myajc.com/business/new-filings-for-huge-project-a...

http://atlantaintownpaper.com/2017/11/gulch-become-amazons-n...

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Re:Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2 by smileysteve on Thursday January 18, 2018 @04:33PM (#16181690)
There are a few other places if the Gulch for some reason fails; each with many more problems (but likely more room to expand)

- Westside (superfund site from concrete operations)

- Jail/Aarons Amp

- Union city area.

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