urbanSTL

ImprovSTL wrote: ↑

Jan 19, 2018

I saw it mentioned once but is the fact that St. Louis County did next to nothing compared to EVERYONE else not alarming?

I mean we can debate the actual value of incentives but that's kinda crazy right?

A big chunk of the cities incentives (almost half) were earnings tax cut backs. The county can't offer that since they don't have that tax. Besides that they both had property tax, sales tax, etc that were in proportion to the building in each. The cites is higher because they had more property to give a cut on than the county. That is why they are so different.

pat wrote: ↑

Jan 19, 2018

How much money do you think has been spent by regional "leaders" on the various proposals for Amazon, Boeing, the NFL stadium, the MLS stadium, etc.? They spent like $17 million on the NFL. How much on these others?

Think of what they could have done with that money if they injected into small businesses, start ups, training programs, etc.?

Well, in all fairness, that money didn't just disappear. Much of it was spent at local businesses, producing and collating the data, renderings, etc. I'm sure many local creative and marketing firms got some sizable jobs out of these efforts. Not to mention lawyers and real estate companies, etc.

I looked at some press speculation from a few other cities on why they think they lost out.

Houston: "Many analysts ranked Houston low on the list before the announcement and pointed out mass transit challenges and even the crime rate." (Houston reeling because rival Dallas got in. They have to be wondering if Amazon just stayed away from cities with "problems", such as flooding.)

Minneapolis: "Maybe we're too close to Seattle. Or too cold. Or too stingy. Or not smart enough. Nah, it can't be that." "Minnesota offered $3 million to $5 million in incentives to Amazon, according to portions of the proposal released to the Star Tribune in December after a data request. That was far smaller than the more than $1 billion in incentives offered by at least nine of the 20 cities still on Amazon's list."

Detroit: "Amazon reached out to Detroit leaders Thursday to say that an insufficient talent pool in the region was the main reason why Detroit didn't make Amazon's short list of finalists for its second headquarters." (I find it hard to believe that they can find more qualified talent in the 1.8M Nashville metro area than they can in the 4.2M Detroit metro area.)

Kansas City: "Kansas Citians didn’t have to stretch far to find reasons their town missed out. Some took the news as evidence of serious shortcomings — KCI, the quality of higher education, thin population density and a lack of tech jobs. Others see more benign reasons Amazon HQ2 won’t be landing here — Amazon’s list of 20 cities reflects a preference for big cities out east."
"In a note to investors, the Kansas City Area Development Council suggested it had received positive feedback from Amazon about its submission."

Charlotte: (On Raleigh getting in.) “Clearly the concentration of their top research universities there makes a difference,” said Bokhari. Omar Kazzaz, a local logistics consultant who’s been following Charlotte’s bid, agreed that universities likely held Charlotte back.

Orlando: "Economic leaders in Orlando said the region continues to struggle to put together a cohesive pitch that clearly defines the region’s strengths, which include a deep tech talent pool and available land. That’s a problem they say likely contributed to failing to make the cut."

Unpopular Opion: M S&T will never reach it’s full potential in its current location. Resources used on S&T and MU would be better spent on developing the urban schools ,UMKC and UMSTL


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Kansas City is more on the radar than St. Louis:
http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/19/technol ... index.html

The only thing more outrageous than this selection process is the journalism about it.

"Kansas City was snubbed" and here is no data to show that.
The only reason they refer to it as 'snubbed' is because Sly did one of the most public gimmicks. Same with Birmingham.

This is totally anecdotal, but I have an acquaintance who works at the executive level in SF for a well known tech firm. In casual conversation last week about how things were going in SF and his firm in general he mentioned how he's hearing the "younger", "hipper" tech workers are talking about how SF is passé and he then specifically mentioned Pittsburgh (and only Pittsburgh) as a city he's been hearing these "younger", "hip" people talk about as a "cool place". True story... For what it's worth

FWIW I want to add to your SF friend’s anecdote about Pittsburgh. In Boston, where we transplanted from in the last year for work, the younger engineers/techies and the hipster set were really positive about STL (most common adjective we heard was “cool” when we told people about where we decided to move next) and not overly impressed by SF - of course many still head there or stay in Boston because of the opportunities but it’s done with a tinge of regret for doing something so cliche.

stltransplant wrote: ↑

Jan 20, 2018

This is totally anecdotal, but I have an acquaintance who works at the executive level in SF for a well known tech firm. In casual conversation last week about how things were going in SF and his firm in general he mentioned how he's hearing the "younger", "hipper" tech workers are talking about how SF is passé and he then specifically mentioned Pittsburgh (and only Pittsburgh) as a city he's been hearing these "younger", "hip" people talk about as a "cool place". True story... For what it's worth

FWIW I want to add to your SF friend’s anecdote about Pittsburgh. In Boston, where we transplanted from in the last year for work, the younger engineers/techies and the hipster set were really positive about STL (most common adjective we heard was “cool” when we told people about where we decided to move next) and not overly impressed by SF - of course many still head there or stay in Boston because of the opportunities but it’s done with a tinge of regret for doing something so cliche.

