I'd place that bet on Northern Virginia as guaranteed and Chicago, Atlanta or Dallas as the other most plausible, with Toronto being a slight possibility since they're going with two.

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.

I agree with some of your other points... however

> 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.

I've copy and pasted this comment from an earlier comment I made, but I really do think you have the wrong preconception of Dallas.

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.

> Denver-Boulder's tech scene is much more vibrant than DFW's

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.

> Do you mean like startups? Or general tech companies? Or large companies with significant tech presence?

Yes to all of the above if you consider the full Boulder/Denver metro.

There is NO light rail link from Denver to Boulder, only buses. The money raised from Boulder residents via sales tax increases was spent on other lines.

There won't be for decades either. When they sold off 36, there's a clause that they can't build anything that would cause a loss of revenue for that toll road without reimbursing Plenary.

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.

>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).

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.

Foxconn building so close to Chicago makes me think Amazon will look elsewhere.

It won't be Atlanta. They didn't even hook up public transit to the new Braves stadium because it would, to quote the county commissioner, "attract a certain type of person". The MARTA there is known as Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta by that crowd.

It's funny to see how so many people in Atlanta insist that Amazon will reject the city due to (insert pet political issue here). Of all the reasons for not selecting Atlanta, if that turns out to be the case, Cobb acting like they've acted for at least half a century isn't going to matter much. Cobb was Cobb when UPS relocated to Atlanta. Cobb was Cobb when the Summer Olympics came to Atlanta. Cobb was Cobb when NCR moved to metro Atlanta. Cobb was Cobb during all of Home Depot's growth (and Cobb is where Home Depot chose to hq in the metro). CEOs love to play games for the publicity but in the end Bezos given the choice between (pet political cause regardless of what it might be) and a billion dollars will go with the cash. He doesn't care if employees can't duck out of work to take the train to see baseball.

It's less that it's a pet political issue, and more that it's an example of how a core requirement of Amazon (strong public transit) simply isn't present in Atlanta. Amazon really depends on city services to fill in the gaps of their amenities, and quite frankly, real estate paid for parking spaces is real estate wasted by not being desks. You can see this in the design of their Seattle infrastructure, abd they've been explicit about these requirements in their requests for bids.

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.

That’s not Atlanta. That’s Cobb county.

Which is such a part of the metro that the Atlanta Braves' stadium is there.

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.

Crystal City is a nightmare from a commuting perspective and an awful place to live.

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.

On the other hand, having lots of available empty office space just ready to go sounds like a bonus. Retail will move back in once there are customers to serve.

And there is a large pool of young talent a couple of metro stops north in Arlington.

> 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.

That seems to match south lake union in Seattle, which used to be warehouses and car dealerships.

True, but the location was always central rather than peripheral.

Crystal City is a nightmare from a commuting perspective only if you're dead set on driving, and even then it depends very much on where you're coming from. I've lived on the Yellow/Blue lines south of DCA, now I'm in west Arlington, and I've done plenty of commuting along that corridor by bus/train/bike/car (Mt. Vernon/4 mile run/ W &OD trails for biking/running as a commute is very effective).

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.

Having multiple "HQs" spread across three timezones would be interesting from an operations point of view, since Amazon uses the "follow the sun" model for on call on some teams.