Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Some of what you say is probably correct, but your implied premise is that the best are those living in the city. Probably false.

I dont mean to say people who live in cities are the best and I dont want to start a debate about that. What I mean to say that younger people and Millenials mostly live in the city and want to live car-free. You are cutting yourself from a broad demographics, and I do not see the value of an off-metro location. Reducing cars on the road benefits everyone including those who drive to work.

My theory is that these companies are run by old school execs who have not adapted to the new car-free generation.

The new care free generation will one day have strollers, go to Home Depot, and have to buy groceries instead of avocado toast at bus boys. Plenty of young families have, do, and will continue to choose the suburbs.

Don't fool yourself that anyone actually wants to make that move. Young families move to the car-dependent suburbs because 99% of them are totally priced out of the 2-3 neighborhoods that combine a truly car-optional lifestyle with halfway decent schools.

There is a huge demand for such places but until all the Boomer NIMBYs finally die off and take their car fetish with them, the supply will not expand to make them affordable for most families.

So you're saying every single young family in MD & VA is only there because they desperately wanted to live in DC ...but couldn't afford it? You're lost in a fantasy of your own making. The car isn't going anywhere. In fact, when self-driving cars take hold it'll likely replace Metro as the most convenient way to get around. And getting back to the "tech talent" argument: if the suburbs are as undesirable as you make them out to be, why do hundreds of thousands of young, talented tech workers live in or near Mountain View, Menlo Park and Palo Alto? Because that's where the top companies are.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Companies want to make the most amount of money with the lowest cost (overhead) to maximize profit. That's what a company cares about.

The problem with "metro accessible" or more specifically
"walkable" likely means more urban/city like, which likely means higher $/sq ft costs. This is a big factor for companies (like say NG) and why they don't have their headquarters in DC proper. It's why you've seen companies leave high cost areas and move to others, be it the suburbs or relocate to another area.

Based on your thoughtless embrace of propaganda, I'll guess you're expecting Goldman Sachs and Google to decamp to Mississippi. LOL! There's more texture to the reality than you simpletons can imagine!

says the person who thinks your choices are limited to rural Mississippi and metro-accessible DMV

Anonymous wrote:
Amazon HQ2 had clear requirements that it had to be in a metro-accessible area which makes sense to me because they want to draw the best talent. However, some fortune 500 companies like Northrop Grumman still have a very archaic thought process. Take for instance the location of their HQ which is off of 495 and 50 intersections. They have 20k employees in the Metro DC area which means they will be adding 20k cars on the already congested roads. Also, how do DC residents and Arlington residents (most of whom live car-free) get to work? Even if you dont care about the environment, or dont believe in global warming, dont you want to draw the best talent?


North Grumman HQ
2980 Fairview Park Dr
Falls Church, VA 22042

Just curious?

It's not archaic to put your HQ in suburban areas when you're in the business of building hardware (some very large) that require huge spaces.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Companies want to make the most amount of money with the lowest cost (overhead) to maximize profit. That's what a company cares about.

The problem with "metro accessible" or more specifically
"walkable" likely means more urban/city like, which likely means higher $/sq ft costs. This is a big factor for companies (like say NG) and why they don't have their headquarters in DC proper. It's why you've seen companies leave high cost areas and move to others, be it the suburbs or relocate to another area.

Based on your thoughtless embrace of propaganda, I'll guess you're expecting Goldman Sachs and Google to decamp to Mississippi. LOL! There's more texture to the reality than you simpletons can imagine!

The big NYC banks like Goldman Sacs often have huge back offices out in the suburbs or other places where most people commute by car. It's not uncommon for big corporations to have a premier HQ in a fancy downtown building and most of the employees in back offices elsewhere. General Electric made a lot of fanfare when they moved their HQ to downtown Boston, but only 800 employees work in that building, the rest of the 36,000 employees work in mostly suburban office parks.

But even in the case of premier HQs in downtown locations, take New York, for example, most employees are commuting from elsewhere and those are long commutes (New York City has the longest average commutes in the country). Not everyone is a young 20-something happy to live in cramped shared apartments, or very highly paid executives who can afford 1+ million for still small apartments plus private schools. I love urban walkable areas but I'd rather have a quick 20 minute commute by car than a hour plus on cramped transit lines. And, of course, for most families, the suburban environment remains the best deal with the best combination of affordability, space and schools.

