CREJ - Office Properties Quarterly - September 2017
As we prepared to go into production on this issue, news of Amazon’s plan to search for a location for its second headquarters, Amazon HQ2, was just emerging as the company opened the request for proposals. The impact this new development will have on its selected city is hard to dispute. The company said it plans to invest over $5 billion in construction and aims to employ as many as 50,000 high-paying positions at the new headquarters. In addition, the project is expected to create “tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the surrounding community,” according to the company’s press release. The plan is for the new facility to be a “full equal” to the company’s current headquarters in Seattle. This idea would get just about any city’s economic development team salivating. From 2010 to 2016, Amazon estimates its investment in Seattle resulted in an additional $38 billion to the city’s economy as “Every dollar invested by Amazon is Seattle generated an additional 1.4 dollars to the city’s economy overall,” the company stated. The Seattle Amazon campus encompasses 33 building for a total of 8.1 million square feet and employs over 40,000 people. It’s hard to read the HQ2 real estate requirements and not feel confident about Denver’s prospects. According to the release, the company prefers to locate in a metropolitan area with more than 1 million people (check), in a stable and business-friendly environment (check), in either an urban or suburban locations with the potential to attract and retain strong technical talent (check), and in a community that thinks big and creatively when considering locations and real estate options (check). Almost monthly I receive reports in my inbox highlighting the technology industry’s impact on Colorado. Our booming tech industry helped us navigate the market’s recent oil and gas challenges. Further, I would wager that every issue of Office Properties Quarterly has made mention of the importance of the tech industry as well as how Colorado’s work-life balance continues to attract highly educated, young professionals. In this issue alone, Andrew Blaustein and Matt Davidson with Newmark Knight Frank outline how the River North district is readying to take the helm as the city’s technological hub and the world’s capital for AgTech. To put the impact of a project creating 50,000 jobs in perspective, employment in all of metro Denver is forecasted to increase by 2.3 percent in 2017, representing the addition of about 37,000 jobs, according to an article written by Patricia Silverstein on Page 4. Granted, all of these new Amazon jobs wouldn’t come in overnight, but the possibilities are staggering. We’re a long way out and the competition undoubtedly will be fierce as cities across the country try to court the online behemoth, but it seems a safe bet that Denver will be right there in the mix. Michelle Z. Askeland maskeland@crej.com 303-623-1148, Ext.104