Amazon's Reality Check for MD

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The 25,000 Amazon employees will not all live and pay taxes in VA. Many will live in MD and DC.
It is estimated that at least 2/3 will live outside VA.

Where are they getting this estimate from? I would think it's the other way around -- 2/3 in VA.

LOL, no kidding! We don’t just make things up and claim them to be facts around here.

[Anonymous]

I think the poster is getting it backwards. The estimate I saw showed a majority in VA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The 25,000 Amazon employees will not all live and pay taxes in VA. Many will live in MD and DC.
It is estimated that at least 2/3 will live outside VA.

Where are they getting this estimate from? I would think it's the other way around -- 2/3 in VA.

LOL, no kidding! We don’t just make things up and claim them to be facts around here.

well.. our POTUS does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Glad MOCO didn’t sell their souls to Amazon. All those tax breaks and incentives are a form of government assistance, aka welfare to the employees.

ditto. it's distasteful

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Glad MOCO didn’t sell their souls to Amazon. All those tax breaks and incentives are a form of government assistance, aka welfare to the employees.

ditto. it's distasteful

It's welfare to the employER.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing inspiring about Maryland. To me, Maryland means traffic, especially around the Rockville, Bethesda, 270 495/270 junction. Of course no company wants to setup in White Flint. There is zero appeal to anywhere near there. That traffic is just killer. Where in VA, you at least have a few different jobs to get around.

Crystal City is appealing for its proximity to DC, its awesome views, and when you are there you are humbled by being next to the Pentagon and within sight of the monuments and Capitol.

Tysons is appealing because it's becoming a bustling, super dense metropolis on its own that represents the future. And it's a central location to a lot of things in any direction.

Maryland. Come on. There are no locations like this in Maryland except for possibly National Harbor, but that only has so much land.

Maryland needs to face facts that it's only future will be medical stuff associated with NIH and NSA stuff. It's hard to explain, but there is something just off about Maryland. The way it was planned out was not thought out well. Too much residential and not enough business districts. Not enough roads to get around.

Have you ever driven in Tyson's between 2.30pm- 6.30pm during the week?? nothing can compete with that ridiculous traffic on 496 in Tysons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing inspiring about Maryland. To me, Maryland means traffic, especially around the Rockville, Bethesda, 270 495/270 junction. Of course no company wants to setup in White Flint. There is zero appeal to anywhere near there. That traffic is just killer. Where in VA, you at least have a few different jobs to get around.

Crystal City is appealing for its proximity to DC, its awesome views, and when you are there you are humbled by being next to the Pentagon and within sight of the monuments and Capitol.

Tysons is appealing because it's becoming a bustling, super dense metropolis on its own that represents the future. And it's a central location to a lot of things in any direction.

Maryland. Come on. There are no locations like this in Maryland except for possibly National Harbor, but that only has so much land.

Maryland needs to face facts that it's only future will be medical stuff associated with NIH and NSA stuff. It's hard to explain, but there is something just off about Maryland. The way it was planned out was not thought out well. Too much residential and not enough business districts. Not enough roads to get around.

They have silver line metro now

Have you ever driven in Tyson's between 2.30pm- 6.30pm during the week?? nothing can compete with that ridiculous traffic on 496 in Tysons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing inspiring about Maryland. To me, Maryland means traffic, especially around the Rockville, Bethesda, 270 495/270 junction. Of course no company wants to setup in White Flint. There is zero appeal to anywhere near there. That traffic is just killer. Where in VA, you at least have a few different jobs to get around.

Crystal City is appealing for its proximity to DC, its awesome views, and when you are there you are humbled by being next to the Pentagon and within sight of the monuments and Capitol.

Tysons is appealing because it's becoming a bustling, super dense metropolis on its own that represents the future. And it's a central location to a lot of things in any direction.

Maryland. Come on. There are no locations like this in Maryland except for possibly National Harbor, but that only has so much land.

Maryland needs to face facts that it's only future will be medical stuff associated with NIH and NSA stuff. It's hard to explain, but there is something just off about Maryland. The way it was planned out was not thought out well. Too much residential and not enough business districts. Not enough roads to get around.

Have you ever driven in Tyson's between 2.30pm- 6.30pm during the week?? nothing can compete with that ridiculous traffic on 496 in Tysons.

weekends around Tysons is horrible, too. I avoid that area like the plague.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing inspiring about Maryland. To me, Maryland means traffic, especially around the Rockville, Bethesda, 270 495/270 junction. Of course no company wants to setup in White Flint. There is zero appeal to anywhere near there. That traffic is just killer. Where in VA, you at least have a few different jobs to get around.