Anonymous wrote:The kind of people that work at Northrop Grumman are the kind of people that want to drive. The kind of people that work at Amazon are the kind of people that would like to take the metro.

Not true at all. It comes down to cost.

Anonymous wrote:
Amazon HQ2 had clear requirements that it had to be in a metro-accessible area which makes sense to me because they want to draw the best talent. However, some fortune 500 companies like Northrop Grumman still have a very archaic thought process. Take for instance the location of their HQ which is off of 495 and 50 intersections. They have 20k employees in the Metro DC area which means they will be adding 20k cars on the already congested roads. Also, how do DC residents and Arlington residents (most of whom live car-free) get to work? Even if you dont care about the environment, or dont believe in global warming, dont you want to draw the best talent?


North Grumman HQ
2980 Fairview Park Dr
Falls Church, VA 22042

Just curious?

no one that works in suburbs use the metro. and why would anyone work in DC given the choice?

Anonymous wrote:

A lot have shuttles from metros. And the majority of employees want the ability to drive to work and park for free. That's huge in my opinion. Now that I have to do daycare drop off, I need to drive daily and need to park. I wouldn't take a job without parking.

If you had your office in a metro accessible location people who want to drive always have the option of parking at the metro station. (Most of the new silver line stations and sub urban metros have massive parking lots). Also, metro travel cost can be pre-taxed and/or company subsidized. But people who dont own cars especially millennials will have no choice.

If your HQ tower is located in non-metro accessible location one could argue that it is more expensive because you have to build a massive parking structure to accommodate thousands of cars? which means a larger footprint and more cost.

My office is two blocks to Ballston Metro and five large levels of parking are full each day.

Anonymous wrote:

Arlington resident - I would guess less than 20% of Arlintonians are truly car-free.

This is plain wrong, most young people(not fams) I know who live in Arlington live car-free. Here are the stats

https://ggwash.org/view/35905/88-of-new-dc-households-are-car-free

About 40% of household in DC dont have cars.

http://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-by-city-map.html

https://ggwash.org/view/33531/the-american-cities-with-the-most-growth-in-car-free-households


I love cars, but I just can't afford the upkeep, parking car payments etc. If I have to buy a car I have to move out of my Arlington apt and move to the suburbs where the rent is cheaper.

You already live in the suburbs...

Anonymous wrote:You can still get there by Metro. Take the Orange line to Dunn Loring and then take the bus to NG HQ.

Did it for years.

This. OP is clearly not familiar with the area as their whole premise is incorrect.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They just aren't concerned with drawing the "best" talent. NG isn't Google or Amazon, it's NG. They want good talent but they aren't looking to pay for Best of the Best talent. They can get that from people in the burbs with cars.

Liberals take transit. People who enjoy the taste of Saudi turds don't have liberal guilt about driving. The company is tailoring its location to its target workforce.

FTFY

Anonymous wrote:They just aren't concerned with drawing the "best" talent. NG isn't Google or Amazon, it's NG. They want good talent but they aren't looking to pay for Best of the Best talent. They can get that from people in the burbs with cars.

Liberals take transit. American patriots don't have liberal guilt about driving. The company is tailoring its location to its target workforce.

Anonymous wrote:Twenty years ago, being in the city was not desirable. A lot of these companies located in the burbs back when that was desirable. Moving an HQ is not cheap, especially when metro accessible real estate is expensive.

Also, look at Apple's new HQ in Cupertino- it's a suburban island and not really transit accessible. And Google in Mountain View is still more of a suburban campus vs an urban environment. There must be advantages to the companies.

They don't care, they just plop the campus where it's cheap when they are just starting out and people eventually move to the nearby burbs and drive up the costs. My friend resisted the move there for a very long time, finally got exhausted with commute so much, they just threw in a towel and bought what you call a "shitshack" for 1.5 mil and moved to one of the overpriced SV burbs, much happier now even though they hated the burbs before.

Apple and Google campuses are not great comparisons. Suburban campuses are great if they have university level services, which is what the tech giants do.

Most f500 campuses are not like that.

I made a post on this a few years ago asking if people preferred working on a campus vs urban tower.

Lots of pro suburban campus posters, even on dcum which surprised me.

Most HQ choices have to do with where the CEO lives. Amazon is doing both a 'back to the future' by returning to the city (whatever city) and also is thinking about its longterm demographic churn in terms if new hires, given how new grads will gravitate to a city rather than a job these days.