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SALT LAKE CITY — The frenzy is over, at least for now.
More than 100 cities across North America submitted proposals Thursday in the hopes of being the lucky winner of Amazon’s second headquarters. Utah submitted a private and confidential proposal Wednesday, a day ahead of the Oct. 19 deadline.
Cities have offered everything from the ludicrous to the humorous, with huge public incentives — New Jersey is reportedly offering $7 billion in tax breaks — and ostentatious marketing strategies — Calgary has placed ads and washable graffiti all over Seattle, promising Amazon they’ll wrestle a bear for them.
Utah has been more circumspect and conservative in its offering and treated the opportunity like any other corporate recruitment project, said Val Hale, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. The state has not shared any particulars of the proposal but knows Utah’s bid may differ from other states’.
“If Amazon is looking at the highest bid, we will not get this project because we will not be the highest bid,” Hale said. “We may not even be in the top half. … Our pitch is about the awesomeness of Utah — my words, not what’s in the proposal. We have a lot of great things in the state.”
Utah’s business-friendly environment, quality of life, talented workforce and outdoor recreation opportunities all make the state an attractive place in which to settle, Hale said, though Utah’s biggest obstacle may be its ability to provide the amount of workers the project will require.
Amazon says the project would bring an estimated 50,000 jobs and $5 billion in capital investment over the next 17 years, and Hale believes there will be another 100,000 ancillary jobs on top of that.
“We’re talking big numbers ... and that’s something we can do, but it would be a challenge. We’d have to push to do that. We’re pretty sure we could do it, but that’s going to be the area where people may say, ‘That’s going to be Utah’s biggest challenge to overcome.’”
Should Amazon's second headquarters come to Utah?
Amazon knowingly ignited a frenzied bidding war across North America when the e-commerce giant announced its plans to build a second headquarters. While many states are jumping at the opportunity, Utah has taken a more circumspect strategy.Amazon wants to build in an area with at least 1 million people in a 30-mile radius and within 45 minutes driving distance of an international airport, which would knock out some cities in the Utah Valley area. Hale would not confirm which areas the state espoused in the proposal but said they first consulted with cities to make sure local leaders were on board and willing to undertake the project.
Amazon plans on building an 8 million-square-foot campus, an enormous project that would require an exceptional amount of strategic planning. By comparison, downtown Salt Lake City is 12 million square feet, so the e-retail giant’s second headquarters would be almost as big of a project as building a second Salt Lake, Hale said.
A project like Amazon’s would affect everything from transportation infrastructure to air quality and would require an extensive design so the quality of life in the state wouldn’t suffer as a result of growing pains.
Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle currently employs 40,000 people, according to Business Insider, and the company says it’s created 53,000 jobs in the city while pumping $38 billion into the local economy.
But Seattle’s housing market has skyrocketed since to the tune of $42.08 rent per square foot for an apartment in the downtown area, compared to $31.38 in 2009, Business Insider said. The city’s homeless population has also increased, especially since the headquarters brought in mostly jobs for highly skilled and educated workers.
Hale admits hosting the company would require a massive "collaborative effort" to ensure housing, transportation and infrastructure were sufficient to support the headquarters.
“So you can see, there are plenty of challenges and, of course, that would be offset by … a tremendous economic push into the state that would be phenomenal,” Hale said. “It would take planning on a level that we’ve never seen before.”
And the city that wins the Hunger Games of the urban world will be in the public eye for quite some time.
