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The Devilish Ingenuity of the Amazon HQ2 Pageant
For over a year, Amazon has pitted cities against one another like contestants on “The Bachelor”, and with it nearing an end, the drama is peaking.
It was a bright cold day in September 2017 when Amazon announced that it would be opening a second headquarters. Where and when HQ2 would be doing so, was something the tech hydra was leaving to municipalities across the United States, and even some in Canada, to decide.
Amazon’s sales pitch to the nation was this: “Our second headquarters will be a $5 billion — that’s $5,000,000,000 — investment in your city that will generate 50,000 new jobs, with an average annual salary of $100,000. Along with that, your city will be subject to unyielding development and new-found prestige the likes of which can be seen in Seattle today.
What then followed was a months-long contest between municipalities across North America vying for the eye of Amazon, the online book-seller-turned “Everything Company” Jeff Bezos founded in his garage in 1994.
Cities offered billion-dollar tax incentives, and because that was a staple of all the offers, the contestants had to get creative. New York lit the Empire State building in an orange tint as part of their bid for…
