HOUTEX

To say that any one length of line is going to make it work is simply unrealistic. A transit system, just as any transportation network, is only as good as the number of places it goes. The best scenario for Houston’s light rail would be to form a loop (i.e. more than one line) between Downtown and the Galleria, using Richmond and either Washington or I-10 as the northern stretch. You would connect the the two major employment center, high speed rail station and inner loop suburbs where it would actually be feasible to walk or bike to a rail station to get to work.

Nm

Well it was said early on that Amazon likely wouldn't want to build or own 50,000 parking spaces in garages. That's not their financial model in Seattle and would be a drain on their resources. Moreover public transit (with emphasis on rail) was a central tenant of the RPP, as was connectivity and transit time to airports. There was no explicit sentence that said you have to have rail to airports, but the area where Amazon's Seattle campus is located has rail access to SeaTac Int'l Airport, so it's not an illogical assumption that would help "check a box." But that's not what I was saying - my point was that fixed rail lines (street car, light rail, etc.) provide CRE investors / developers more security that mass transit will be accessible at their site than a rubber tire trolley or bus route. I've never heard anyone of authority say otherwise. Now the pros/cons of such a system are contingent on how it's implemented, what the route is, etc.

Good article in Bisnow from today: https://www.bisnow.com/houston/news/economy/where-houstons-hq2-pitch-fell-short-83950 Reinforces the opinion that rail is what makes a difference in commercial real estate investment. Bus systems, though they serve a more diffuse service area, are easily removed and don't provide an assurance that might compel a firm to invest in putting down roots. I concur with this assessment. There might be a lot of STEM workers in town, but they aren't the labor force that would be usable by a tech company. Ironically lack of competition for Amazon in the Houston workforce is probably more of a turn off than a benefit. That's, in part, why I think they'll end up in Dallas, which has a lot higher coefficient of STEM workers in the tech space.

I'm not sure I understand correlating policies that would encourage growth in new industries as leading to cannibalizing the prominence of the energy sector. Economic growth is not a zero-sum game, and in fact could have cross pollination effects that positively benefit unrelated industries.

Like I said...complacency. https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2018/01/19/op-ed-why-amazons-rejection-of-houston-for-its-hq2.html The point here isn't that the author goes on to say people are pleasantly surprised when they visit Houston, but that the fallacy exists in the first place and is only overcome when people actually believe it when they see it with their own eyes. Like clockwork....

You don't need a state to own or control an industry to diversify your local economy... you need a good municipal / regional recruiting agency and to be able to market your area's assets. The Greater Houston Partnership is notably weak on this subject and was very probably a contributing factor in a weak pitch to Amazon. What surprises me is for such a large MSA, there's notably very little ambition to be better, or to think big. HoustonIsHome nailed it on the head - there's complacency in the status quo. Houston's biggest regional competition, Dallas, used to have a terrible reputation as dysfunctional city government and is often lambasted as the home of the "$30,000 Millionaire"...but even it's biggest detractors can't accuse Dallas of being small minded or complacent in not being a Tier 1 city. Correspondingly, city leaders in North Texas have made dedicated efforts in attracting new blood to the economy by selling the attractiveness of the school districts, high living standards and inland port. As a result, in the last handful of years MSA has seen Toyota totally relocate from California, and new offices for Liberty Mutual, State Farm, JP Morgan, and others...all solid, high paying, jobs that feed the economy. With respect to your "pluses," Houston is indeed better off for being strong in those industries, but isn't it somewhat outlandish that there's so few to note given the size of this market? Every economic forum or market outlook lunch I go to I hear the same refrain as speakers count them out on their fingers..."energy, aerospace, and medical"...as though these negate the weakness in other sectors like tech, finance or tourism. What's additionally perplexing to me is that aerospace (aka NASA) is so often spoken of as a pillar of the economy when it's job contribution is a fraction of other hard sciences...representing only 3% of the engineering jobs in town. In some respects it almost seems like "Space City" is hanging its hat on a by gone day. Houston has incredible neighborhoods and arguably a higher capacity to be a regional capital for business for the gulf coast states and yet we never see anything marketing why financial institutions, tech firms or new industries should plant roots here...let alone an attempt to counter the national narrative that Houston is an ugly industrial afterthought. Why? Energy will forever be a volatile marketplace and yet there seems no earnest public effort to plan for the future and really diversify the economy. Why?

