Massachusetts is hitting Amazon with a shotgun blast of up to 24 bids for its second headquarters today — with Boston’s bid focused on Suffolk Downs — despite the online retail giant’s call for metropolitan areas to stick to one pitch.
“Frankly, there’s a lot of good options here for Amazon,” Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Jay Ash said yesterday. “We’re excited about what Massachusetts is going to put forward and we hope we have a winning proposal.”
Ash said by tonight’s deadline, he expects Bay State communities to submit “give or take” two dozen bids for Amazon’s massive development windfall — a $5 billion, 8-million-square-foot second headquarters, hosting as many as 50,000 employees. State officials plan to fold information about each of the two-dozen separate pitches into their own overarching proposal, which as of yesterday stood at roughly 150 pages long, Ash said.
Amazon’s request for bids called on states and metropolitan areas “to coordinate with relevant jurisdictions to submit one (1) RFP.”
Gov. Charlie Baker told the Herald, “Every conversation that we’ve had with (Amazon), in terms of trying to narrow the scope of this, has basically given us the impression that they’re actually looking for people to give them a lot of options. … Our bid is basically, ‘This is why Massachusetts is great.’”
In addition to individual bids from across the state, including Worcester, New Bedford and Billerica, Amazon will also get two different proposals that include Boston sites — Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s bid, headlining with Suffolk Downs, and Somerville Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone’s plan for a regional headquarters along the Orange Line that includes offices in Boston near North Station and in Charlestown, as well as sites in Cambridge and Somerville.
New Hampshire, meanwhile, is submitting just one bid — which takes shot after shot at Boston, hitting the Hub on its traffic and housing prices. The 75-page bid pitches a site in Londonderry, highlighting the state’s low taxes, while also making the argument it is close to Boston, but not too close.
“All of the benefits of Boston without all the headaches,” one section of the bid is titled.
“Choose Boston and next year when you leave your tiny $4,000-a-month apartment only to sit in 2 hours of traffic trying to make your way to an overburdened airport, you’ll be wishing you were in New Hampshire,” the bid says, while also touting easy access to Harvard, MIT, Boston University and Boston College.
Walsh pooh-poohed New Hampshire’s criticisms.
“This is about positive stuff, not negative stuff,” Walsh said. “I don’t want to have Amazon come to Boston by tearing down another city.”
Yesterday, Walsh signed Boston’s final bid, which will emphasize Suffolk Downs, the racetrack in East Boston and Revere, as the ideal home for Amazon. The proposal will also include at least three other potential sites, Walsh said. City Hall declined to make the bid public before it is submitted. It is also believed to include Widett Circle and the Seaport District.
John Nucci, a former Boston city councilor and an East Boston resident, said of Suffolk Downs, “I think it’s a very good location, primarily because it’s not complicated and pretty much shovel-ready.”
But Nucci added that transportation improvements for vehicle traffic are needed.
“There would have to be a lot of study and improvements to make the site work,” Nucci said.
And while other areas have offered incentives, with Worcester promising $500 million in benefits, Walsh said Boston’s bid does not contain specific enticements, which he said will be tailored to whichever Boston site Amazon chooses.
Mayoral challenger Tito Jackson last night said, “First I believe the Amazon package has to be transparent … people should know what this is about. We’ve seen time and time again with this administration, with the Olympics, with IndyCar, with General Electric, with these deals being cut not before the public. Transparency and accountability is key. Amazon is an amazing company. And I would love to have them. But they do not need an economic incentive to come here. We have the best ecosystem in the United States of America for the work that they do.”
O’Ryan Johnson contributed to this report.
