I would't feel too bad for Amazon. They are the ones that made it a big spectacle and dragged it out for far longer than necessary or wise.

I don't necessarily feel bad for Amazon - I guess I just hate how disappointing the result was. Transparency lost.

They likely could have avoided it if they had just selected one of the dark horses like Indianapolis or Saint Louis.

> Transparency lost.

The process was anything but transparent. "Cities’ Offers for Amazon Base Are Secrets Even to Many City Leaders": https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/technology/amazon-headqua...

You’re being tremendously naive about this. There was never any chance of Amazon locating to St. Louis or whatever: NYC and DC were always the only options on their radar. The entire “HQ2 search” malarkey was just to extract the maximum possible tax breaks from whichever one they chose.

Amazon never intended to go with any of those "dark horses". It was just a play for a better deal elsewhere.

I woudln't call the process transparent, since in many (all?) cases, citizens were not allowed to know the details of the negotiated deals.

They wouldn't know the details if Google or Facebook quietly shopped around either! But when they do it behind closed door they don't open up anyone to criticism.

You have to be really careful with bringing a sudden influx of high-paying workers into an area that does not already have that kind of income distribution (generally speaking, COL on the coasts is higher than that in the heartland). If you don't increase housing supply enough, you can price out a lot of the current residents and things can go downhill quick.

> And good paying tech jobs stay on the coasts

But NYC is on the coast. What do you mean by this?