Totally anecdotal as well, but I was out last night in Tampa. I met a group of people from Cleveland and told them I was from St. Louis. They were like St. Louis is a party city, all those casinos and clubs. The lady from the group said some people from Ohio even go to St. Louis for the weekend sometimes, I was totally shocked. Then she went on to talk about how beautiful the city was and the Arch, BBQ too. I think we forget sometimes that many of the people that visit St. Louis are from other Midwestern markets that are very similar or even in worse condition.

I actually think we REALLY underestimate or misestimate our national reputation just amongst regular people.

We're either flyover country that they're just not familiar with or we're a cool little city with some great attractions. Neither is necessarily great. I wish we were thought higher in both cases, but it's better than people thinking we're a hell hole, which is an oddly prominent opinion locally.

Now, if we don't get our spending in order and have to declare bankruptcy, then I'm afraid we will get that reputation. I think that's what did it for Detroit, honestly.

St.Louis is beautiful! I was driving back in town last night imagining on how impactful One Cardinal Way and 300 Broadway will have on the Skyline

St.Louis is very under valued by its own people plain and simple its funny the amount of complaining about St.Louis from its own people.
The attractions in St.Louis are near the top. Our zoo is continuously in the top 5 so is forest park the arch could be that if we built our environment around it Downtown is on the verge but we need to do more we have great urban neighborhoods full of beautiful red brick.
St.Louis reputation sums it up! CRIME and POOR management.
The pessimism has everything to do with the older generation the lack of change they want and simply set in their own ways.
I knew St.Louis didnt have a chance at Amazon however Amazon played over 200 cities when they should have just picked a city from the start.
I don't believe in lack of talent cause talent always follows I'm Happy for Indy Columbus Nashville and Pittsburgh thats more positive PR that they get that St.Louis doesn't i hope the leaders in the region build off of this and make headway on making St.Louis a strong contender for whatever company wants to plant roots.

I kind of do feel like St.Louis is trying a bit hard to be noticed like we're jealous of the Pittsburgh's Nashville's Kansas Cities Indianapolis's Columbus's we need to do our thing and not worry about what they are all doing.

Looking at the https://stlouishustle.com/ video, I don't think I saw any pictures of Clayton. I'm afraid some folks just link vitality to skyscrapers. Also no room in the short video for suburban or out-state attractions such as St. Charles, Ozark rivers, or Lake of the Ozarks. I guess there wasn't room for the family things like Zoo or CityMuseum in the video either. St. Louis looked a little more dull than it really is if you just saw the video. That said, I'm sure the decision on St. Louis was not driven at all by the video.

If the decision to skip St. Louis was driven by concerns about the volume of talent, I don't think they realize how many talented people would move from nearby states if Amazon came here. I'm here because McDonnell Douglas recruited me down in Oklahoma years ago. For engineers in Oklahoma, you can work for an oil related company or move -- usually to Dallas. Not much else there. Lots of engineers from all the Midwest universities come to work at Boeing since Boeing recruit widely and offers the best starting salaries. How many big tech companies like Boeing are there in surrounding states? Not many. That means not much competition for the top talent-->Boeing St. Louis can get nearly all the top talent from the surrounding states if they want them. The same would happen if Amazon had come here. But when you locate in an area already loaded with tech companies, good luck luring them away from their current jobs at affordable rates. Maybe that's whey they skipped San Francisco and San Jose.

I know this has floated around on social media but I haven't seen it here.

Still shot from one of the videos in the proposal.

AMAZAON?

Getting coffee with another member of the boards here, we somehow wound up sitting at the table just over from Sheila Sweeney. She overheard us talking about the Amazon bid, and was curious what we thought, why we felt we missed, etc.

That started a brief but really nice conversation with her. It was cool to get her insight and have her interested in our views.

She was extremely proud of the proposal, but seemed to think the miss came down to a few factors.

• A lack of immediately ready talent in the immediate area (the "immediate" descriptions are mine because it's the only thing that makes sense).

• Incentives. Despite what looks like high numbers to us, she said we haven't seen all of the proposal and suggested the contribution from the state is what likely really didn't measure up. She felt they could have done a lot more.

