Amazon is abandoning a prominent downtown Seattle office project 10 months after it threatened to do so if the city imposed a new business tax. [...]
Amazon confirmed Wednesday it will not occupy the 722,000 square feet it had leased in the Rainier Square tower under construction at Fifth Avenue and Union Street. The lease was one of the biggest in Seattle history — enough space to hold at least 3,500 employees and perhaps up to 5,000.
— Seattle Times
Sounds familiar, said Long Island City.
Designed by NBBJ, the 58-story mixed-use Rainier Square tower is currently under construction right next to Minoru Yamasaki’s famous Rainier Tower in downtown Seattle and will win the title of second-tallest tower in the Pacific Northwest once finished next year.
14 Comments
I’ve said it a million times. Everyone called me crazy. Looks like I’m right. High tax states with high cost programs and infrastructure will slowly collapse due to the lack of geographical dependence between big commerce and urbanism. Cities are biting the hand that feeds them...
Bullshit. Cities have been emasculating those fucktards peeing on their leg, and selling it's gold.
I still call you crazy though jlax ;-)
b3, the 50 states, and hundreds of cities, are basically all competing. Why would a company pay x more in taxes unless they have a geographical dependency on a particular place? In the present digital economy, that dependence no longer exists for many big companies. As technology increases, that dependence will become even smaller. The draw that big cities have is now mostly amenity driven. It’s a luxury to be in downtown Seattle or NY...not a need. That luxury has a price cap. The growth of these cities depends on an antiquated idea that society can be funded by distributing money from the wealthy. In the early 20th when a company was land locked...dependent on high density to man the factories...or ports for shipping...this worked. Nowadays, companies can leave very easily. Amazon can exist almost anywhere as can many large companies. When you build a high overhead city that is funded by the taxes of large companies and the wealthy, then you drive them away by overreaching taxes, regulations, etc...guess who will end up paying? You and me! The middle class. Shit rolls downhill. Once they are gone too, the city will either implode, start whoring itself to the super rich with all kinds of incentives that don’t apply to you and me, or expand taxes on the poor and working class.
Many of the political issues out there are really urbanism issues and technology issues. The politicians are missing a big part of the story.
Race to the bottom!
Florida may be a good option.. No State tax!
I was amused when GE decided to move its headquarters from tax hell Connecticut to tax hell Massachusetts. Of course the company got tax breaks for doing so, but the employees moved from one wage slave plantation to another. Now even the morons running GE have scaled back the move drastically.
Texas tried to collect a couple years worth of back taxes out of Amazon, which immediately closed its warehouses there and threatened to move away.
Texas waived the taxes.
Boycott Amazon - which does more than 50% of US retail. Amazon is a ruthless monopoly that has eviscerated American society. ALEXA (100m installed) mines data from everything it hears. That data is sold and used to target you.
Aside from that Bezos has CIA contracts and is on a Pentagon advisory board.
The only vote you have that counts is the one in your wallet. Cast it well.
It's no coincidence that these high tax places are very desirable places to live. There are other reasons to live somewhere than a low tax base.
^New Jersey?
good point
I would love to see Amazon go to states where older, rural economies are in decline. Then the cities wouldn't have to dole out welfare to those states. Either way it's a win win for cities. Only way we lose is if we give up our taxes, in which case Amazon gets all our infrastructure and the benefits of living in the city for free.
Edit: Of course, that's assuming Amazon holds up it's end of the bargain in providing high paying jobs for rural people and doesn't snuff out local businesses like Walmart does (not likely)
It also doesn't make any sense to move into a tower that is still under construction, the mess, the noise, the wind. Can you imagine sitting there somewhere up on the 45th floor trying to get some work done when the glazing is still to be installed, the elevators not even up and running, not to mention the wifi, my god the wifi!
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.