With respect, it's that mentality that will keep this city from ever being more than an also-ran in corporate relocations not involving heavy industry. The fact that 20 cities made the cut and Houston didn't in the face of the fact that there are more STEM workers here than anywhere else in the country is a damning statement. Granted, those workers by and large aren't going to be sought after by tech companies, but it does prove up the robustness employment base and regional education system to accommodate the 50,000 jobs that Amazon would have created. Blaming Harvey may not be all that incorrect - although it's likely more accurate to say that climate change and risk were factors. The fact we didn't make the short list is ultimately a judgement on the desirability of Houston, and a confirmation that nothing has changed in the eyes of the nationwide firms who value quality of life. The city has made great strides to reduce it's concentration on energy labor and to boost quality of life, maybe this will provide adequate impetus to kick start a tech sector and invest in public facilities that don't just convey massive numbers of cars from the burbs to downtown. Or, we could just shrug our shoulders and say "aw shucks, didn't want it anyway."

http://swamplot.com/former-brown-root-building-3-moving-on-from-amazon-lure-to-world-series-contention/2017-10-24/ THE LIGHTS have been changed again in the vacant office building at the center of Midway’s newly renamed East River site on Buffalo Bayou in the Fifth Ward. The 12-story former Building 3 on the KBR campus the development firm bought last year has progressed from referencing Amazon minus a couple of vowels to spelling out our city’s well-accomplished hometown baseball team minus its initial A.

I didn't think this was the Amazon thread. As I recall several posts from this thread were deemed inappropriate and moved to that thread when the Amazon RFP originally went out, including the aforementioned subject (circa Sept. 10). I'm in agreement with the disdain for a needless bill like what was being championed by the Lt. Gov., but this thread doesn't seem like the appropriate place to reopen that subject.

Leave the bathroom politics in the past and quit beating dead horses.

A big difference of course being that Regent Square is still separated from Buffalo Bayou Park by Allen Parkway. East River touches the (future) park directly.

What a dump... Source: http://eastriverhtx.com/

Having lived in Dallas most of my life there’s a big time cultural difference in just the way the people act. Doesn’t show up on paper, but there’s a tangible difference. Don’t get me wrong, the Dallas burbs are a great place to raise kids and it’s a good fit for a Toyota or State Farm, etc. but as a corporate “fit” for the type of company Amazon is, and their employees are, Houston easily wins. This city actually has soul. Dallas is sterile. Houston does not do a good job presenting itself though, which Dallas excels at.

While I might just be ready to worship at the shrine of the almighty "market forces" as any red blooded capitalist, the fact is it's been less than 5 years since the site changed hands after the previous owner sat there for some 9 decades...how have oil prices (and causally capital market lending in Houston) reacted for the last three or four years? We might let one full market cycle run it's course before blithely passing judgement.

How so?

I would wager a majority of people dissing the KBR site have never actually seen it. It’s worth a trip to The New Potato folks. That area was one of the first settled when Houston was founded for a reason.

http://swamplot.com/the-fifth-ward-building-with-amazons-wall-street-name-and-jeff-bezoss-fast-action-concept-in-lights/2017-10-09/

http://swamplot.com/the-fifth-ward-building-with-amazons-wall-street-name-and-jeff-bezoss-fast-action-concept-in-lights/2017-10-09/

That's not an answer. The "simple question," and the argument that private sites can't compete with publicly owned land, is a strawman fallacy. You're asking for info that's almost assuredly behind NDA's and private conversations--no one here has it. And it's the wrong thing to focus on, too. Why? Because, Amazon doesn't need a free site. They buy and rent a tremendous amount of real estate at market value, have a solid credit rating, and can go wherever they please. Incentives will be a factor only when the real driving needs of the selection process have filtered out the non-contending cities: access to workforce, compatible cultures, a place at the table with city elders, etc. (Great article here: https://medium.com/migration-issues/no-room-at-the-inn-for-amazon-effda4edc00f) Amazon will get incentives for any given city from the state, and any given city will have their own incentive package for the variety of sites they submit. Developer incentives aren't going to move the needle very much beyond what the state and city can do because, as correctly pointed out, they're all for-profit and have to make risk adjusted returns for their stakeholders, but also because their relatively minuscule in comparison to the public sphere.

Enlighten us as to what the other privately owned sites around town will be offering...cause the Astrodome isn't going to make the cut and frankly should be dropped from conversation.

I was under the impression that the $105M is only to add parking under the ground level of the Astrodome...which is great if you're going to park thousands of cars for nearby events, but does nothing to renovate the structure and turn it into something viable for an office building. The proposition to turn it into a convention center, which would have mode the most of the huge (385,000 SF!) floor plates, was for over $217M. You could build three new class-A office buildings with 750,000 SF of combined space for that amount.

As if there needed to be more evidence that people in Houston have no clue how to do urban development...

No, because it at least has habitable floor plates and windows. What are you going to do with a 700-foot wide building? Have corridor upon corridor upon corridor of cubicles without windows, or facing into a vacant expanse under a roof? I couldn't begin to imagine the heating and cooling costs for that volume of air. Even Apple's circular building is just a big donut with another bay of windows facing into a green field.

Not to be disrespectful here, but the Astrodome site is a non-starter unless you're talking about razing the structure. It's totally inappropriate for an office building and has nothing of note for around it for the population that would inhabit it. 800 Bell/Post HTX and East River are far more conducive candidates. You could say nothing is around East River, but that's as much a positive as a detraction, since everything can be built new and to suite Amazon without the imposition of building around existing improvements.