• The crime perception and numbers.

It wasn't clear to me if she had heard back from Amazon directly, though the way she phrased one thing made me think she had been told the same thing Detroit was about talent. The other two factors seemed to be her own reading of the situation.

Anyways, I told her how impressive I thought the proposal was and that I hoped that vision would be pursued and lead somewhere regardless of Amazon. She felt it would. I thought it was a cool little run-in, so I thought I'd share.

I agree the presentation was outstanding. On crime, the pitch correctly showed crime rankings of metro areas, not cities, so suburbs were treated consistently metro to metro. But the “city” rankings, which include low crime suburbs for some towns and not for others, are promoted so heavily — especially by the Post and RFT— that even the locals here believe metro rankings are cheating and not right since they don’t match conventional wisdom.


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^ just so we all recognize Saint Louis Metro has a very high homicide rate... higher than any that made the Amazon cut, double many of them. (I believe Indy and Chicago metros have the highest on the Amazon list but are still lower than ours.). Overall violent crime rate may be slightly better but still a leader. As I like to say other metros may steal more of your stuff but not as likely to shoot you.

^ ... or other metro areas have a much better grip on violent crime and the gang bangers/drug dealing that are more times than not behind it. California went lax on petty theft to clear overcrowded prisons and a noticeable increase in property theft.

But have to agree on generalization from my perspective/experience to date. I never felt unsafe in St. Louis because you get to know your surroundings & dull lifestyle helps but my wife and I have had our car broken into or gone through more times in Cali/San Fran Bay area than St. Louis. Its even on stolen car bit. One car stolen while at the Galleria mall in St Louis and one car stolen in Lafayette, CA (Wife and I even on that score as well because we both left keys in the car).

Have to ask again, time to change thread to Apple Effort? Do you drop Metro East w Chicago as finalist for Amazon to go all in on a N. Riverfront only proposal?? I believe Apple was talking 20,000 vs. Amazon's 50,000.

^ definitely think a new, separate Apple thread is warranted... go ahead and start it!

Has Apple released a request for proposals or any kind of list of what they are looking for in a campus location? Looking at their current (and future) campuses in Cupertino, I highly doubt that the North Riverfront proposal would be as congruent with Apple's needs as it was with Amazon.

Here is their existing campus
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3315217 ... a=!3m1!1e3

Here is their new campus
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3333118 ... a=!3m1!1e3

Instead of an urban campus spread around a city organically, Apple will probably be looking for a single site green field development. The best fit for that in the city looks like somewhere in Cortex or one of the sparse areas of Midtown. The North Riverfront could still work, but would likely require a massive change in vision for the area. If anything the best fit for Apple would probably be somewhere in the county along the side of 64 or 270.

chaifetz10 wrote: ↑

Jan 23, 2018

It's my understanding that they don't want to incite a bidding war among cities and already have certain locations in mind already. I don't see Apple asking for proposals and don't think cities really have much sway in trying to recruit them.

Good points, It would be interesting to know if Apple is going to let Amazon its city first and then go from there. I would assume so for simple fact that's a lot of jobs and talent between the two & why put yourself next door.

On a development blog for San Fran I note that Facebook could easily be the next big tech titan looking to plant another flag somewhere else. They have been expanding their main campus like the rest of the giants and actively seeking to get big infrastructure, another bay crossing in the works for a workforce that can barely afford the housing nearby if they can at all or end up with mega congested commutes..

If Amazon doesn't pick Denver, "there will be a sense of relief" says Colorado governor.

https://www.denverpost.com/2018/01/23/c ... q2-denver/

I encourage you all to read this letter from Detroit's Dan Gilbert to the Amazon HQ2 Detroit Bid Committee.

http://1md1ifcdgpn3hahxo2l2bzt6.wpengin ... e-Room.pdf

Amazingly applicable to St. Louis, particularly the close. Save the bankruptcy, this could be written about St. Louis

"We are still dealing with the unique radioactive-like reputational fallout of 50-60 years of economic decline, disinvestment, municipal bankruptcy, and all of the other associated negative consequences of that extraordinarily long period of time."

Perceptions*, unfortunately, are reality. People** view St. Louis as a badly declining, rather than ascendant, city, and see STL's problems as beyond repair. Alternatively, the buzz behind ascendant cities like Austin, Raleigh, Nashville is self-perpetuating on some level. Those cities have buzz so more "things" happen there leading to even more buzz.

*By no means am I saying that STL doesn't have deep problems, just that, many times, the problems aren't as bad as perceived.

**"People" could mean our own suburbanites' view of the city proper or people in other cities and their view of the region.