ALL GROWN UP--ALMOST.

AuthorRundles, Jeff
PositionRUNDLES WRAP UP

There is a national, even international, frenzy following e-commerce giant Amazon's announcement in September that it was looking for a "second headquarters" location that could eventually involve some $5 billion in investment and as many as 50,000 "high-paying" jobs for some lucky metropolitan area. Amazon, based in Seattle and quickly becoming the gold standard in modern business, has already driven a few cities giddy by placing distribution centers in their midst--metro Denver (Aurora) among them--but that's small potatoes compared with the whopping HQ2. Responses to Amazon's Request for Proposal (RFP) were due in mid-October, with the coveted economic development mega-deal winner expected to be picked sometime next year.

The Denver area, through the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., is, of course, preparing a response to the RFP, and most signs point to Denver's position being among the strongest. Indeed, a recent article in The New York Times went through all of the Amazon RFP criteria--a population of at least 1 million, an international airport, "business-friendly" environment, rapid transit, the ability to attract high-tech talent--evaluated as many as 50 U.S. locales, and in a few steps determined that Denver was the logical choice.

To be sure, the idea of the RFP Amazon put out was not only to set the criteria but also to start a bidding war on possible tax and development incentives that states, cities and local businesses are willing to throw into their proposals. New Jersey, it is said, could offer as much as $5 billion in tax breaks over 20 years, for instance, and every place else, including Denver/Colorado, will have significant money on the table. And, apparently, more: Tucson sent Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos a 21-foot Saguaro cactus, and a suburban Atlanta town, Stonecrest, Georgia, is offering to de-annex 345 acres of land for the HQ2 site and rename it Amazon, Georgia.

Silly is often di rigueur in economic development enticement campaigns. Even Denver got on the ridiculous bandwagon some 30 years ago by staging a Macy's Parade on 16th Street to try and lure the major department store to our downtown--a retailer, by the way, that had given no indication at all that it wanted to expand.

But silliness is often all that the very faint contenders have to offer, so Denver's relatively sober, straightforward and businesslike approach this time around, I believe, is a leading indicator of our overall maturity. Instead of...

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