Crystal City is appealing for its proximity to DC, its awesome views, and when you are there you are humbled by being next to the Pentagon and within sight of the monuments and Capitol.

Tysons is appealing because it's becoming a bustling, super dense metropolis on its own that represents the future. And it's a central location to a lot of things in any direction.

Maryland. Come on. There are no locations like this in Maryland except for possibly National Harbor, but that only has so much land.

Maryland needs to face facts that it's only future will be medical stuff associated with NIH and NSA stuff. It's hard to explain, but there is something just off about Maryland. The way it was planned out was not thought out well. Too much residential and not enough business districts. Not enough roads to get around.

This is actually why I chose to live in MD and not VA. I hate the VA suburbs, it seems to be one annoying road after another populated by ugly step malls.

I think MoCo dodged a bullet by not getting Amazon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the poster is getting it backwards. The estimate I saw showed a majority in VA

Nobody cool or smart would live there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The biggest issue is the American Legion Bridge. There needs to be a large new bridge connecting Moco to the jobs in Nova, and Moco will continue to lose if it's too difficult to get to where all the jobs are.

-There are already companies in MoCo, lots of them, but yes we need to do a much better job attracting big name companies.
-Yes, the bridge is a pain but no, not everyone commutes to VA for jobs.
-People commute to DC too. People also take the red line or the Marc train.
-People also travel to Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville, Gaithersburg, Frederick, Germantown, College Park, Greenbelt, Baltimore, and many more MD cities for work.

The total number of jobs in the locations you mentioned are less than the number of jobs in 1 location ( example McLean). Like McLean , VA have more locations like Arlington, Alexandria, Reston, Herndon, Sterling, Ashburn, Chantilly..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Amazon is just evidence of Moco’s wider problem with attracting and retaining businesses. There are hundreds or thousands of businesses that elected to go elsewhere that we never head about. I think this ties in with the problems in Moco’s schools. More takers and fewer makers is a recipe for disaster, and the county doesn’t seem to care — it is living in the past.

Actually, Elrich fought to preserve the light industry in Lyrtonsville (tire repair, home construction, etc) instead of just typifying everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing inspiring about Maryland. To me, Maryland means traffic, especially around the Rockville, Bethesda, 270 495/270 junction. Of course no company wants to setup in White Flint. There is zero appeal to anywhere near there. That traffic is just killer. Where in VA, you at least have a few different jobs to get around.

Crystal City is appealing for its proximity to DC, its awesome views, and when you are there you are humbled by being next to the Pentagon and within sight of the monuments and Capitol.

Tysons is appealing because it's becoming a bustling, super dense metropolis on its own that represents the future. And it's a central location to a lot of things in any direction.

Maryland. Come on. There are no locations like this in Maryland except for possibly National Harbor, but that only has so much land.

Maryland needs to face facts that it's only future will be medical stuff associated with NIH and NSA stuff. It's hard to explain, but there is something just off about Maryland. The way it was planned out was not thought out well. Too much residential and not enough business districts. Not enough roads to get around.

This is actually why I chose to live in MD and not VA. I hate the VA suburbs, it seems to be one annoying road after another populated by ugly step malls.

I think MoCo dodged a bullet by not getting Amazon.

Exactly! Many people believeMoCo is a nicer place to live...and many MoCo residents are self-employed or run small businesses. If Marriott didn’t live in Potomac, we would not have kept Marriott. Honest Tea is in Bethesda cuz Seth Goldman lives here. When MoCo becomes a nicer place to live, biz will follow.

[Anonymous]

MoCo was already paying consultants to figure out why it was falling behind NoVa before Amazon picked CC. The only winner in MoCo here will be the consultants picked to write the next report.

[Anonymous]

Arlington was able to out-compete [Montgomery] in terms of mass transit, recruiting potential, hotel stock, all the things that Amazon seemed to care about in this process,” said economist Anirban Basu, CEO of Sage Policy Group in Baltimore.

“Of all the 20 [finalist] cities, Montgomery County will have the most difficult time turning this is into a marketing campaign. … This is a bitter pill to swallow.”

He said the loss of Discovery Communications, which will soon decamp from its high-profile Silver Spring headquarters, coupled with the Amazon near-miss, amounted to a 1-2 punch, and should prompt some soul-searching north of the Potomac.

But Basu believes the benefits of Amazon may not cross the river to the extent that Maryland officials and business leaders would like.

“This will put Arlington County at the epicenter of e-commerce… There’s probably going to be some impact from a regional perspective. But I really believe the lion’s share of the positive economic impact will be captured in Northern Virginia itself,” he said.

https://www.marylandmatters.org/2018/11/14/amazon-decision-to-skirt-maryland-a-bitter-pill-to-swallow/